Raising Resilient Kids: Julia Black Of ‘Lights On Learning’ On Strategies for Nurturing Emotional Strength in Children
An Interview With Dr. Kate Lund
View disengagement as an opportunity, rather than a problem.
In today’s fast-paced world, children face numerous challenges that can impact their emotional well-being. Developing resilience is key to helping them navigate these obstacles and grow into emotionally strong individuals. How can parents, educators, and caregivers foster this resilience in children? As part of this interview series, we had the pleasure to interview Julia Black.
Julia Black, is a mother to two young adults and creator of Lights On, a BAFTA and Grierson nominated documentary director, social entrepreneur, educationalist and Master Neurocoach. She is author of the book Lights On Learning: A Parent’s Blueprint To Happy, Fulfilled, Curious Kids. Her vision is of a world where all children love learning, and believes parents are the key to that future.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to ‘get to know you’. Can you tell us a bit about your background and your backstory?
Ever since I was nine years old, I remember thinking to myself ‘Why am I here? What am I here to do?’ I always felt I was here for a reason that was bigger than me. I would ask my dad, who was on such a clear mission, ‘How do I find my thing?’
‘You’ll find it,’ he reassured me.
Looking back, I can see I wanted a roadmap to show me the way. Yet somehow, I always felt his certainty and belief that I would discover my bigger purpose, as he had done. I found my thing when I was forty years old, wearing false eyelashes, a pink wig and a corset, sitting backstage after directing a big top circus with all 106 children in my daughter’s school. I experienced this heartfelt sense of awe of what we had achieved and knew I was here to lead people to express their brilliance and shine their inner light out into the world. To do that I clearly had to learn how for myself too. This took me on a deep journey into my own personal growth where I discovered it is not what we do in life that really matters, but who we are being that leaves our legacy.
Can you share a story with us about what brought you to your particular career path?
Eighteen years ago, I began to dive deep into learning, growth and human potential when my four year old daughter started school. It feels surreal to see where I’ve arrived because there was no plan, not even a vision to arrive here as an educationalist. Although slowing down to be present for my kids, I still very much identified as being a documentary maker. I can see now, however, that there were a series of actions and choices I made that led me here, one step at a time.
One phone conversation, with a man from the LocaI Education Authority, stands out as pivotal to opening this portal. To him, I was probably just another parent who was not happy with how their child was feeling in school. He unknowingly changed the course of my life. So I want to give him a name. Simon.
I explained to Simon that my daughter had started school full-time as a summer-born, and, just four years old. She was struggling with the long days and since going full-time, I had seen a change in her mood and a deterioration in her mental health. I felt it was too much, too young, and wanted to continue the part-time arrangement of the six-week staggered entry. Was that possible? I was fully expecting him to say no. To my surprise, he said yes: ‘It’s called flexischooling. You just have to get permission from the head teacher.’
So that was what I did. Every Thursday, my daughter, Esme, stayed at home to learn with me and her younger brother, Seb. This sparked my commitment to play an active role in unlocking my children’s learning potential and we have flexed the system to work for them ever since. They are both phenomenal learners and understand that mental and emotional resilience isn’t about being strong all the time or ignoring what I call your Lights Off thoughts and emotions. It is about being vulnerable enough to shine your spotlight directly on the source of emotional discomfort and pain and move through it. It’s also about being brave enough to tune into the life-enhancing power of Radiance, which I have discovered, by working with so many parents, is sometimes more scary than sitting in our Darkness.
Can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority on raising resilient kids? In your opinion, what is your unique contribution to this field?
For the past two decades I’ve been learning alongside thousands of children, young people and their parents through my in-person and virtual programmes. I’ve been obsessive about understanding the art and science of learning. How can we fully express our human potential in a sustainable, healthy and inspiring way?
I’ve developed my own philosophy and practical approach to learning, I call Lights On, which provides the blueprint for success being played as an inner game. I’ve discovered that we perform best when we are fully connected; emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually, with our creative energy. When our heart, head and body are fully engaged in the learning process, we unlock our personal power and feel the freedom to learn, grow and flourish throughout our lives, regardless of the limitations of the environment we find ourselves in. As Viv, one mother I’ve worked with, so brilliantly put it, ‘It feels like remembering of who I am. A return to me.’ This is exactly what it is. With children, the aim is to stop that disconnection to their true creative spirit happening in the first place. Which is why I’ve created Lights On Learning for parents. They are key to their children loving learning.
