From hard feelings to bad memories, some parents worry that the relationships they had with their own parents will dictate the parent they will become—that they will fall victim to the very practices of their own parents that did not work for them as a child. However, what is misunderstood is that nature has a way of preparing us for caretaking despite the examples we are provided! While wonderful role models are helpful for shaping a new parent, poor ones don’t define our parenting potential. The idea that you had to have an idyllic childhood to become a good parent is a harmful message that disempowers parents and casts doubt on their ability to rise to the occasion.
Play makes the parent
Ask yourself: what is a “great” parent? In your list of attributes, you probably didn’t include one who never makes mistakes or one who always lives up to their intentions. Even a great parent can sometimes struggle to find enough warmth to give or can feel frustrated with all the sacrifices that come with parenting.
A great parent yearns to connect with their child, offers comfort when they are struggling, and endeavours to know what they need before they have to ask for it. It is about cultivating a deep sense of belonging with them, conveying that they matter, and offering them an invitation for a relationship that is unwavering. The truth is that great parenting has little to do with us and is all about how our children look at us and find comfort, contact, and caretaking there waiting.
Surprisingly, regardless of our upbringing, the capacity to parent already dwells within us. The ability to care, protect, nourish, guide, and to cherish someone was first revealed in the hours we spent in play as a child. It is here where we practiced protecting our “babies”: animals, younger siblings, insects, and toy trains. It was in our play that we experimented with what it meant to be in charge and responsible. It was in our pretend world, created from our imagination and emotion, that we took our first steps towards revealing the caretaker in us.
It was in play where our instincts and emotions to care for another were preserved and nurtured. It was here we were free to make mistakes, to get frustrated, and to walk away from it all. Play provided a dress rehearsal space where no one was ever really hurt or worried if we got it right. No one judged their actions (or they shouldn’t have), and we had no sense that knowledge was required to take care of something. In play, our caretaking was instinctive and lacked words or insight. It has always been there, dormant, waiting for the child who could unlock the caretaker in us.
It is the transition from play caretaking to real parenting that allows the provider in us to arrive in solid form. It is when we accept the emotions that come with being a parent that our shape solidifies, and our identity is transformed in the process.
Things great parents do
Insight into our kids and what drives them can come at the strangest times–while we are in the shower, making dinner, or in the moments before we fall asleep (or wake us up in the middle of the night). There is no recipe, no toolkit, no instruction manual needed to find that place inside of you where you desire to make sense of a child. This focus on caretaking is born from your desire to be their answer to contact, closeness, and caretaking. Your only task is to willingly give yourself to the places where guilt, confusion, joy, fulfillment, sadness, yearning, and mixed emotions mingle together. In other words, being great doesn’t come from having all the answers as a parent; rather, it is found in one’s striving to be the answer to a child.
Here are some of the ways we can strive to be the answer:
They care deeply
With deep caring we can grow to be the answer to our children’s needs even if our own were not taken care of. Caring is what motivates us to nurture, be generous, forgive, be conscientious and attentive, and to take responsibility. Caring is what makes a parent seek information when they have questions. When we feel the push inside to consider our child’s needs, to look out for them, guide, and share our values with them, it is caring that has driven us there. Parents who care are moved to show up to do the work of parenting, even when it is hard.
They embrace their responsibility
Without fail, the parent who sees themself as being the one to lead a child and as responsible for their relationship with them is the “greatest” parent of all in their child’s eyes. When the parent aims to be unconditional in their invitation for relationship, a child will recognize that nothing they could say or do would make that parent give up on them. If the parent makes a mistake, they are able to admit it and graciously move on, continuing to care for their child. It means they will not let anything come between them.
They adapt to challenges
There are so many challenges and obstacles that come with parenting, from figuring out how to get children to sleep, eat, and toilet train, to separating from you to go to school. As parents we often expect more from our child than they are developmentally capable of (e.g., going to sleep on their own). Parents who pay attention to their own frustration and seek to understand it realize that they sometimes need to be the one to change what they are doing. As they recognize and re-evaluate what isn’t working, they can then better determine what different course to take. So much of parenting involves trial and error and figuring out who our child is, from the child who is only soothed by a story and a lullaby, and a long, accompanied transition to sleep, or the one who just needs us to hold their hand as they drift off. When we pay attention to what doesn’t work, and are willing to sometimes change our agenda, then we can adapt to the child with a version that does work and are able to find a way through.
They emotionally stretch
There is nothing like the force of an immature child to test the maturity level in a parent. We soon find that we must be the one who emotionally stretches to hold onto not only our frustration, but theirs as well. We may need to be braver when they are scared, and confident when they are defeated. When they are in the throes of an outburst, we may need to stretch our caring wide enough so that they feel our invitation for relationship is unwavering despite their undesirable conduct. When you become a parent, you realize you are not only responsible for your feelings, but for helping your child learn and understand theirs too.
They lean on others
We need to consciously build the villages that will help us raise our children. We need to introduce our children to their care-providers, teachers, and coaches, and in doing so, not take for granted that they are partners with us in raising our child. When we honour and support the other adults in our child’s life, we take matters of their relationship into our hands. We “play matchmaker” and cultivate a connection by pointing out similarities and shared hobbies, or simply by conveying confidence that these other adults will take good care of our child.
They roll with conflicting feelings
There is often no “right” answer to some of the decisions or challenges we face in taking care of a child. Parents who don’t shy away from sitting in the middle of their mixed feelings often make more well-thought-out decisions because they have looked at many sides of the issue. There are many decisions we make that have consequences for our children, such as whether to hold a child back for a year from schooling or how to help our child deal with peer conflict at school. Sometimes we need to wrestle with many sides of a problem before making headway.
They feel guilt
It is not possible to parent well without guilt! Just ask the parent who worries about their child being bullied at school, or the parent of a child who is sick. It sometimes feels too much when you have had little sleep, have outside work responsibilities to “balance” with home, or when your child is having a tantrum when you want to have one of your own. If our child gets hurt by accident, we may feel guilty that we didn’t prevent it. If we say yes to something and it goes poorly, we may kick ourselves that we didn’t say no like we wanted to do in the first place. The best way to deal with guilt is often to share it with another adult you trust and/or to permit ourselves to shed tears about all of our perceived imperfections.
Being a parent is not about the performance we give, nor a script or formula we follow, nor a way of talking or walking, but something that comes from deep within as the moment calls for it. We cannot find the parent in us by following someone else’s mantras, or in the hours spent processing our own pain from childhood (not that this isn’t important sometimes). We are made into the parents our children need when we vulnerably accept the emotions and feelings that come with this role. When parenting isn’t a mask you wear or a performance you give, you will feel much—sometimes too much—and it can be messy, but it is from this place where your children will be genuinely nourished and grow. It is the invitation you give your child for caretaking that matters most, and it is this, that truly makes you great in the eyes of your child
This article first appeared in the Summer 2021 edition of EcoParent Magazine
Copyright — Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet counselling center, she is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), which has been translated into 11 languages, and a children’s picture book The Sorry Plane. For more information please see www.macnamara.ca
My younger sister used to poke me when I wouldn’t play with her. My first strategy was to tell her to leave me alone and when that didn’t work, I would ignore her, which also didn’t dissuade her. At some point I would become so frustrated that I would swat at her like a fly to make her go away. She would scream and cry and I would get in trouble, commensurate with the level of her distress and tears. As a child it seemed to me that the person who was bleeding, crying the loudest, or most upset—usually my sister— was uncritically deemed the victim with the perpetrator assumed by default. A swift verdict would follow.
There are few more provocative things for a parent than watching the children you love get hurt or hurt each other. Our instincts and emotions are there to protect and defend our kids and can kick into high gear when we witness acts of aggression, meanness, and immature behavior as our children attack each other. But our own impatience and annoyance can add more fuel to the fire of frustration that is already burning, and it can be costly to our relationships with them.
There is no greater test to a parent’s maturity than dealing with the immature ways of relating that our kids present. How do we bear witness to acts of aggression while keeping our cool and remaining in the role of the adult? And how do we lead through these difficult situations while protecting our relationship?
Them’s fighting words!
In the heat of the moment, your kids will tell you just about anything to get the heat off of them. We don’t need to follow our kids when it comes to discovering the reasons why they’re fighting but we will need to make sense of what is truly driving the problems between them. When you understand the roots of “misbehaviour,” it can be tackled it in meaningful ways that lead to change.
When kids fight, they are ultimately fueled by frustration, the emotion of change that wants something to stop or to be different. Children under the age of six don’t have sufficient brain development in the prefrontal cortex to temper strong emotions. Frustration can spill out of them unchecked by any braking mechanism in both verbal and physical forms of attack. Children under the age of three often unleash physically whereas older children have learned to use their words to attack. “I hate you and you are not coming to my birthday party” is a popular threat with the school-age set.
