In Habits of Mind -- a weekly class for all middle school students -- we explore how the brain works and how they can use that knowledge to become stronger students.

There are two foundational health habits that are necessary for optimal brain functioning: sleep and exercise. Without these, we compromise our brain’s ability to focus, attend, memorize, analyze, synthesize, persevere, and make sound decisions.

I recently wrote about the power of sleep for the Washington Post -- you can read it here. This week, we turned our attention to exercise.

The teenage years are marked by paradoxes. Even as teens’ cognitive and problem-solving capacities are expanding, many adolescents experience declines in academic performance, coupled with an increase in behavioral and mental health concerns. Research shows that parental involvement helps stave off these negative trends — but it also reveals that parents’ school-related involvement drops during these years as teens seek greater independence. To add to the challenge, parents may find that strategies that worked in elementary school are no longer effective.

Into this mix comes a recent study of middle and high school students that highlights ways that parents can effectively adapt their involvement to meet the changing needs of adolescents. Teens and parents are on a “paired journey,” marked by shifting family dynamics. The key for parents? Engage teens in a way that honors their autonomy while also providing structure and support.

“The good news is that youth still want their parents to be involved,” says Harvard University Professor Nancy Hill, one of the study’s co-authors. 

Resilience increases our capacity to thrive in any situation; resilient people keep challenges and setbacks in perspective, have strategies for navigating difficult emotions, and have the strength to bounce back and take another step forward. According to research out of Harvard's Center for the Developing Child, "The single most common factor for children who develop resilience is at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or other adult."  Within this context of support, here are a few ways adults can help kids and teens develop resilience. 

Modern life is often typified by bursting schedules, meals on the fly, and never-ending alerts, emails, and texts on our phones. Yet if we simply do and do and do without pausing to reflect, we can find ourselves stuck on a hamster wheel. Reflection is essential to self-knowledge, and self-knowledge can propel us toward self-improvement -- toward making choices that align with who we want to be.

In his TED Talk “Want to be Happy? Be Grateful,” Benedictine scholar and monk Brother David Steindl-Rast says that “it’s not that happy people are grateful, but rather that grateful people are happy.” Modern social science research bears this out: expressing gratitude increases our feelings of joy and well-being. According to a review of gratitude research in a Harvard Health letter, “gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.

Empathy is the ability to step into the shoes of another person. When we empathize, we imagine their feelings and perspectives and use that understanding to thoughtfully guide our responses. Empathy is also related to dignity -- because empathy is a natural response once we recognize a person’s inherent worth as a human being. Children’s book author Anna Dewdney offers this wonderful definition: “Empathy is an understanding that other people have feelings, and that those feelings count.” Or as researcher and author Brene Brown writes, “Empathy is communicating that incredibly healing message ‘You are not alone.’”