When you realise that your potential to shine is always within you, you have the power of choice. Just as you can choose to switch on the lights as you walk into a room, the same is true for you. You can be Lights On or Lights Off, and my Lights On Spectrum has six signatures. Darkness, Dimness, Glimmer. Glow, Brilliance and Radiance. The more your family attunes to what switches on their lights and what turns them off, the more they can access their hidden Lights Off potential and activate their exponential Lights On potential.
For a long time, I assumed we wanted to avoid being Lights Off. I believed it was a negative state to be in. I now know differently. Lights Off is hugely important for our growth as learners, and the more opportunities we have to move fluidly between being Lights On and Lights Off, the more resilient we become. The problem arises when we become stuck in the darkness of the Lights Off state and rarely step into the light.
Our ability to shine and flourish is nuanced and this is truly what Lights On Learning is all about. It is a full immersion into your inner learning landscape of what it means to unlock your human intelligence. Think of it as having a dial or dimmer switch to calibrate the exact luminosity you want at any given moment depending on what outcome you desire to achieve. Do you want dark and moody? Is it a warm, contented glow you are after? Or does this moment require your brilliance to light up the room? You get to choose.
As Katrin, a home-educating mother of three in my community, shares in my book: ‘I realise it is less about being Lights On or Off, and more about having the awareness of which state I am currently in.’ Awareness of your inner state of being is key. Understanding that your mental, emotional and physical connection to learning is fluid and dynamic gives you flexibility and ownership over what you can achieve. While you can be totally Lights On, feeling the full neurochemical high of love, joy and gratitude, you can also quickly flip to Lights Off. It can feel like a volatile emotional and mental pattern until you know how to stabilise it and use the nuances to your advantage. This is what my Lights On philosophy and approach offers — a way for individuals of all ages to calibrate their inner state to fully explore and express their potential in a sustainable and healthy way. When you know how to do this then the learning game takes on a whole new meaning and significance.
So, Lights On Learning is less about what you learn, where you learn, or even how you learn, and all about who you are as a learner. When your child realises that they have a choice about what they think, how they feel and the results they can achieve in life, it transforms their educational experience.
Do you have a favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life or your work?
For me this has to be the mantra I grew up hearing from my parents. ‘Persist, persist, persist.’ Throughout my childhood failure was normalised as an inevitable part of learning to do something you couldn’t yet do. Like a toddler learning to walk. They see the outcome they want role-modelled in their parents or siblings and they go for it. It takes many attempts, a huge amount of failure and lots of tears and tantrums! But as they persist, practice and are patient something amazing is happening in their neurocircuitry. As Hebb’s Law states their ‘neurons that fire together, wire together’ creating the neural network that turns the mirco-failures into mastery. One day, much to the joy of their parents, they take their first step! One split second before they couldn’t walk and now they can. This is what I love about embracing micro-fails as a natural part of learning. It turns the impossible into the possible.
The mental and emotional resilience I built up failing during my childhood is one of the reasons I’ve been able to keep going. I have an incredible tolerance for being knocked down and getting back up. When I began my career as a documentary filmmaker, I didn’t go the conventional route of working my way up the ladder. I went straight to the Commissioning Editors to pitch ideas before I was even a filmmaker. My first idea got a no. My second idea got a no. My third idea got an invitation to meet with the Deputy Commission of Current Affairs at Channel Four. She realised I wasn’t going away! I got my first commission to produce a Channel Four News feature on children in the UK living with HIV which was broadcast on World Aids Day. My next commission was a three-part documentary series. Then I landed a development budget for a drama-documentary that would have a £1 million budget. Unfortunately, it never got produced in the end because the political landscape changed overnight on 9/11. The film that got me nominated for both a BAFTA and Grierson award was also turned down at first! So I went on to make it anyway, repitched and got the commission.
This is how I have lived my life — always taking intentional action before I am ready because I ‘persist, persist, persist’. It does of course mean I fail a lot!
Ok, thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. How can parents handle situations when a child faces failure or disappointment? What strategies can parents use to help a child bounce back?