There are many factors that contribute to kids fighting with each other. Based on developmental science and my experience in private practice working with families, these are some of the most common.
You can’t always get what you want It is a sign of good development when a child has their own mind and can voice their needs, preferences, and desires. The challenge arises when they are engaging with other kids who don’t share those desires. Disagreements over how to play with something, what character they are, or the rules of the game can lead to frustration spewing forth. What we often miss is that each child is meant to develop their own will and it’s only because of their immaturity that they struggle to accept a difference of opinion with others, leaving them at an impasse and frustrated because they cannot solve it.
The futility that children will struggle with—that we are all challenged by—is that we can’t always get what we want. Not everyone wants to do it our way, nor shares our ideas and dreams, and one of the hardest lessons to learn is how to accept the things we cannot change. Kids are in the process of learning about the futilities of life and may need help coming to terms with something that is not going to go their way, even when there is a level playing field. For example, in a game they perceive to be losing, they may fight over the rules and try to force their agenda on their sibling. This is where it is important for adults to step in and reinforce the ground rules for interaction and game-playing.
When my eldest was five she loved playing cards but every time she started to lose she would tell her sister, “Well losers are the winners and winners are the losers.” As I kept a watchful ear on their playing I would often intervene and state something to the effect of, “No, that is not how the game is played. I understand you are frustrated with your cards but keep trying. There are some games you win and some you don’t.” There were many times she would just throw her cards into the air in frustration and I would declare her sister the winner. With time, patience, and support for her tears in the face of frustration, she learned to accept the futility of trying to change the rules to suit her. What helped me remain patient throughout these episodes is knowing that her immature way of relating was not personal but developmental, and that these were the teachable moments that helped me prepare her for a world where there is no shortage of disappointments.
It is also helpful to think ahead of problems and to set up interactions between kids with some guidance. You might say, “When you play together you are both going to have ideas and things you want. If you can’t figure it out then come and get me, or work together to compromise if you can.” Depending on the age of the child, different strategies may be used. Preschoolers will definitely need more direct help, but older children can become more skilled at navigating these differences, particularly if they care about playing together.
Territoriality and possessiveness We are thoroughly invested in having our children share and get along with each other, and have very little patience for disagreements. I often wonder if we have the same expectations of ourselves? After all, are we all that enthusiastic about handing over our cherished possessions for others to use? Don’t we also feel that instinctive reluctance to surrender things that we love?
We need to step back and consider whether we really don’t want our children to voice disagreement with others when their territory is under threat. What we should want is for them to know when to stand their ground to protect something of meaning as well as to know when to share. The challenge is that the instincts and emotions to protect one’s place are not bad, but they eventually need to be balanced by caring about others so that we can become socially responsible and emotionally generous, and that is where parents come in.
Part of maturity is being able to relate to others in a conscientious way and to share and work together towards a common goal. What children reveal is the chasm between primal territorial relating and this communal thinking. It is the role of adults in a child’s life to help close this gap by simply creating the conditions for good development that then naturally reach this end. This means providing enough attachment to satisfy their hunger for relationship and helping them begin to accept the futilities—like “You can’t have it! That’s mine!”—that are part of life.
When children are full of caring and can also consider the needs of others as well as theirs, they will have the necessary ingredients to share and get along better and temper their territorial instincts. But these developments occur at the earliest between 5 and 7 years with healthy brain integration. Until then, it is our job to simply and regularly communicate the value of sharing, the importance of having your own mind, and the reminder that you can’t always get what you want. Supervise young kids to prevent territorial disasters from unfolding and reaffirm that turn-taking is part of life, and that you are there to help them.
Attachment-seeking behavior Kids seek connection and when they are bored or hungry for attachment, they may seek each other out, especially if adults are not available. Just as with adults, the challenge is that sometimes kids don’t want to play with each other, or they just want to be on their own. This attachment- seeking energy is what drove my sister to poke at me, but I had other ideas for my time, like reading my books. When I wouldn’t reciprocate and give her connection, she continued to pester until things eventually erupted. In such situations, an adult needs to step in and provide the desired connection, redirecting away from using a sibling to fulfill their child’s attachment needs.
Displaced frustration One of things we often miss when our kids are frustrated with each other is that their emotions may have their roots in something other than the currently raging conflict. A child can be stirred up by something that didn’t go their way in an unrelated situation, and later take it out on their sibling. A brother or sister can be a lightning rod that unleashes emotional energy such as frustration.
One of the biggest sources of displaced frustration for a child is from relationships that do not work for them. It is often emotionally costly for a child in trouble to fight back against a displeased parent when their relationship may be on the line or they are overpowered, or when separation-based discipline is used (e.g., consequences and timeouts, which can also hurt the relationship). If a parent is upset with a child, then that same child can often turn around and unleash their frustration onto their sibling. The less a child feels emotionally safe in communicating their frustration to an adult, the more likely this frustration will be displaced onto the shoulders of other children.
The Heat is On
Making sense of the reasons why kids fight is helpful, but what do we do in the heat of the moment? The following strategies can help you consider how you might intervene in a way that preserves the dignity of everyone involved, as well as your relationship with each child.
Don’t play judge and jury Intervening in a way that doesn’t convict or lay blame on one side is important. Kids often will say, “You like them better,” communicating a sense of betrayal at the relational level. The bottom line is we don’t often know who is right or wrong but what we do know is they are having trouble, what they are doing is not okay, and that they need our help. While we can convey that the whole situation is not okay, we can also let them know we see they are both hurt, and that we believe they can do better. The idea is to get out of tricky and heated scenarios quickly and revisit them calmly when emotions are lower.
Come alongside each child If we could take a moment with each child to listen to their hurts, we would be better able to lead them through the big frustrations between them. This is often better done in privacy without the other child listening but it can be done on the spot too, conveying that we know there are hurt feelings all-round. When my sister was poking me I would have longed for someone to understand my frustration too, that I reacted because I was annoyed, and that my sister had to accept that I didn’t always want to play with her. When we react without recognizing both parties are hurt, we miss the opportunity to come to the child’s side, communicate we are there to help, and address things at a root emotional level.
Don’t force apologies Forced apologies lead to even more hurt feelings as the obvious lack of genuine caring stings you all over again. What we want is for our kids to feel genuine remorse and this can only come from a place of caring for another person. A cooling- off period is often needed when emotions are high, and when kids come back together to play they will quickly bring their caring to the surface again. When the caring is back, then cue-up the child to make amends. Reading picture books that portray what a real sorry looks like, as it does in The Sorry Plane, is helpful for normalizing frustration as well as conveying the importance of saying you’re sorry from a place of caring.
Get to the root emotion If children are constantly at each other’s throats, then we might need to step back and take a closer look at what is driving their frustration. Are they enduring a lot of change or hard times at school or in the home? Are there relationships that are important to them that are not working? It might be time to focus on your relationship with the child rather than dwelling on the relationship between the children in order to make headway.
Keep them moving Sometimes we don’t know what to do with our fighting kids but when we get in the lead, things are much more likely to straighten out. Sometimes we literally need to move them in a different direction: take them outside, get them engaged in a different activity, or spend some one-on-one time with them. When things are going sideways, take the lead and steer the energy into something less hurtful and more productive. Emotions have a way of taking care of themselves if we can keep our kids moving in a healthy direction.
When we see our children unleashing their frustration on each other, it’s better for everyone involved if an adult takes the lead and takes the heat off the child under attack. We can simply communicate that we see they are frustrated, we are there to help, and that siblings aren’t for attacking. Most kids understand to some degree that their siblings will get frustrated with them. What they have a harder time with is why their parents don’t intervene to help and provide reassurance that the problem isn’t them.
Perhaps if we could accept that kids are immature, that they will fight, and that this is part of our role as parents to help them navigate conflict, then we might find the patience we need when things are coming undone. It is hard to watch them hurt each other but our focus shouldn’t be on making them get along. As mature adults, we just need to make sure we continually express our caring as we deal with a (natural and temporary!) lack of caring in them. •
Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet counselling center, she is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), which has been translated into 11 languages, and a children’s picture book The Sorry Plane. For more information please see www.macnamara.ca
This article first appeared in the Winter 2020 edition of EcoParent Magazine.
Re-entry has begun and we are now preparing to return to parts of our lives, like work and schooling, without knowing exactly what this looks like. How do we lead our children? What do they need from us? Can they adapt to the new realities of social distancing at schools and will this create anxiety and emotional problems for them? These are just a few of the questions I have been asked by parents but center around the question of – how do I lead my child(ren) back to school?
Will our kids feel safe?
