Game On: Playing Your Way Through Discipline

One night my 5-year old said, “Mama, we have a problem: I don’t like to sleep.” I agreed it was a problem because unlike her, I loved to sleep. Seeing the impasse between us she offered up a solution, “Well I am going to be nocturnal like my hamster then.” I told her that this was still going to be a problem because I was diurnal. She told me, “Mama—don’t use your big words with me.”

The one thing you can count on with a young child is the more unyielding you are, the more they will dig in and resist. From battles over going to the bathroom to leaving the park, a young child routinely struggles with transitions and can launch into fits of frustration. The other side of young children is that you will never meet more playful and joyful people. They have an unparalleled capacity to make the routine things in life seem new again and their giggles are infectious. They live in the moment and have an appetite for play and imagination that is irresistible.

The challenge is that a young child is predictably unpredictable! They can swing from one emotional extreme to the other seemingly without warning. Transitions with a young child can feel like navigating land mines. Teeth do need to get brushed and breakfast does need to be eaten. While young kids live in the world of play, we live in the world of work and responsibility. Young kids don’t act like us and we can’t remember being (or thinking) like them. The gap between us is real, but instead of focusing our energy trying to make them change, we would be better off employing what we know to be consistently true of them.

Wired for Play

Play is a hard-wired instinct in the brains of all mammal species. The instinct to play never completely leaves us and young children can quickly get caught up in its energy. The challenge for adults is that our various concerns and volume of work seem to bury the places, time, and energy we have to play, and we lose all sense of its usefulness. Yet if the instinct to play is so strong in young kids, then it behooves us to discover how we might harness this capacity to use to mutual advantage in our challenging times with them.

Perhaps part of the reason why we haven’t thought of play as the answer to some of our tricky times with young kids is that we hold onto the idea that discipline teaches a child how to be more mature. Discipline is serious business! In those moments when they are doubling-down and resistant, the apparently unintuitive idea that we might play our way out of it provokes a fear that we aren’t preparing them for the “real world.” No one wants a spoiled and entitled child, but maturity doesn’t come strictly from lessons and discipline. (After all, don’t most of us know adults who behave like preschoolers despite all of the lessons and discipline they have purportedly received?) Maturity, in fact, most reliably comes from deep attachment to and security from those who care for children.

Understanding the Young Brain

If we provide the conditions for healthy development through attachment and emotional safety, then a child should naturally grow to be more tempered, accept lacks and losses, deal with change without erupting, and use their words to communicate frustration instead of hitting or screaming. From the ages of five to seven (and up to nine for more sensitive kids), a child’s brain should sufficiently develop to have the capacity for more sophisticated mixed feelings and ideas, which in turn generates emotional control and tempered behaviour. Instead of living in the moment like a preschooler does, they are able to talk about having mixed thoughts: part of me wants to do this but the other part of me wants something different, as well as pause and think before they speak. As brain development further unfolds, they can see and consider the consequences of their actions prior to acting out. The impulsive swings of emotion that are typical of the preschooler are slowly replaced with a more tempered child who can feel two things at the same time: I don’t want to go to sleep but I feel sleepy. Until then, we have to direct a young child to do things like get dressed, clean up their toys, and adhere to bedtime.

What is unique about the very young child is the exclusivity of their experience. They are engaged by what is in front of them alone and that is why transitions and being told what to do next feel like something is being taken away. This singular focus is also what makes play a wonderful strategy because it naturally grabs their attention and creates a painless segue out of the activity they are currently occupied by.

Play Over Punishment

Most traditional forms of discipline aim to change a child’s emotions or their mind to a wholly dissimilar state (from the joy of finger- painting to the harsh reality of being banished to the corner for not cleaning up!), with the end goal being obedience. From time-outs, to consequences, and “123 magic,” attempts to coerce them with threats, separation, and bribes reveal that we just don’t understand how young kids operate. Leveling consequences against them is pointless because they don’t have the capacity to thoughtfully consider what might happen when all they possess is a one-track attention span that can only focus on the present. They routinely get in trouble for reacting impulsively without any understanding from adults that they simply lack impulse control until the crucial age somewhere between five and seven (or later). When a young child is sent for a time-out (which even Canadian pediatricians now oppose), it can create insecurity in the relationship and stir up frustration and alarm over losing their attachments.

