1KHO 831: Resilience Across the Lifespan | Dr. Steven Baron, Teaching With a Strengths-Based Approach

**Ginny Yurich** (0:00)
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Welcome to The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast. My name is Ginny Yurich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And I have a wonderful guest today who is helping parents and teachers to look at their kids with a strength-based approach. It is so encouraging and so needed. Dr. Steven Baron, welcome.

**Steven Baron** (1:33)
Thank you so much, Ginny. A pleasure to be here.

**Ginny Yurich** (1:36)
Okay, so you are a New York state licensed psychologist, as well as a nationally certified school psychologist. Can you give us a little of your backstory here? You wrote this book called Teaching With a Strength-Based Approach, How to Motivate Students and Build Relationships. And one of the things I was going to say to you, Dr. Baron, is these things could really be applicable to parents as well.
And then you told me you actually have another book that's going to be coming out that is applied to parents called The Strength-Building Parent. But what is your backstory of taking this approach? Because often, often, and I think this has been for a long time, we're constantly talking about what's wrong, how can we fix this thing that's wrong? And you're looking at it from a different perspective.

**Steven Baron** (2:17)
That's very true Ginny. My backstory is essentially, as you mentioned, I was a school psychologist for 30 years.
And what I discovered during that time was that there was such an emphasis on, why is it Ginny reading? Why isn't Ginny keeping up with the class? Why is this person having social issues? And one of my roles as a school psychologist, I was a part of a team and I had to do assessments on children who were experiencing different challenges. And I noticed over time that there was such an interest in, well, what's wrong?
Where are they weak? Where are they struggling? And it really wasn't, as I realized, there's more of an emphasis on what are these kids doing right? What do these kids have going for them? And I think for myself and other members of my team who assessed kids, a special education teacher, a speech pathologist, an OT, a PT, it gets kind of hopeless. There's a sense of hopelessness and despair when you're focusing on what's wrong with people all the time. And I think for me, this was sort of germinating in me. And I think for me, the moment where it all kind of crystallized, I went to a conference on resiliency in children. And the speaker was a fellow named Robert Brooks, who was a big, big author in this field.

**Ginny Yurich** (3:37)
Yeah, I've gotten to interview him.

**Steven Baron** (3:39)
Yes. Yes.
And Robert has become a very good friend and he wrote the forward to both of my books. You know, I asked him and he spoke about how we can enhance resiliency and inner strength in children. And I thought, you know what? This is what I've been feeling. This is what I've been thinking. So I went back to my school job and I began and I realized that they had a particular way of doing things. They had a culture. They asked. I wasn't going to change the world overnight, but I began to integrate more positive types of interventions in my work with kids. And at the same time, I was also working in a private practice, which I still do in New York. And in my work with children, I always ask parents at the beginning. I know why they're there because Johnny can't do this or Johnny is struggling with that. I'll ask parents and the kids, what do you do well? What are your biggest strengths? And I think it kind of catches them a little off guard because they didn't expect that. We hear because, you know, I'm anxious or we hear because I, you know, I can't get off my phone or what, I'm addicted to it. But people have strengths. And so I began to incorporate that framework. When I would assess kids, yes, I would certainly indicate where their struggles and challenges are. And that's a misconception, like a positive psychology, strength-based approach doesn't mean you ignore the problems, because you need to know what you're dealing with. But can there be inner resources within a child or person to help deal with some of those challenges the person is struggling with? So really, you need both sides of the coin. And so I began to incorporate more and more of this type of work, and this type of philosophy in my work. And when I retired from my school psychology position, after 30 years, it was one of my bucket list was to write a book on how educators can bring this way of thinking based on the experiences that I had into the classroom, into the school culture.