Safety is an illusion and telling our children that they won’t get covid, or that we won’t get covid is not the best way to make them feel safe. Safety has much less to do with their surroundings and more to do with their connection to adults. Assuring our children that they will be ‘okay’ is far less effective when it comes to feeling secure than making sure they feel taken care of by us. In order to understand why this is so we will need to understand something about attachment and why it matters to kids.
Children are not able to take care of themselves and they can’t make sense of the world like an adult does. It is their dependency on adults that makes them feel secure as they look to them for protection, guidance, and direction. The relationship with an adult is like an emotional bubble that preserves the child’s heart. When a child is afraid, frustrated, or overwhelmed, it is this relational bubble that can provide a safe place to retreat to. Home is where the heart is, and we need our children to give their hearts to us for safe keeping.
A child doesn’t feel lost when they can count on their adults to show up for them and to lead. It doesn’t mean that all the threats in their life disappear and that they can’t be hurt, but that they are shielded from this reality as they trust their adults to lead and to provide for them. Where they are confused, they should look to their adults to lead the way and for their adults to be responsible for figuring out issues of safety.
How can parents and teachers lead?
- We can work on taking care of our kids by being their compass point, caring for them in unexpected ways, providing more than they seek, listening with our full attention, and taking the lead in feeding them
- We can take the lead in matchmaking our kids to their teachers and strengthening that connection. We can remind our children that their teachers have missed them and can be trusted to lean on.
- We don’t know all of the details about what school will look like as they re-enter, but we can direct them to their teacher who will tell them what they need to know
- We can’t say ‘everything will be okay’ as we can’t know the future but we can say that we will take care of them and they can count on that
If there was ever a time that we needed our children to rest in our care, it is now. We need to work to strengthen and preserve our relationship with them, providing more contact and closeness than they ask for and being generous in our capacity to make room for their big emotions like frustration, resistance, and fear. We need to take the lead and make decisions about schooling and whether to send them back to school.
Sometimes the hardest thing to do as a parent is to lead when we are full of doubts. Leadership can feel lonely and we may feel guilty as well. These are the emotions that come with parenting and we can care for our kids and lead them through these challenging times, despite all that we are feeling.
How will our kids adjust to the new restrictions and rules around social distancing?
The question of how classrooms will look and whether our children will adjust to them is understandably a big concern for parents. Schools and teachers have been working hard trying to figure these things out and should have started communicating the changes that have been put into place to parents. We can help orient our children to the changes by following the lead of the school and sharing the information they provide, for example, what supplies they can bring to school, guidelines for eating lunch, washing hands, and playing.
When we communicate information to a child that might alarm them it is best to do this in a matter of fact and non-alarming tone and manner. For example, this is how flight attendants give safety demonstrations on planes and it is how we lead our children through fire drills, lock down drills, and earthquake preparedness. Simple scripts and directions help to reduce fear and give the child a sense of agency.
One of the ways schools will be helping children adjust to the new rules around social distancing is by taking a playful approach. For example, we can sing songs to know how long to wash our hands to using hula hoops to understand social distancing. These playful approaches are strategic in helping kids adapt to new rules, experience less fear, and be less resistant to changes. Some parents might be concerned that schools aren’t taking matters more ‘seriously’ but we need to remember that play promotes feelings of safety and rest. It will take the attention off the risks and put the focus on the rules which will help our kids adjust to the new safety measures at school.
How can parents and teachers lead?
- Support play as a way to learn about social distancing and the new rules and restrictions
- Show support for the school and teachers by positively addressing the changes they have made
- If you have concerns about the changes at the school then direct these to the appropriate adults without your child’s involvement or awareness. It is key that your child trusts their teacher even if you are working through your concerns with the school
- Matchmake your child to their teacher and the school by affirming that their teacher will take care of them
Will this impact their emotional well-being and create anxiety?
Some parents are concerned that sending their child to school will create anxiety and stress. To answer this question, we will first need to consider where anxiety and stress comes from. Stress arises when you are emotionally overloaded and can’t make sense of everything in your life, and anxiety is a sure sign of this. It is important to remember that it isn’t school that is stressful per se (although there will be stressors there for sure), but that it creates separation from home and their trusted adults. Separation anxiety is from alarm at being disconnected from their caregivers and leads the child to question- “Who will take care of me now?”
If a child trusts their teacher and the adults at school to care for them then the separation from home won’t be as alarming and they will feel ‘safer’ in the care of their teachers and school. Kids feel highly alarmed when they anticipate the world is going to hurt them and there are no adults to support or take care of them. The answer is to foster a strong relationship with their teacher and make a seamless attachment team between the home and school. Parents can bridge the distance by giving the child something to hold onto that represents their relationship – a reminder of what they will do after school, an invisible string that connects them, to a picture of their family in their lunch box.
Our children can also be experiencing a range of emotions as a result of all the changes in their life. There may be frustration that they can’t be with their friends, play where they want to, and have a limited space to move in. They may be resistant to go back to school because they have enjoyed the extra time to play and the freedom from doing work while at home. Some kids are excited to go back to school and see people whereas some of our children are worried they will get sick with covid. What is the answer to all of our children’s emotions?
Emotional health and well-being requires emotional expression and for kids it helps to have someone who will listen to you. We can help our kids talk to us by acknowledging the frustration or sadness they are experiencing. Sometimes parents are worried that if they allow their children to feel sad or worried then it will never stop and their child will just ‘learn’ to be this way. This is not accurate and the more we tell someone NOT to feel, the more feelings it will create. Emotions are not right or wrong, good or bad. Emotions are here to serve us and have an intelligence all on their own. The challenge is being patient with our kid’s feelings and giving them enough room to express them.
Many parents ask how they can get their child to talk to them and the answer lies again in your connection. Find some time to spend with them one on one and just enjoy being with them. As you play together, share a hobby, or go outside together, listen with your undivided attention. Be neutral as they share their ideas and feelings with you, acknowledging how they feel – rather than how you feel about how they are feeling. When children feel the conversation has become about meeting the parents needs, they can stop talking.
If words are hard to find then play is a wonderful place to soften feelings. The very nature of play – not being real or requiring you to work at a problem, allows for feelings to be expressed without words nor consciousness. If a child is frustrated then play that changes things such as building things, destroying, putting together, taking apart, mock aggression, wrestling, arts and crafts may be helpful. If a child is alarmed you may want to play more hide and seek, building forts and hideaways, monster games, chase and so on. If your child has few words, then lead them to their expressive play.
We will likely have to make some room for frustration and some tears too. There are so many futilities that come with the changes at school – from social distancing, to missing home, that our children may be emotionally charged and on need of release. Part of the “emotional homework’ we do with our kids is to help them express what didn’t work and lead them through frustration and to disappointment and sadness. Sometimes there are many things we cannot change but we can adapt and adjust if we make room for emotion.
How can parents and teachers lead?
- Bridge the home to school divide by giving your child something to hold onto that represents your relationship (i.e., what you will do after school, a picture in their lunch box
- Listen to your child with your undivided attention and make time to just be together
- Don’t judge how your child is feeling, and don’t act defensively about what they are telling you, or try to talk them out of their emotions
- If your child is resistant to go to school you might need to explore why, come alongside their lack of desire to return, and perhaps have some tears about it
- Make room for play – especially after school which can help provide some emotional discharge
- Tears can be helpful in releasing alarm and you can support your child this way by naming the things that are frustrating and acknowledge how sad it is
- Hold onto your relationship with your child and use this as the safe vehicle to help them express what is stirring them up inside
What about learning?
There is an order to what is most important when you are under stress. Relationship comes first, with play and tears next. Learning happens best when we feel safe in our relationship with adults or when we are at play. Helping our kids feel safe again at school, making sure they trust in their teacher to care for them, and getting our children to express themselves emotionally, are all things that must take precedence over learning.
Learning is easy when kids feel safe. Learning is hard when a child’s brain is preoccupied with questions of security and when it is emotionally overloaded. If we work to create the rest our kids need then the learning will come.
At this time the world may feel out of sorts and upside down for a child and our priority is to make them feel at home again with the adults who are there to care for them. Humans are resourceful, resilient, and amazing in their capacity to care for each other. With enough patience and focusing on what matters most of all, we can carry our children through this storm, taking comfort they are shielded from the worst because we are taking the lead.
Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet counselling center, she is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), which has been translated into 11 languages, and a children’s picture book The Sorry Plane.
“It’s fun to have fun but you have to know how.” Dr. Suess
Sometimes we need a few ideas to get playing moving along. I consulted with my kids preschool teacher, Ms. Kari, who was kind enough to put this wonderful list together.