I work with parents to shift from the outside-in model of education to learning from the inside. To create a mistake-friendly culture within their homes I suggest parents begin by looking at their own relationship with failure. Do they fear it? Do they try to avoid it at all costs? How do they react when their children get upset, frustrated or angry with learning? Do they try to make them feel better and ‘fix’ the problem or are they able to hold compassionate space for their child to feel all the uncomfortable emotions that come with learning?
In many cases where a child is disengaged, not putting in the effort, or already has a fear of failure, I know the parent most likely has a lot of old-school thinking about what success is. They are chasing the outcome. They want to get there as quickly as possible. They want affirmation that they, as the parent, are doing a good job. Their child’s success becomes all about them. Unfortunately, this thinking holds their children’s growth back and limits their opportunities to develop the emotional resilience that is required to fulfil their potential.
Parents often say to me ‘my child gets frustrated when they can’t do something’, thinking that is a problem to solve. My response is ‘Great. That’s a normal healthy response to have when you are faced with a challenge that is getting the better of you.’ What the parent is really signalling is ‘I find it really painful when my child feels emotional discomfort’. With this shift in awareness, we can fast-track the emotional intelligence within the whole family, which is what is needed if we want resilient kids. We need resilient adults.
So, what does that look like to be able to handle failure and disappointment? I think of failure as an emotional wound. It can feel like a punch to the gut, for sure. It demands to be fully felt. The mistake I see parents make is to rush in and try to make their child feel better. To stop them feeling the shame, embarrassment or at times humiliation that we can feel when we get things wrong or make mistakes. ‘You haven’t failed, you’re just one step closer to success’ is a classic phrase. I personally don’t see anything wrong with failure, so instead of covering it up I like to encourage a culture of learning where we normalise failure as an important part of success. Rather than diminish mistakes I encourage parents to learn how to hold compassionate space for their child to feel it all. To know how to do that they need to learn how to fail with ease and hold compassionate space for themselves first. Probably not what parents want to hear!
What role does parental modeling of resilience play in the development of emotional strength in children? Can you share an example of a resilient parenting moment that you experienced directly or that you have come across in the course of your work?
Without exception, parents who have transformed their families to love learning the Lights On way have understood one simple truth: Lights On Learning begins with them. Once this lands, they stop looking for old-school solutions to fix their child. They open up to their own passions and growth and create a life of abundance, happiness and fulfilment. This inner wealth enriches every area of their lives, as Nicky shares in my book:
‘Learning to live Lights On is transforming my life. Navigating the unknown. Walking through fear and uncertainty. Trusting the process. This work is deep. It can be challenging, uncomfortable and confronting at times, as beliefs and thought patterns reveal themselves. Yet it is also simple, energising and liberating.
‘Looking back, I see just how far I’ve come. I began with the hope of overcoming patterns of poor mental health. I now know this as my reality. It is happening, and from here anything becomes possible. My aspirations are expanding.
‘I’ve found an inner freedom I couldn’t imagine possible before. I’m reconnecting with my passions and stepping into who I was born to be.
‘The effects of Lights On are rippling out to my family and now I lead them on a new adventure — empowering my children to embrace a life of possibility, no matter what. An exciting journey ahead and one that I trust in completely.’
Nicky’s powerful reflection really shows how possible it is to rewire past thinking when you dare to dream big and ask
for what you want in life. Nicky’s vision was for her children to know how to use the power of their hearts and minds to live a fulfilling life, doing something they love. She wanted them to have intrinsic motivation to be able to flourish, regardless of what obstacles come their way. To achieve this, she understood she had to commit to that for herself first and learn to play an inner game of success which involves a lightness of spirit, and an ease and flow. This is a common pathway for parents when they begin their Lights On Learning adventure.
When a parent transforms their relationship to learning everything changes for their children almost immediately. I call it the Lights On Effect which refers to the transformative change that happens in others as you become Lights On. Scientifically, this is explained as brain-to-brain coupling or neural synchrony. It is where the emotional state and brainwaves between two or more people synchronise. I like to think of it as creating a family rhythm-scape, with a harmonious ebb and flow of creative energy, where you learn, grow and flourish together. This is what makes Lights On Learning so powerful and exciting as an educational blueprint — it enables whole families to transform and live their most happy, fulfilled and engaged lives. By becoming an empowered, resilient learner you, as the parent, heal, learn and grow in a new way. In doing so you light up your family’s learning circuitry in a spectacular way too.
