{"id":937,"date":"2017-11-22T12:47:41","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T17:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.psychedconsult.com\/?p=937"},"modified":"2020-03-07T12:46:51","modified_gmt":"2020-03-07T17:46:51","slug":"my-superhero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.psychedconsult.com\/my-superhero\/","title":{"rendered":"Unleash Your Child’s Inner Superhero"},"content":{"rendered":"

At any given moment, if you were to ask my almost four, going on fourteen, year-old son Tristan who he was, you are likely to get the response \u201cI\u2019m Spider-Man!\u201d or \u201cBatman\u201d spoken in a low, Christian Bale-esque grainy voice.\u00a0 My son is a lover of all things super heroes and from the moment he could understand them, he was enamored!\u00a0 His identity (or the \u201cI\u201d) is strongly intertwined with these characters and their positive traits.\u00a0 He will often say \u201cI\u2019m Batman, look at what I can do,\u201d with a glowing face.\u00a0 It is not surprising that he identifies with these superheroes as pretend play is a part of child development.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Recent studies done by Rachel White of the University of Pennsylvania and Stephanie Carlson of the University of Minnesota explain the \u201cBatman Effect.\u201d\u00a0 In her\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0article \u201cThe Power of Pretending: What Would a Hero Do?<\/a>\u201d Alison Gopink states that children who pretend they are a superhero do better on measures of self-control and persistence.<\/p>\n

According to the aforementioned\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0article, a study published in 2015 in the journal of Developmental Science details 48, 5 year-olds who were given increasingly challenging problems.\u00a0 They were required to use their skills of control and self-inhibition.\u00a0 They were asked to sort cards according to color then quickly and then suddenly change to sorting by shape.\u00a0 Some of the children were told to pretend they were powerful fictional characters as they worked through the tasks and some children wore props, such as cape.\u00a0 Then the experimenter told the kids they were Batman and ask themselves \u201cWhere does Batman think the card should go?\u201d (Gopnik).\u00a0 With no surprise, the children who pretended to be superheroes did much better than the children who tried to solve the tasks as themselves.<\/p>\n

\u200bA common exercise I like to use when working with children to help them identify their positive traits is a superhero activity.\u00a0 This is usually a favorite!\u00a0 The children are first encouraged to identify their positive traits, and asked to then draw themselves as a superhero and give themselves a name.\u00a0 Finally, we discuss their positive traits and how they are \u201csuperhero like.\u201d\u00a0 With this, I often see children get very excited when they compare themselves to superheroes!\u00a0 Below are several ways you can help your children identify with their inner superhero:<\/p>\n