- DRIVE-IN MOVIE Have children decorate a cardboard box (one that is big enough for them to sit in) to look like a car. Have fun and add all the details of a real car….wheels, license place, door handles, lights etc. Then have a drive in movie in your living room complete with all the yummy treats. Disney+ & Netflix are great places to get movies.
- ART HUB FOR KIDS – is an amazing website to learn how to draw anything. The artist takes gives you step by step instructions to draw your picture. www.artforkidshub.com
- MAKE YOUR OWN CHIA PET – All you need is a plastic red solo cup, soil, grass seed and a nylon sock. Decorate the cup, tie the sock at one end, fill the sock with soil and grass seed, put it in the cup, water and watch it grow. Cut the hair if you want.
- CORN SYRUP PAINTING. All you need is some empty egg cartons, corn syrup, food coloring & Q-tips. Pour the corn syrup into the egg cartons, add food coloring, Paint your own picture or one that you’ve drawn. When your picture is dry, it will be shiny and still look wet.
- TIC-TAC-TOE – Make your own tic-tac-toe with rocks and sticks. collect rocks, paint them two different colors, find 4 sticks and set them up to play tic-tac-toe
- NATURE WALK – Go on a nature walk and look & collect: rocks, sticks, pine cones, leaves. You can make them into a table setting, put them in a jar, or make crafts out of them.
- NEIGHBOURHOOD SCAVENGER HUNT – Make a list of items and how many of the items you want to look for: 4 stop signs, 3 white vehicles, 6 ppl walking, 5 dogs etc.. can be anything you like. Make the list with your children.
- OUTSIDE FUN – Go for a walk, scooter or bike ride. Sidewalk chalk, bubbles, hidenseek, TAG, lay on the grass and look at the clouds and find objects and shapes. Play EYE SPY.
- MUD KITCHEN – Kids love to play house in the mud, dirt and with natural ingredients. All you need to do is t0 head outside and set up some old utensils, pots or plastic tubs (recycled stuff can be great), and just add water and dirt.
- BOARD GAMES – A few of our favourites in our family are: CLUE kids, Monopoly (kid and adult), Bolkus, Candyland, Memory, Quirkle, Skip-Bo, UNO, Busytown (great for the younger kiddos).
- PAINTING – Put out paper, cardboard or any other surface that can be painted on and set up paints and brushes. You can make homemade paint with flour and water, see the recipe at https://tinkerlab.com/salt-and-flour-paint/
- OPEN ART SHELF: a variety of arts and craft materials for the children to create what they want. Make sure you have scissors, glue, tape, and any other fun stuff they can use.
- TIN FOIL AND PERMANENT MARKERS – Make some beautiful pictures with tin foil and permanent markers. This website has some good examples – http://www.housingaforest.com/tinfoil-and-sharpies/
- BEADING – all you need is beads and string. You can make your own beads out of homemade clay or playdoh that dries. See this site for 18 different kinds –https://buggyandbuddy.com/18-ways-for-kids-to-make-beads/
- BUILD FORTS – All you need is your imagination along with some blankets, chairs, couch cushions. Flashlights are a fun addition too.
- PICNIC TIME – Have an indoor picnic with ‘tea’ and finger sandwiches
- CAMP INSIDE – Go Camping in your house. If you have a small tent, set it up and have a family campout.
- CANVAS AND PAINTING – Use a canvas, put painters tape on your canvas to create a design, paint. When your painting is dry, remove tape and admire your creation.
- BAKE with your kiddos, they love to help measure, pour, mix and taste!
- FASHION SHOW – Have everyone create different outfits from their closet or another person’s closet, and have a fashion show set to music. You can even have people do each other’s hair and make-up for an added bonus.
Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet counselling center, she is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), which has been translated into 11 languages, and a children’s picture book The Sorry Plane.
The most important message our kids need to hear right now is now about what co-vid19 is, but about who their adults are – the people who will care for them and carry them through this storm.
DR DEBORAH MACNAMARA
KiDS NEWS & REViEWS: Parents want to be honest but not terrify their children at this time. What would you recommend we tell our kids? What should they know and what can they handle? What is helpful and what is detrimental to share and discuss? Can you break this down for us by age groups.
DEBORAH: The most important message that our kids need to hear in relation to Covid-19 is that we will take care of them and get through this difficult time. While we don’t have all the answers about Covid-19, the reality is that information doesn’t make a child feel secure – relationships do.
The challenge is that we are struggling with our own alarm about Covid-19. This includes our worries about loved ones (some of whom are on the front lines), financial issues, as well our own health. We watch in horror as this invisible virus moves across the earth at lightning speed, upending life as we once knew it. You might wonder if it’s possible to make a child feel safe in a storm of this magnitude? The answer is yes, because safety is about human attachment and we do have control over this.
Our children may have questions about why they aren’t in school, why they have to wash their hands so much, or can’t see other people right now. There are many places to go online for information about Covid-19 in terms of the facts. As parents, we can interpret this information to our children according to their level of understanding in a non-alarming tone and manner. In explaining Covid-19 to them we should consider the following:
- What is the child’s age and developmental readiness, that is, what are they going to understand? A preschooler doesn’t understand the big picture whereas a teen is looking to their future and what it means for them in terms of schooling and their life. For a preschooler we might give a simple statement about what is happening, whereas for a teen, we might spend more time hearing about their thoughts and feelings.
- Be clear and simple in your response – be concrete and don’t speculate on what might happen.
- Reassure them that you believe there is a way through, and that you trust the adults who are working hard to help people who get sick. If you have people in your life who are sick with Covid-19, make sure you repeat this to them often.
- It is important to help a child express their thoughts and feelings. We may have strong ideas about what this means for us as well as our own frustration about it, but this is not what our children need. They are trying to make sense of their emotions and cannot handle ours on top of that. We need to show up and be there to guide them through this, not make them responsible for our emotions or insecurities.
Honesty is an incredibly important virtue but that does not mean we have to be upfront and explicitly honest with our children about what has happened and what might happen with Covid-19. We need to think developmentally and what is appropriate to share and conceal to a child or a teen. The bottom line is we must give them a sense we will figure things out in the days ahead.
KiDS NEWS & REViEWS: I know each family is different but what general tips or advice would you like to offer parents while they are adjusting to all being housebound together.
DEBORAH: It is obvious to say but bears repeating that we need to be thoughtful about the amount of change that has happened in such a short time period, as well as the stress that comes with it. As we come together and frustration increases, a heavy dose of grace, mercy, and forgiveness for each other is likely good medicine for everyone. Besides being thoughtful and patient with each other and ourselves, the following strategies may be helpful too.
Structure & Routine – We all seem to have different comfort levels and ideas about structure and routine in our lives with some people finding it restrictive while others finding comfort in it. What is true for kids is that having some predictability to their day is not only a comfort, but will also help with their emotions and feelings of security. If you watch what professional childcare providers and preschool teachers do, you will see how effective they are in creating some order to the day, including routine songs to signal when it is time to clean up. Structure and routine is one of the biggest things they rely on to help the kids know when it is time to play, to eat, to sleep, and to have quiet time.
When children can anticipate what will come next there can be less energy required to get them to transition. They are also more likely to follow the adult, and they are less likely to ask repeated questions such as, “what is the plan for the day.”
It is helpful to get them moving in the direction you want before they are moving in the direction you don’t want.
DR DEBORAH MACNAMARA
Morning times may be reserved for high energy activities aimed at tiring them out and burning off steam such as dance parties, to building forts, to obstacle courses.
It may be helpful to sketch out a rough idea for the flow of your day including eating, sleeping routines, as well as play and/or learning. If you try it out and it doesn’t work, then the next day can bring a new routine and flow with it too. Humans are adaptable and we can adjust to new routines and ways of being. The important thing is for adults to lead kids into these routines – for our own sanity and their security.
Play helps release emotions and to reduce alarm. You might think play is frivolous time, but the science of play demonstrates its critical importance in helping to cope with emotions and to reduce anxiety.
When we are facing separation and stressful situations, our emotional system can get busy with three powerful emotions – frustration, alarm, and intense pursuit for connection.
DR DEBORAH MACNAMARA
These emotions can lead to problems such as angry outbursts, anxiety, and restless energy. Play is the best release for these emotions because it isn’t real, doesn’t count for anything or have consequences, and allows for emotional expression without repercussion to one’s closest relationships. In other words, you shouldn’t be getting into trouble for something that isn’t real and doesn’t really hurt anyone. The challenge of stress is how it can stir up overwhelming emotions that we don’t have names for and can’t be expressed. Children often don’t have a conscious awareness of how they are stirred up and this is where play comes in.