Also on this note, it feels too good to be a resilient learner, so why would you not want this for yourself, as well as your child?
What approaches do you recommend to foster a growth mindset in children, encouraging them to see challenge as opportunities to learn?
My starting point with every child I work with is their Heartset. I want to ensure they love learning as fast as possible and so I look for their ‘switch’. Everyone has something they are naturally good at and when they learn through their strengths and passions, they become more courageous and willing to take risks. Maybe they are a wordsmith, like my daughter. Or a digital wizard like my son. You’ll know because you’ll see it in their eyes, it is like their lights have come on. That is the simplicity of my approach — you don’t need to be a teacher to lead your children to become incredibly resilient learners. In fact, it often helps if you are not, because then you don’t have to unlearn as much.
Once a child is Lights On they are powered by love, curiosity, joy and are more likely to step beyond their comfort zone and take action before they are ready. They will experience fear and cascade into darkness at times and this is where they learn to harness the inner power within their shadows. Guided by their own internal light, they grow in new, expansive and exponential ways. I’ve found that children who lead themselves through passion-led projects naturally include a level of challenge that extends them beyond their comfort zone and skill level. They learn to ask for support when they need it, and collaborate with others to plug their skill gaps. They can see the outcome they want to achieve and they’ll do what it takes to get there. This to me is what resilience is. It isn’t that a resilient child doesn’t fear failure but they are prepared to fail and get back up, over and over again. In a very simple way persistence is built as part of the design of my Lights On blueprint because our hearts will always dream bigger than our heads are ready for. Once the Heartset is engaged it is much easier to develop their Mindset.
The mistake I see parents and educators make is they try to teach mindset. I believe you have to role model it and create a culture of learning where it can develop over time. As the term suggests ‘growth mindset’ it needs to be nurtured continually.
As Rachel, a mother in my community who has led her family towards a growth mindset shares; ‘When you find that thing that motivates you from the heart — that’s the game changer.’
How can parents balance providing support with allowing their children to experience and overcome difficulties on their own?
One of the biggest challenges I see parents face is knowing when to step in and when to step back. They either micro-manage and take over, or completely back off leaving their child to get on with it. Most often they will flip from one to the other which confuses their children and breaks down the trust. How is mum or dad going to show up today? What they also begin to feel is a huge sense of judgement, because the parent gets frustrated that their child isn’t doing what they want them to.
So, I treat raising a child to be a resilient learner as a leadership skill. This means being a parent becomes such a great source of personal and professional growth. You continually feel like a failure (subconsciously) every day in some small or big way.
I can illustrate this with an inspiring story about Nicky and her six-year-old daughter, Bryony. She had started feeling scared and anxious, complaining of tummy aches and not wanting to go to school. Then schools shut down during COVID and together we quickly discovered Bryony’s self-talk was that she was ‘rubbish at writing’. So, we knew our challenge was to get her to feel confident that she could write and shift her from Lights Off — ‘I can’t!’ — to Lights On — ‘I can!’
As they sat down to write ten words, it was hard to see her daughter so anxious, but she held compassionate space for them both. When Bryony reached six words, she wanted to give up. There were tears. Frustration. Panic. All a natural stress response to believing she couldn’t do it. Nicky enabled her daughter to feel it all and led her to write ten words. They celebrated big time. Bryony accepted a creative brief to make a homemade illustrated book with drawings and key characteristics written about her favourite dinosaurs.
By leading her daughter through massive fear and anxiety she helped Bryony see an alternative to her internal dialogue and gifted her the opportunity to move from ‘I can’t’ to ‘I can’. From Darkness to Radiance. From Lights Off to Lights On. By having evidence she could do hard things, overcome difficulties and keep on going, she had a new belief about herself. She can use her Lights Off moments to achieve hard things. Now it was time to develop her Skill Set with more practice and repetition to hardwire the neurocircuitry that automates her handwriting skill.
Nicky had helped her daughter believe she could achieve whatever she set her heart, mind and skills to and be happy, engaged and self-led by connecting three core components — Heartset, Mindset and SkiIlset — which make up our ‘learning circuitry’ and ensure we stay mentally, emotionally and physically connected to learning.