The kind of play I am talking about can be done on their own (this is really beneficial for their development), with you, and/or other children in the same house. You may want to gather your kids in the morning and play or do activities, while setting up a routine for quiet time or play in the afternoon. If they are playing, it can give you the time you need to get other things done as well. For the most part, video games, TV and screen time that is entertainment based are really not true play but they may be required ‘babysitters’ when sanity and boiling frustration are on the line, in other words – use them as a last resort if you can.
Focus on the here and now – In times of stress, our emotions can spill out of us over the smallest of things. This is usually a sign we are overwhelmed and overloaded. Some of the strategies we use in counselling when emotions are too big are called ‘grounding.’ This means you just focus on something else in detail – like going outside for a breath of fresh air, play some music and really listen to it, stare at your favourite picture and really see all the details in it. By paying attention to something else for a short break, you can help your emotions settle a bit and provide yourself with some emotional rest.
Each day is a new one, and sometimes in the middle of stress we just need to focus on what is right in front of us. Don’t have expectations of yourself that are unrealistic, while at the same time, don’t count yourself out as being able to figure out a way through all of this.
Learning can be fun and playful – Many parents are rightly concerned about the loss of a couple of months of school. Some kids will better accept their parent in a teaching role than others. Some kids will want to preserve their parent as a Mom or Dad but there is a way around all of this. The trick is to make learning fun which will serve to protect our role with them and reduce a child’s resistance to learning. If school is ‘work’ we may find more resistance to our requests, but if we inject some fun into it with contests or games, kids will likely play along and learn at the same time.
The important thing to remember is that we need to lead through this time of great uncertainty and stress. This means we watch for signs when our kids are struggling such a stomach aches which could mean anxiety, to nightmares. We need to lead them to eat, to play, to sleep, to wash their hands, and more. This is best done through relationship and conveying a sense of delight, enjoyment, and warmth.
I wish you and your family all the best in these trying times.
Lorrie Holmes, is the Editor of Kids News & Reviews which is a popular blog followed by kids, parents, and early childhood educators & experts and also elementary school teachers.
Learning To Cope During These Stressful Times
Bossy, commanding, demanding, insatiable, frustrated, restless, and resistant are just a few of the words used to describe the behaviour of children who act like they are in charge of their adults. These characteristics are not genetic, learned, nor can they be punished out of a child. They are the result of emotions and instincts that are fueling a child’s behaviour, making taking care of them difficult and exhausting. These behaviours are a result of a growing phenomenon in our homes and schools where our kids are taking the lead in the adult-child relationship.
The number of children with dominance problems has steadily grown over the last thirty years, overturning the natural adult/child relationship that has existed for centuries. Without understanding the roots of how the relationship has become upended, adults are left to chase down rabbit holes and ineffectually focus on the myriad behavioural symptoms.
When there are dominance problems a child is driven (emotionally and instinctively) to displace their parent from the leadership role, and to act and talk like they are in charge. Instead of resting in their adult’s care and following their lead, they insist on “fairness” and adherence to their version of the “rules.” They can also be clingy, must have the last say, and claim superiority. While the child is attached to their parent, they are attaching in the lead position instead of a dependent one. Children cannot rest, play, or grow if they are in the lead, making it the work of the parent to regain their role as the caretaker.
A LOSS OF LEADERSHIP
There are many reasons and ways parents can lose the lead when it comes to caring for their kids, including a lack of cultural support and a lack of confidence in what they can offer a child. Four of the more common reasons are:
Our love of independence
We all want to raise our children to become separate, social people who will be self-sufficient and goal-driven. The problem is not in wanting these things but in how we seek to get there. Children need to depend on their adults given their immaturity, which was always nature’s intention when it came to raising a child. We are meant to be the ones to guide and orient them, share our values, look out for, protect, nurture, and defend them when necessary.
Children were not meant to take the lead in caring for themselves until they are mature but we can prematurely push this along. Adults were meant to slowly retreat to a consulting role by the teen years, but this does not come from pushing kids to grow up. Examples of this include expecting babies to soothe themselves or preschoolers to be able to self-regulate strong emotion, or when we push young kids into early academics instead of allowing them to play. When we push independence before our children are ready, we communicate to them that they better care for themselves.
Our love of independence is eclipsing from view the necessity of inviting our children to depend upon us. All growth emanates from being deeply rooted in a trusting relationship and this is our role in raising a child—to ensure they are rooted in our relational gardens where we can cultivate them to mature, civilized ways of being in the world.
Offering too many choices
Promoting premature independence in kids often begets the parenting practice of asking our children to make choices about their caretaking. What do they want to eat? Do they want to go to bed yet? Do we consistently surrender to their relentless demands for playdates and sleepovers? There are many ways we lose our rightful place as leaders, especially when we over-consult with them on what they need. That being said, there are age appropriate areas our children can show healthy leadership, such as taking care of a younger child or pet, deciding what they want to play with, or how much food their body wants to eat. The problem is with our belief that we have to ask our children questions to make them independent, when what they hear is that we don’t know how to care for them nor know how to take the lead. A child will feel most secure when we read their needs and move to provide for them.
Too much separation
Parents face many stressors and competing attachments ranging from work responsibilities and financial obligations to divorce and health challenges. Kids need to count on their adults to provide routine, consistency, and stability. When parents are not available, and when they do not generously provide warmth and attention to their child, then insecurity may flourish. The more things that detract parents from their caretaking role, the more a child loses an emotionally safe, dependent relationship they require to grow. Further, while there often exists unavoidable separations parents and children face from each other given work and school demands, the role of surrogate adults in the child’s life becomes just as important to ensure the child feels cared for.
Alarm-based parenting
Parenting is not for the faint of heart. While we have been caring for children for centuries, today’s parents receive conflicting and contradictory advice, making the job seem even harder. Fear and lack of confidence in parenting stems from feeling like we don’t have all the answers to deal with their tantrums, learning needs, or how to discipline them correctly. When we parent from a place of fear— being overprotective, never saying no, negotiating as if they were equals, distracting them from their upset, or making everything work for them—we rob them of the secure base they would instinctively lean on when facing adversity. We need not worry that we don’t have all the answers as long as we see ourselves as the answer to their needs.
THE MARKS OF A LEADER
Staying in the lead means inviting the dominant child to depend on us. We cannot force a child to rest in our care, but we can work to create the conditions that will foster it by accepting the work of the relationship and assuming the alpha role in the child’s life.
To accept the work of the relationship is to keep our finger on the pulse of whether our children feel close to us, depend on us, and trust us. If our relationship feels strained or weakened, we need to repair and protect it and refrain from using separation-based discipline methods. Our relationship alone is what should influence a child’s desire to obey, follow, attend, listen, and share the same values as us, and parents must take the lead in preserving it.
To claim an alpha role in a child’s life is to act as their compass point and to help them make sense of the world around them. It means we don’t simply meet their demands but anticipate their needs, and we seize the lead in nurturing and comforting them when they are facing futilities that are part of life. To invite a child to rest in our care we need to portray a strong alpha presence so that they feel we are in charge and can handle whatever comes our way, from tantrums, to resistance, to emotional outbursts.
Given the intense nature of the alpha child, it is common to hear that they need a “harder hand” or to be “taught a lesson.” If the response to an alpha child is to exploit their dependency, remove things, punish, or lord one’s authority over them, this will do little to court reliance on a parent. At the same time, you cannot give in to unreasonable demands or fail to lead through the storms that occur. The place that one must lead an alpha child from is one of caring dominance where the parent is in charge but the child will not experience their care as adverse or unsafe. It is only through warmth, generosity, and capably setting limits while dealing with upset that will convincingly demonstrate that a parent is their best bet.
RECLAIMING LEADERSHIP
There are three things we can do to give our kids an invitation for relationship that they cannot refuse.
Reassert your caretaking stance
One of the most important strategies for managing an alpha child is to lead from one’s own alpha (read: caring and firm) stance. You need to convey to the child at every turn that you can take care of them. Finding the place inside of you that wants to take care of them, seeing yourself as strong and able enough to take care of them is a must. You may not always feel this way but by acting in this role every day, small gains can be made. If a child with a dominance problem recognizes that they can defy and baffle their caretakers, they will not trust in your caretaking. While there will be times a child gets very frustrated because you won’t give in to their demands, the feeling of being too much for their caretakers will only reinforce their alpha stance.
Invite dependence
To invite dependence, a parent must make it safe to be depended upon. When adversarial parental authority is used to control the child by taking things away or denying privileges in order to gain compliance, this will do little to build trust and will only exacerbate a child’s alpha stance. Time-outs and other forms of separation-based discipline can convey to the child the relationship is conditional and based on good behaviour only. A parent must steer through stormy behavior by not using their power to coerce compliance. Sidestepping the battle in the middle of conflict, and talking about the child’s feelings and behaviour after the fact can go a long way to preserving both the dignity of the child and the parent.