What self-care practices would you recommend for parents to maintain their own resilience while going through the everyday challenges of raising children?
I’d like to answer this with a story about Rachel, a home-educating mother of three in my community that I include in my book. She shares;
‘I was all over the place and didn’t have a clear education strategy. I had a big insecurity about what I was doing and an underlying fear that my education provision wasn’t good enough. So I was a little bit lost and looking for a solution. I spent the first decade of parenthood trying to change everyone else: if only they would do X… The only person I could change, really, was myself, and from there I could learn to lead my family. If my children were to learn to follow their passions and shine brightly in the world, I had to lead the way.
‘I began making music. It felt good but also tinged with guilt. A little voice in my head whispered that self-indulgence was a bad thing. I had to remind myself that I was role-modelling passion-led learning. I soon saw the results. The creative freedom made me a better mum: calmer, kinder, lighter. The more fulfilled I felt, the less I wanted to control my children. I saw that a lot of the hoops I wanted them to jump through were to prove I was good enough, and had nothing whatsoever to do with their true paths or their education. When I felt “good enough” and the children felt less controlled and more trusted, the culture in our home shifted dramatically. I stopped thinking of my creative pursuits as frivolous. I came to see them as an essential life force.
‘As I learned to lead myself, I led my family in a new way, as a role model following her dreams, no matter what. Looking back, I was so concerned with old-school “shoulds” that I only remember my children having too much screen time and a sense of apathy. I was missing where their brilliance naturally shone out. Now, I have an artist refining her style, a dancer training daily and an engineer developing his Lego wizardry. Self-led learners. I’m so proud of them — of me, of us — as a family.’
Rachel’s story beautifully illustrates the importance of knowing how to lead yourself so your children can learn by observing who you are being. So I could give you tools such as the inner smile memory that we use to activate your Lights On state, or tuning into gratitude first thing every morning. But really the shift that ensures you live a life where self-care, respect and love is centre-stage for yourself and your family is when you do what Rachel did. Take your own creative energy seriously and step into being fully expressed as a learner every single day. When you shine, your family does too, and those every day challenges? Well they tend to no longer seem a problem in the first place.
Can you please share “5 Strategies To Raise Children With Resilience and Emotional Strength”?
1. View disengagement as an opportunity, rather than a problem.
When my daughter was three years old, I went to pick her up from preschool. The owner, Claire, asked if she could have a word. Esme had been unusually defiant. She had run towards the road and refused to stop. When they called her, she turned,
smiled and kept running.
‘OK, it’s one of those conversations!’ I thought.
My dyslexic father had notoriously been the naughtiest boy in his school, so I thought to myself, ‘She’s got his maverick gene. Buckle up for the ride.’ What Claire said next surprised me.
‘She’s bored. I think we need to teach her to read.’
Instead of clamping down on her behaviour, Claire’s team raised their game so that Esme could flourish. Unfortunately, millions of children around the world don’t have a ‘Claire’ in their lives. They lack a teacher who sees them for who they are: hungry and curious to learn. Sparky. Brilliant. Full of radiance and joy. A bundle of creative energy looking for opportunities to express themselves fully.
So next time your child misbehaves or is disruptive, get curious and ask them what they are thinking and feeling. Chances are they are bored, switched off and unmotivated. That is much easier to solve than thinking there is a problem to fix. Now we shift our focus to what switches their lights back on as quickly as possible.
2. Look for what your child is naturally good at, that they can become great at over time
I met Ollie when he was thirteen years old.
‘The person I want to be has never made it into school,’ he told me.
Since age five, he had felt like a failure, that he was stupid. He didn’t believe he would achieve anything in his life: ‘How far have I got in eight years? At the end of every day I go home with this negativity. The information is hidden in this huge web which I’m try-
ing to unpick extremely slowly.’
As his mum, Sandra, said, ‘Everyone focused on what was wrong with Ollie.’
Let’s do the maths. That’s roughly 10,000 hours of having Special Educational Needs and feeling worthless. Shockingly, we accept this reality for so many children. When we judge a child by what they can’t do, they become disempowered. As nothing seems to work, they feel ‘what’s the point?’