Take the lead in activities
An effective strategy with an alpha child is to find windows of opportunity where the child must depend on their adult for care. Taking the child on outings can achieve this. Many alpha children refuse to leave the house simply due to the fact that the request is coming from their adult (over whom the child is “supposed” to have authority) and because their house is also their safe “kingdom.” Despite their protests, getting them out and leading them to a new place in which they must depend on your expertise to navigate can dislodge their alpha stance temporarily.
If we can see the alpha child for what they are—a child who no longer depends on their adults—then we can find our way back to demonstrating we are the security they seek. When an adult regains the lead through caring dominance, the child will rest in thecaretaking offered and be freed of their hunger for connection. •
Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a family counselling centre, she is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), which has been translated into 9 languages.
*NOTE: This article first appeared in EcoParent Magazine, Summer 2019
Sensitive kids are everywhere. Their numbers are estimated to be between 15 to 20% of children in a North American context, but they are often misunderstood or not recognized as being sensitive. What does it mean when we say a child is “sensitive” and how would you know if your child is among them?
To make sense of sensitivity, it is easier to start with understanding what it is not. It is often confused with a child who has strong emotional reactions or whose feelings seem to get more easily hurt. Sometimes it is confused with a child who seems to be more considerate of other’s needs or who is gentle or kind. While children with sensitivity may display some of these characteristics, these are not typical of all sensitive kids, nor do they help us understand what is at the root of their different way of being in the world.
Sensitive kids are defined as those who have an enhanced receptivity to the world through their senses. It could be through any sense—touch, taste, smell, sight, or hearing—and it is unique to each child. It also exists on a continuum, with some kids being more impacted by touch and smell while others may be affected visually or through another sense.
Talking senses
While no two sensitive kids are alike, their enhanced receptivity to sensory information leaves them without a “skin” against the world. Things can feel too much, too big, too cold, too loud, too hot, too smelly, too painful, and too overwhelming. In other words, they can easily feel bombarded by stimuli and this can stir them up emotionally. They are also likely to be more activated and reactive in environments that stir up their senses. For example, I remember watching a boy run for the door in his Mommy & Me music class every time the noise started to escalate. The cacophony of sounds was neither soothing nor fun but instead crashed into him, flooding him, and overwhelming him. As he instinctively darted for the door to escape, there were some adults who saw him as disobedient or defiant, but in truth, he was simply overwhelmed.
It is important to see sensitivity not as a disorder but as part of the diversity in human temperament. Sensitivity doesn’t seem to be a mistake when you look at it from an evolutionary perspective. You can find sensitivity in other mammal species (even in fruit flies!) lending support for the idea that it is not a mistake but perhaps adaptive in some way. What is clear is that sensitive kids need adults to “get them” and to take care of them. This is true for every child, but much more so for the sensitive ones among us.
How do you know if your child is sensitive?
Sensitive kids reveal themselves soon enough to their adults. The child will seem more easily triggered or comforted through a sense, or combination of them. In some cases overly-stimulating environments may prove to be provocative or upsetting to young ones. Likewise, the sensitive child may also find comfort in certain senses: for example, a child with tactile sensitivity may only sleep when they are held or touched, or one with an auditory sensitivity may prefer hearing your soft voice as they fall asleep.
Sensitive kids often seem to have an unusual alertness even as babies. They may sometimes be described as “old souls” or the ones who watch everything. They can sometimes display exceptional memory and become preoccupied with their thoughts. Their questions are often probing and reveal a unique way of looking at the world. They can have a range of interests or can become squarely focussed on one area in particular. Sensitive kids are often described by adults as being intense, passionate kids with big ideas and plans. When they are happy they can infect a room with their enthusiasm just as when they are upset, they can fill a room with hurricane- force levels of frustration.
As the parent to two sensitive kids I have experienced first-hand what comes with caring for them. One of my children is visually sensitive and sees too much at times which appeared when she was 11⁄2 years old as she yelled at strangers to stop looking at her. It felt unnatural to be seen by someone she didn’t know, and their attention was unwanted and alarming. She was also the same child who would never perform or dance in front of other parents at school because “they were all strangers.” Her visual sensitivity brings gifts like the ability to remember details, see patterns, and create novel and new designs—like her “candy wall” when she was three. At the same time, it can become unbearable when there is too much stimuli, particular scary movies with sounds, images, and suspense.
Research suggests there is often a genetic component to this enhanced receptivity, or that it may be due to birth practices, as well as prenatal experiences.1 Genetics play a strong role in determining the intensity or prominence of each affected sense. As mentioned, it can be any combination of the five conventional senses, or internal senses like the vestibular (balance) system, proprioceptive sense (movement), or the complex sensing apparatus we call “the gut.”
Parents need only pay attention to what stirs a child up and to consider how much is too much for them in order to figure out which combination of senses are enhanced. The key to understanding a sensitive child is to not hold their big reactions against them but to appreciate how they are being impacted by the world around them, and how to deal with them effectively.
Providing a sense of security
Brain development is a phenomenal thing—especially in young children. With ideal conditions, a sensitive child’s brain will develop so that it can increasingly handle and process sensory information. They can develop neural wiring that can manage the sensory overload and find ways to compensate for too much stimuli. In other words, nature has a solution for a child’s sensitivity, but it needs our help for them to internally cultivate these answers. If we can create ideal developmental conditions for a child, then nature can take over and grow the child up and through their sensitivity.
1. Strong, caring adult relationships
Sensitive kids need strong caring relationships with adults who convey to them that they are not too big, too difficult, or too much of anything. Sensitive kids are usually more aware of the vulnerability inherent to relationships; that is, if you give someone your heart, they may hurt you. It is emotionally vulnerable to trust someone, to get close, and to rely on them for care taking. Adults need to take a strong lead and convince a child they can count on them especially when it comes to dealing with a child’s mistakes or their challenging behaviour.
Separation-based discipline such as time-outs, 1-2-3 magic, or consequences can often go too far and create insecurity in relationships. Attachment-based and developmentally-friendly discipline is key to being an emotionally safe caretaker in the hearts of our sensitive kids.
Little things can go a long way in cultivating a connection with a sensitive child. It could be the small things we remember, the patience we take to draw them out and hear their story, and all the ways we communicate that we enjoy being with them. Relationships matter to all kids but sensitive ones don’t “suffer fools gladly” and they often wait to see if someone can be trusted before giving them their heart. We need to work to earn their trust and be patient until we are there. Whoever cares for a sensitive child will need to work on a relationship with them to get them to follow and take their cues. This is true in a childcare environment as well as in school with their teachers.
2. Know when to protect from and when to encourage exposure
If a child does not have a thick skin to protect them from sensory overload, then it will fall to their adults to compensate for this. We can start by changing the child’s environment. For example, some kids prefer white noise to cancel out environmental stimuli or may benefit from headphones. Caregivers need to be patient and accept that their child may not want to engage in activities that are overwhelming such as playing with a lot of kids or music classes.
While it is important to reduce arousal and stimulation where appropriate, it is also important to think about if and when you can gently expose sensitive kids to the things that are overwhelming for them. For example, one mother had a child with a number of sensitivities and loud sounds were particularly difficult. She begged her mother not to walk by a construction site near their house because of the loud sounds of the big trucks and “diggers.” The mother took note that this was a challenge for her daughter and took a different route as they walked to school each morning. On one morning she said to her daughter, “We are just going to quickly walk by the construction site and I want you to put your hands on your ears so that it won’t be too loud for you.” As they ran by, her daughter spied the diggers and the hole in the ground and became fascinated. As the week went on, the mother continued to walk by the construction site with her daughter, watching, and eventually stopping. One day her daughter took her hands off her ears and listened, and eventually, she was able to walk by the site without feeling overwhelmed. What sensitive kids need is an adult who understands them and who knows when to shield them and when, and how, to gently and patiently encourage exposure to the things that are hard.
3. Make room for their emotions and tears
Sensitive kids can be stirred up by the world around them and this can create big emotions inside of them that need to be released. The best thing we can do for them is to help them express feelings through words, play, or through their tears. Sometimes we need to encourage play that will draw out their frustration, fears, or desires. It is often easier to face things in play when it isn’t for real or can’t really hurt you. If we are to move a sensitive child to their words or tears, they will need to trust us and to see that our relationship is unwavering even when they are having a hard time.
When we have to deal with issues regarding their behaviour we may make better headway outside of the incident. They may be more receptive and able to hear us when we talk to them when they are less stirred up and feeling close to us. Sometimes they may not want to talk about issues or tell us they can’t remember. We can simply tell them we will make it fast, and easy, and it won’t hurt but we just need to say a few things. We may need to lead them into vulnerable territory but if we fail to do so then they will have a harder time having a relationship with the emotions inside of them.
If there were a secret to caring for sensitive kids it would be to realize that they often act in congruence with the sensory world that exists inside of them. They are not trying to give us a hard time—they are simply having a hard time. While there are challenges posed by their sensitivity, there are also gifts, which caregivers learn to recognize as coming from the same place. If we can hold these things in mind when dealing with them and invite them to rest in our care, then we will be able to become the strong caretakers they need.
Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a family counselling centre, she is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), which has been translated into 9 languages.
*NOTE: This article first appeared in EcoParent Magazine, Spring 2019.
This article was first published in EcoParent Magazine, Winter 2018 edition, www.ecoparent.ca
We get take delight watching kids when they are full of caring: from the kindness they show siblings, to helping others out, to paying attention in school. We also watch in horror when children are cruel to each other, dominate and bully, or selfishly put their needs first without considering others. What is the difference between caring and uncaring kids? When caring is absent on a consistent basis, is this due to genetics, parenting, school issues, modeling from other kids, or something else within the child themself?
The challenge is that we can’t make sense of uncaring actions until we can make sense of caring ones; that is, where does caring and empathy come from in the first place? How do kids grow up to be socially and emotionally responsible people, and what is the role of adults to make sure they get there?
Caring on the outside
There are two primary schools of thought on the development of caring and empathy, and like two sides of a fence, you can only pick one side to be on. One approach is more popular and widely held but it is not supported by current developmental science and neuroscientific research. The other approach is less understood, partly because of new research emerging on the development of the affective (emotion) system. In other words, most parents and educators stand by an approach to raising caring kids that is the least likely to be effective. We should care about this. Research on U.S. youth finds that in comparison to 15 years ago, youth are 40% less likely to show empathy and caring towards others. This has untold consequences for our homes, schools, and our communities.
The first approach to cultivating caring kids is based on behaviourism and learning theory. The main idea is that children learn to act maturely and can be trained to behave better. Reinforcements such as positive rewards are used to increase the likelihood of caring behaviour. The critical question that isn’t asked when rewards are motivating the behaviour: Is it really “caring” at all, given that it is a self-serving act? When you act in a caring way to get a reward, then you are really taking care of your needs and not someone else’s. This is the opposite of empathy or altruism and characteristic of narcissism and entitlement.
Behaviour and learning theory also believe in the converse power of negative reinforcement or punishment to correct a child’s lack of uncaring actions. Negative reinforcement means you take away something a child cares about or isolate them with time outs to “teach them a lesson they won’t forget.” This approach is based on a belief that pain is a great teacher and that administering unpleasant things will make a child stop being mean, uncaring, rude, or disrespectful. What gets overlooked are the emotions that underlie the behaviour; that is, what is driving a child to hurt someone else? Bad behaviour doesn’t appear out of the blue: it is connected to something that isn’t working for the child, that needs to change, or that the child needs help to adapt to. Without understanding the underlying issue or having words to express what isn’t working, a child won’t develop a greater capacity to handle their more “troublesome” emotions.
The problem with a learning approach to caring is that it misses the emotion that should drive it. Rewarding caring teaches kids that they can act in a caring fashion without feeling the emotion that should root it. You can get caring behaviour out of a child but it doesn’t mean the child is caring, it could just be a performance for the sake of reward. What happens to a child’s caring when the adults are no longer rewarding the behaviour? Does the child do the “right thing” when there is no personal benefit attached to it? In other words, you can make a child say sorry, but it doesn’t mean they feel remorse. You can make them say thank you, but it doesn’t mean they feel gratitude. You can make them say many things, but this doesn’t mean the words are connected to the caring that should be at the root of them.
The instinct to care about people and things is unlocked when kids feel cared for.
Caring from the inside out
The perspective of developmentalists (who study how kids grow), as well as neuroscience, is that you don’t have to teach a child to care. Caring is already in us and ready to come out if the environment supports its development. The question we should ask is: How can we get a child’s caring emotions to the surface? Fortunately, the developmentalists have some answers for us.
The instinct to care about people and things is unlocked when kids feel cared for. This caring can come from a teacher, parents, siblings, grandparents, or a pet. It is feeling cared for by others that opens up the instincts and movement to be a caretaker to others. When you feel loved and taken care of by others, your capacity to love and care for people and things is unlocked. You don’t have to teach a child to care for a doll, their parents, or a sibling. These caring actions come to the surface when the conditions support their development and expression.
The developmentalists are also clear that empathy isn’t something you can directly teach. Empathy is being able to take another person’s perspective into account and see the world from their perspective. Empathy requires not only caring but also the accompanying growth in the pre-frontal cortex that usually arrives between five to seven years old with ideal development. A child needs to be able to take two things, two people, or two thoughts and emotions into account before they can truly be capable of empathy. This won’t be possible until sufficient brain development has occurred. Young kids are still trying to figure out their own story before being bombarded with the stories and needs of so many other people. Empathy is a developmental milestone that most kids should be nearing as they enter kindergarten or first grade.
What are the implications for parents and educators based on a developmental approach to growing caring kids?
- Caring kids feel cared for by adults in their life.
- Caring is an emotion which needs to be felt, not taught.
- A lack of caring in a child suggests an emotional issue that needs to be addressed.
- We need to keep our own caring when dealing with a child who has lost theirs.
- We should move away from rewarding kids for caring behaviour because it is no longer genuine caring when self- interest is involved.
We all want caring kids, and uncaring acts should concern us. The solution lies in how we care for our kids, whether they feel cared for by us, if their hearts are soft, and whether they can feel vulnerable emotions. Children’s hearts can become hardened when faced with a lack of caretaking by parents or when they have been too wounded by others. Caring for a child with warmth, love, connection, relationship, generosity, and invitation is the key to unlocking their potential for caring. Protecting our relationship with them, ensuring competing relationships to devices or peers remain in check, and assuring them that they can rest safely in our care is the key.
Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a family counselling centre, she is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), which has been translated into 9 languages.
My 4 ½ year old nephew decided one day that he wanted to marry everyone who lived in his house. With great determination he located his mother, sister, and two brothers and placed his forehead to their forehead, eyes locked, and said, “I marry you.” After 4 consecutive marriages he found his dog and held her head against his head and declared, “I marry you too.” The only person who received a formal marriage proposal was his father who heard, “Daddy, I marry you too okay?”
By five years of age my two children expressed sentiments of deep and abiding love for their father and I too. My youngest daughter wouldn’t hold a boy’s hand in her dance class despite being told to repeatedly by her teacher. When I asked her why she wouldn’t touch the boy she said, “because I am going to marry my Daddy.” My eldest expressed her devotion through art and heartfelt messages of love notes, it is a wonderful time when a preschooler gives you their heart.
But why are preschoolers at this age moved to profess their love for the people they are closest to if the conditions are ideal? What are they really asking us and how can we best answer them?
It’s the birthplace of emotional intimacy …
When a child between the ages of 4 to 6 professes their love for someone it signals that a deep attachment is unfolding due to healthy development. This deep love comes on the heels of feeling significant to their loved ones as well as a strong sense that they matter to them a lot. It also comes after a sense of belonging and loyalty has been established between them, as well as a desire to be the same as them.
Marriage is one way a child may express the arrival of this deeper level of connection, especially if this is how love is expressed around them culturally. What you are witnessing is the birthplace of love and emotional intimacy. It means they now carry you inside their ‘heart’ and that the emotional parts of their brain have become engaged along with their attachment instincts. This deep connection is the result of many years of consistent, predictable, and reliable caretaking by their adults. It is the natural evolution in a relationship that contains warmth, enjoyment, as well as an unwavering invitation to be close, despite conduct and performance. It is something to be celebrated and not feared.
Healthy development requires that a child feel deeply rooted to a person they call ‘home.’ This provides the fuel to play and to grow. It is the place you return to when you face adversity and to find rest. Being attached at the heart level allows a child to spread their wings and explore, always knowing they are able to take their loved ones with them through a heart connection.
When a child gives their heart away to an adult, then this adult has the power to shield that child’s heart with their own. The wounding words of other kids don’t seem to hurt as much, and the despair that can set in after big losses can be processed through tears and feelings of sadness.
The goal of development is to free a child from their dependence on adults by providing the conditions in which they can truly mature. Being connected at the heart level allows a child to stretch and reach their full human potential as an independent being. It moves them to follow and obey their closest attachments and subdues their natural resistance and opposition that comes with increasing autonomy or just disagreeing with your agenda.
When a child connects to their adults at the heart level it also becomes a template for future relationships and friendships. It can become the benchmark against which they set expectations as to how they should be treated by others. Being able to give your heart to another person in a vulnerable way is the natural antidote to narcisissim and self-absorption. You learn that love is not something that you hold onto for yourself but is something you freely give to others without conditions.