Apathy takes hold, mental wellbeing suffers and they lose their appetite to learn. Before we know it, that light in our sparky kids has dimmed. Let’s try a different strategy. If everyone has something they are naturally good at, we need to look for what switches on their lights. Then we turn the dial right up and support them to cope when their lights
dim or go out.
I found the ‘switch’ to Ollie’s creative energy within minutes. He was a natural-born visual creator and storyteller. As he began expressing his ideas through film-making, photography and animation, he transformed as a learner. Immediately. His teachers noticed a difference in the classroom, too, as his principal shared:
‘Ollie is so much more visible within the school and more engaged in lessons. He is now part of the class and has found a way to engage with school and be Ollie.’ That academic year, Ollie received his best school report ever. Of course he did.
‘I’ve gone from thinking everything about me is rubbish. That I’m never going to have
a life, to being good at something and having that drive. The change has been extreme. I’m a different person. I have the confidence to do whatever I want. I’m trying hard in lessons. My creative mindset has impacted everything.’ Ollie.
When you believe everyone has something they are naturally good at, this has to be your starting point. Don’t look for what is wrong, because chances are there isn’t any problem at all. It’s simply that your child does not have the opportunity to express their creative energy in a way that lights them up. Find their switch and they transform as learners really fast.
3. Switch from judgement to compassion by looking at disengagement through the Lights Off lens
To understand disengagement in a new light (pun intended!), let’s look at the words children, young people and adults have used to describe how it feels when they are, what I call, feeling Lights Off:
• Lonely
• Disconnected
• Scared
• Frustrated
• Angry
• Apathetic
• Bored
If you think about your child feeling this way rather than seeing them as disengaged, how does that change how you feel towards them? When parents and teachers I work with see a child as Lights Off, they immediately move out of judgement and into compassion. Rather than punish them for their behaviour, or force them to sit for three hours to do a ten-minute homework, they know the child feels scared, lost and disconnected from the learning process. Disconnected from their own brilliance. Disconnected from their innate passion to be the explorer, artist, scientist, mathematician, filmmaker or inventor they were born to be.
When children stop learning, for whatever reason, it is an extremely uncomfortable place for them to be. Through this lens, it is clear that, when a child has these negative thoughts and feelings, disengagement is a normal and healthy reaction. It is a clear signal that their stress response has been triggered. We need a certain level of stress, or arousal, to perform at our best. To be Lights On. Too little and we become bored or complacent. Lights Dim. The work is too easy so we switch off. ‘What’s the point? I know this already. It’s so boring.’ Too much stress, or distress, affects our ability to perform even the simplest of tasks. Lights Off.
Viewing disengagement through the lens of being Lights Off makes the solution so much simpler. Find what switches on their lights. Spark their curiosity. Power up their creative energy and switch their full beams back on. We no longer have a problem to solve but an enormous opportunity on our hands. That feels much more exciting.
Take Lisa’s twelve-year-old son, James, for example. He was struggling academically and his mental health reached rock bottom. It was clear that James’ lights were off at school and this was impacting his mental health and his ability to learn. It was also clear that James had a passion, was a natural entrepreneur and wanted to learn. As Lisa brought his entrepreneurial switch centre-stage and focused on what James was naturally good at, she connected his Heartset, Mindset and Skillset.
In just nine months, Lisa led her son from disengaged to highly engaged and became an award-winning, celebrity-endorsed young entrepreneur. He appeared on local and national media and raised over £1K for his local children’s hospital through his social enterprise project. Now that’s what I call activated Lights On potential! Lisa gifted her son the opportunity to explore what he loved and was naturally good at when she stopped judging his behaviour and moved into compassion for how he felt. In doing so, she also reignited her passion for learning, wrote and published a children’s book, and started her own side business as a life coach. This is what is possible when you bring Lights On Learning into your home: your whole family transforms. Because it begins with you, whether you are ready to admit that or not.
4. Get your family to define what being Lights On and Lights Off means to them
Being Lights On and Lights Off refers to your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual state of being. It is what you are thinking, feeling and how you act at any given moment. Your thoughts and emotions determine your actions, which affect your outcomes and influence how you experience the world.
Thoughts + Emotions + Actions = Outcomes
Just as quickly as you can become Lights Off, you can flick the switch into being Lights On. Toddlers are a great example of this with their huge tantrums followed by smiles, laughter and cuddles.