A deep connection immunizes a child against falling for cheap substitutes that act loving towards them but are really self-serving in nature. They are also more likely to seek out people who can truly nourish them at the deepest levels. The capacity to love is unlocked inside a child because they have been deeply loved by others and love them back – this is how emotional intimacy is born.
We need to say yes…
There is no greater gift as a parent than to be given a child’s heart for safe keeping, but how do we reply to their requests for marriage?
We need to say yes ….
- Yes, I care for you deeply and carry you in my heart
- Yes, I will always be your mother/father
- Yes, I am yours
- Yes, you are mine
- Yes, this love is forever
When our children give us their hearts we need to say yes – and not a simple yes to reassure them that “I love you too.” It has to be the type of yes that resounds deeply in their bones that we love them more.
Our gift back to them is to let them feel that it is us who loved them first – before they could love, before they could feel deeply, and even before their heart started to beat. Our promise to them is that they won’t have to work for our love and that this is something we give to them freely – without conditions.
If we don’t say yes to a deeper bond with them they cannot hold onto us. We don’t have to agree or disagree with their marriage proposal at face value but rather, answer their question at the place that it matters. We need to answer the deepest hunger they have and one that can only be filled with an invitation for relationship that is unwavering. A deeper love between us is nature’s plan.
One day, when they are older, we may get to watch them give their heart to another person and hear those words, “for better or worse, and in sickness and in health,” to cement their relationship. We may remember back to a time when they gave their heart to us too and we will take comfort knowing that we dwelled there first and that first loves are forever.
Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a family counselling centre, she is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), which has been translated into 9 languages.
If someone asked you what period in human life is likely to be the loneliest, what would you say? Fortunately there are loneliness researchers who care about this common experience and have answers for us. You might think this topic is frivolous but the link between social isolation and emotional and physical vulnerability is a serious issue. According to researchers, loneliness should be viewed the same way as physical pain but on a social level.
When it comes to being lonely you might have guessed seniors and you would have been right. Forty percent of seniors say they feel lonely sometimes which is correlated with increased cardiovascular, blood pressure problems, dementia, and other mental health issues. But surprisingly, seniors were not the loneliest group of people – teenagers were. Eighty percent of teens said they felt lonely sometimes. What is this about and how do we start to make sense of this?
Adolescence can be a time of turmoil given that one’s identity should be changing (think of it like a house that is undergoing renovation).When you are in the midst of transformation you no longer have the comforting sureness of knowing yourself as well as you once did. The teens relationships with others and oneself is changing and they can second guess others as well as their own actions. They see possibilities where things used to be certain and they can feel overwhelmed by the responsibilities that come with getting older.
While parents hold onto the idea maturity that is around the corner, the process of getting there with a teen can feel messy, emotional, and unpredictable at times. One minute a teen can seem agreeable but they can easily switch to being disagreeable to parental suggestions. Loneliness seems to come out of the blue despite the number of friends a teen has or the amount of social interaction in their life. But why so much loneliness – where does this come from?
There is a natural distancing from adults that is both welcome and daunting in the teen years. In one breath the teen acts like a child and longs to be cared for by a parent, only in the next moment to crave their independence and freedom. The dilemma for the teen is they are neither child nor adult – they are in the ‘in between place’. They are somewhere on the bridge crossing the divide between childhood into adulthood. I feel for them, I remember being there, it often felt agonizing. The anthem for teenage years should be – “Everybody’s changing and I don’t feel the same” (compliments of the band Keane), but of course the irony is that it is actually the teen that is changing the most of all.
HELPING TEENS TRANSITION INTO ADULTHOOD
How can we help our teens transition into adulthood? What do they need from the adults in their life as they take the steering wheel in their own life? What role do we play in helping them give birth to their adult selves? Given that many teens wouldn’t know how to articulate what they need due to overwhelm or that sometimes they are trying to ‘do it themself,’ I have included 5 things here that I think they would really like the adults in their life to understand about them.
-
Provide room for self-reflection
For the teen to (re)discover who they are, they will need room to reflect. Teens need muses to help them along this path – from music, to art, writing, dance, or nature – and the freedom to explore these things without feeling the need to produce something. Giving birth to a new identity is an active process that requires movement and expression and must be free from the pressure to perform. This means they need to have space preserved away from distractions like screens, peers, siblings, work, and school. They need room for the voids in their life to emerge and to be filled with a sense of who they are. And it is in this vacuum – where things are not filled up, nor overflowing with things to do or learn – that teens can discover who they are.
The role of adults in their life is to hold back the tide of distraction that threatens to drown out a teens emerging voice. It is the role of the adults not to push for performance nor fill up their lives with activities. Yes, teens will still have work to do at school or at a chosen activity, but there is a corresponding need to give them room for play and creative solitude without adult pressure and expectations.
-
Draw them out and affirm who they are
Adolescent development brings with it changes in the brain and an increased level of awareness. Teens can become more self-conscious and wonder if their new thoughts and feelings are okay. They also have an explosion of ideas and need to test out their theories and how they are making sense of the world. Drawing them out and listening is one of the best gifts you have to give them. Showing an interest in their ideas doesn’t mean you agree with them. Trying to understand their point of view doesn’t mean you have to change your own. Taking a genuine interest in your teen and being curious about how they are making sense of the world will help the teen put the pieces together better in their own head.
Teens don’t often like to be pressured to answer questions. They are more likely to be drawn out by just being together in natural ways like walking the dog, going for a drive to do errands, or after school chats over a snack. When teens feel pressured to talk or to share they often close up. Parents who draw their teens out do so by making it safe to talk but not demanding it. They also create a space where a teen feels validated for having their own views without judgment nor fear of reprisal.
-
Create space to experience disillusionment naturally
Teens are some of the most idealistic people around. They are keen observers of the distance between rules and how adults they fail to live up to them. They also set idealistic goals for themself and are blind to the challenges that may lie in their path. It’s hard to argue with a teen who thinks they are right and who has the moral high ground.
Everyday life has many wonderful lessons in store for the teen and it is important to allow them to learn these naturally. They need to be able to make mistakes and experience the disillusionment on their own – like realizing you really can’t leave all of your homework to the last minute! They may tell you something is going to be easy for them (e.g., finding a job), only to discover that it can be hard. They may think someone will allow them to do whatever they want only to find out that the rules state otherwise. Teenage years are a time to allow a child to bump into the everyday realities we live with as adults and to support them through the disappointment and frustration that may come with this
-
Normalize sadness
From a teens changing identity to the changing relationships with others, there are many normal losses that come with growing up. While there is freedom on one side, there is also the responsibility that feels heavy and cumbersome. Teen years bring with it a roller coaster of emotions. When adults normalize these feelings of loss they can help reassure a teen that this is to be expected, that they aren’t broken or messed up, and that they need to face their feelings with courage and to express them however they can. Teens often believe that they are the only person their age who feels sad or worried about their future and the changes happening. Understanding that this is what comes with the rite of passage into adulthood helps bring some ease and reassurance, as well as confidence to face things head on. A teen’s emotions often feel up and down but if a parent notices that sadness isn’t moving through a child and depression is starting to weigh them down, then it may be time to speak to health professionals for help.
-
Be generous with patience and caretaking
For some parents, the teenage years can be a time of sadness too as they watch their child strive towards independence and in needing them less. For others, it is a time of celebrating the maturity they see or conversely, worrying if their teen will ever grow up and be less self-absorbed. There are many feelings both for the teen and the parent. What is clear is that teens need parents to be patient and to just keep taking care of them. We don’t need to retire ourselves too prematurely, nor should we cling to them out of our own emotional needs. The good news is that a teen still need parents to lean on, we just need to try and keep a sense of humour as they switch from acting mature to being immature in a matter of minutes. I still laugh remembering my teenage niece argue with her mother that the signs on the side of the road that said to “beware of the bears” were a complete sham and that there were no bears in the area. My sister realized arguing with her was pointless, so she just let her talk and vent her feelings and thoughts. A couple of hours later a bear wandered by their cabin – a perfect message to the mother to hold on and to laugh at the absurd ways of the teen.
What teens can’t say and parents need to know is that our job is not done yet – but we do need to think about how we go about caring for them a little differently. We need to find ways to be less direct, to listen more, validate feelings and thoughts where we can, give them room to discover who they are, and keep our relationship strong. Finding ways to be close to a teen without being pushy is imperative as is talking to them without being full of commands. Relationships are for life and when our teens change, we need to change too, and to find new ways to hold onto what is most important to us.
Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a family counselling centre, she is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), which has been translated into 7 languages.