Being Lights Off is a reactive state. Your thoughts limit and diminish your power. ‘I can’t do this. It’s too hard. I’ll never be successful, so why bother? I might as well give up now.’ Everything feels hard, pointless, forced and challenging. Parents have described it as walking through treacle, and they feel insecure, anxious and under threat in some way.
In contrast, when you are Lights On, your energy is warm, welcoming and inspiring. People see it in your eyes and feel it in your presence. Your thought patterns are empowered. ‘I can do this. I have what it takes to keep going, no matter what.’ Emotions such as contentment, hope, happiness, love, joy, peace, awe and gratitude make you feel alive. Like you can do anything. You are more creative and energised when you are Lights On and have a rock-solid belief in yourself and a positive sense of wellbeing. You like who you are. I’ve seen this with my son, Seb, who when nine years old, walked up to me with a big smile on his face.
‘Mum,’ he said, ‘I am really loving being me at the moment.’
Lights On!
It is one of my inner-smile memories, supercharged with love, and I will cherish it forever. From age seven, he had shown a natural talent for filmmaking. He would instinctively trim shots by one or two frames to make a smoother edit.
By age nine, his digital literacy was so strong that the teenagers in my creative learning centre would call out, ‘Where’s Seb? I need his help!’ This grew his social skills massively. At age eleven, he was making films for my business, charities and entrepreneurs. He had his own online course, Digital Directors and a Special FX Hitfilms
tutorial YouTube channel. Seb’s ‘digital wizardry switch’ was well and truly on and he could use frustrations, obstacles and blocks in a healthy way to find solutions.
As a parent, it is exciting to see your child lead their learning at this level. It’s what I want for families all round the world. We really should not be systematically dimming our children’s lights and keeping them stumbling in the dark. It is inhumane. When children learn what they love and love what they learn, they naturally tune into being Lights On and become self-motivated creators guided by a strong sense of passion and purpose.
5. Find what it is that switches on their lights
Lights On Learning is designed around one equitable fact — we all have the inbuilt ability to shine. Once we learn to switch on our inner power, we can dial it up to whatever intensity we choose.
The fact is, a child who is Lights On can learn in any learning environment. Their success and flourishing are not dependent on circumstance, or even how the education is delivered. A boring curriculum or less than inspiring teacher does not stop them from achieving. However, a child who is Lights Off can’t learn effectively in even the most creative of educational settings. We can tinker all we like with the external learning environment and we might make a difference — to some children. However, equally, we might not move the dial at all. When we shift our focus to strengthening and enhancing a child’s internal learning environment, the impact is life-changing.
Ruby was nine years old when I started working with her at my creative learning centre. Although it took over a year to turn things around for her and shift her anger, not once did I or her mum give up on her. We could see the brilliance in Ruby. The problem was that Ruby couldn’t see it, and this was holding her back.
Here are her own words, age eleven:
‘I definitely had some anger in my body that I had to get out. I didn’t want to interact and that was my learning block. When you don’t have that passion, you’re trying to find it all the time. As soon as I held a camera in my hand it was like that passion where I don’t care about anything else anymore. I wrote an article for the magazine and I wrote at the end “I feel invincible”. I’m doing really good at something. No one can take this away from me. It opened all the doors that were padlocked shut because of your anger. It opens different life opportunities. One path you can keep going with your anger and not find that passion and get anywhere. Then there’s the other one which is padlocked shut. I’m going to get bolt cutters and I’m going to open those doors. When you find that passion, it changes the whole life-set and you collect all your learning on the way. It’s just how far you want to keep on going with it. At that time, I got through so many doors. If this was in schools, people would be astonished at what we can do. It got me through everything. It is definitely a game changer when you find that thing.’
Ruby will always be the child who made me question everything over the first two years of my adventure as an accidental educationalist. She showed me the transformative power of tuning into our Lights On potential as well as the importance of holding that belief for them about their potential to shine. As she stepped into her creatorship, she rose to face challenges in extraordinary ways and really took ownership of her emotional and mental inner world. It was so beautiful to witness her redefine success on her terms and step into who she was born to be.
How can mindfulness and emotional regulation techniques be incorporated into daily routines to support children’s emotional resilience?
Lights On Learning is all about being self aware and mindful of the thoughts and emotions you have when you are in the six signatures of my Lights On spectrum. Darkness, Dimness, Glimmer, Glow, Brilliance and Radiance. It is also about learning the subtle and sometimes big signals you feel in your body when you move dynamically and fluidly between your Lights On and Lights Off states.
When we use the Lights On spectrum as a calibration tool it becomes an excellent learning tool. To quote Carolina, one of the mothers in my community and our resident neuroscientist, ‘When you shift your focus to your internal reality you can react in new ways. This is when you can realise your maximum potential. You, and only you, get to decide how you use it, when you use it and whether you use it.’
Having awareness of the different Lights On and Lights Off signatures opens up different levels of our children’s, and our own, potential. We all have so much hidden potential in our Lights Off signatures, because this is where our limiting thoughts hold us back and try to keep us safe. Then in our Lights On signatures, particularly in Radiance, we can explore our exponential potential where we truly believe anything is possible.
Take Karen’s ten-year-old son, for example, who created his own scale of cool. ‘My son embraced it and made sense of it in a way I had not anticipated,’ she explains. ‘I got him to calibrate his own spectrum and he did this with joy and ease. I loved the way he made sense of this in an instant and in his own words.’
I also love the way he made this his own. When in Darkness, his thoughts were, ‘I’m not cool. I don’t like who I am.’ In Radiance, his thoughts were, ‘I’m flippin’ cool.’ I love his description in Glimmer: ‘Maybe I’m cool.’ His main feeling was ‘curiosity (but not the kind that killed the cat), the tiniest cheese slice of hope’. And in Glow, ‘I’m cool’ with the emotion of ‘feeling rad, like on a bicycle downhill (in a good way)’.
So really my approach is all about using our mindset and emotional regulation system to learn at our highest levels. It is a total gamechanger.
Are there any specific tools or resources (books, apps, courses) you recommend for individuals looking to improve in this area?
Yes, I would suggest starting with my book Lights On Learning; A Parent’s Blueprint For Happy, Fulfilled, Curious Kids. This will provide you with everything you need to understand the adventure ahead of you and give you my powerful tool, the Lights On spectrum. Then if you want to dive deeper into my educational framework or learn how to become a Lights On family, I have a range of options available including an inspiring global community of parents, online self-study programmes and I also mentor parents to become inspirational leaders of their families.
Wonderful. We are nearly done. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
If I could extend an invitation to a private brunch, it would be to Barbara Fredrickson. Her scientific findings on positive emotions, and particularly love, really provide the data as to why my approach to learning is so transformative.
I feel she has been on a parallel adventure to me over the past twenty years. The scientist and leading researcher into positive emotions collecting the hard data on what she calls, the positivity resonance. I feel I’ve been hands-on in the trenches working alongside children, young people and adults to use the power of love, curiosity, awe and wonder to transform families’ relationship with their own human potential.
It is so effective when we bring the love for learning centre-stage of our educational strategy. In fact it is a complete gamechanger. Her scientific findings and my discoveries together I believe build a case for a complete about turn in educational policy and practice on a global scale. I only discovered her work towards the end stage of writing my book, but it gave me complete clarity and confidence in the simplicity of my blueprint. ‘Ah that is why being Lights On is such a powerful way to learn!’ So if Barbara accepts, I’ll fly out to the US to treat her to brunch!
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can connect with me on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn as @thelightsonmum. If you want to know more about Lights On Learning and how we collaborate with families to get them loving learning then head to my website www.lightsonuniverse.com. But of course, really I’d love to invite you to get a copy of my book — Lights On Learning; A Parent’s Blueprint For Happy, Fulfilled, Curious Kids.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
About the Interviewer: Dr. Kate Lund is a licensed clinical psychologist, podcast host, best-selling author and Tedx Speaker. The power of resilience in extraordinary circumstances kept her thriving as a child. Dr. Lund now helps entrepreneurs, executives, parents, and athletes to see the possibility on the other side of struggle and move towards potential. Her goal is to help each person she works with to overcome their unique challenges and thrive within their own unique context.
Raising Resilient Kids: Julia Black Of ‘Lights On Learning’ On Strategies for Nurturing Emotional… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.