So, where does play come in? The beautiful thing about play is that it offers us a place of reprieve in difficult moments. Play is not real life and there are no real consequences. We can pretend in play that we don’t really have teeth, that we don’t have to brush our teeth, that our stuffed animal will brush our teeth for us, or that someone stole our teeth. It doesn’t matter whether teeth are real or not and that is the whole point of playing it out—that is fairly irresistible to children. The more we are in play, the less coerced our children feel. The less coerced they feel, the more we preserve their will (and avoid their defiance!). It gives us a chance to play our way through teeth brushing or diffuse the “crisis” and gently lead them back to the real world where their real teeth exist.

It’s okay that our young kids have their own mind and we should want this for them. When they are 14 or 24 years old, we will want them to chart their own course and to take responsibility for their decisions and goals, and by then we hope they will have the learned experience to back these up. Until then, the “I do it myself” mode that appears in the two- or three-year-old is the birthplace for this autonomous personhood down the road. The problem is we have to care for them at a time when they really don’t know what is good for them and are inherently prone to disagree with us—simply because we are thinking of consequences and they aren’t/can’t. We have to preserve this spirit inside of them that wants to figure things out on their own and that is where the play mode comes in handily.

Getting in Play Mode

When we are at play, we are suspended from work and the realities of life. It is in play where a child can develop a sense of agency and voice their thoughts and ideas (as wacky as they are), without any threat to their existence or to others. Play allows a child to discharge emotion and to express themselves, while at the same time preserving our relationship with them—a true win-win. The great thing about play is that after a good giggle or some absurdity like a game of hide and seek for “missing teeth,” your relationship is stronger and you are in better position to lead them.

While getting my young kids ready for bed one night, I remember them “ganging up” together and telling me they weren’t going to brush their teeth. I told them that they were funny and to get back at it, but the more I persisted, the more they resisted with all their 5-and 3 1/2-year-old might. My youngest looked at me and said, “You are not the boss of us,” and the absurdity of it registered deeply inside of me. In my head I though, “Oh, I wish sometimes I wasn’t the boss of you,” and nothing left to do but cry or push back more, I tool another path towards play. I told them since they didn’t need me anymore, I was going to go back and be a baby because it seemed juice fun. I lay down on the bathroom floor and with legs and arms flailing in the air, I cried, “Gaa gas, goo goo, poo poo, woo woo, I’m a baby, I need milky, I need hugs, I need my diaper changed,” and then burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter. While I was clearly at play, my youngest said to her sister, “Let’s never let her be the baby again okay?” With that they proceeded to brush their teeth. The surprising bonus was how good I felt after playing out my own frustration, with them none the wiser and their sense of agency preserved.

A real problem is that we don’t often feel playful between the pressures of work and rearing children but what if we just accepted from the get-go that this is what comes with caring for a young child? What if we just understood that they are single-minded, sometimes ill-tempered and prone to erupt, joyful, playful, silly, and routinely baffling, instead of trying to make them grow up, be serious, be correct, be responsible, and think about consequences (which, by the way, just doesn’t work)?

What if instead of battling our way to bed, we played our way to bedtime—from dance parties to wrestling matches, from songs we make up about our day, to fictional characters that journey with us into our dreams? What if we let play carry us instead of always having to worry about discipline and keeping our cool when they don’t have the same agenda as us? How much better-off would our relationship be if we let play carry us over the impasse that exists between the mature and the immature? What if we went right back to the place where we are all the same, where life isn’t real, where emotions are safe to come out, where fun brings us together, and just let it bond us when the difficulties of our day threaten to pull us apart? What if knowing and applying all this made our lives, in fact, easier?

Play can be the answer to so many of the conflicts we face with young children, but we don’t see it because we are often focused on the outcome rather than the most promising way of getting there. There is time enough when they will join us in maturity but for now, they offer us the unparalleled opportunity to witness and remember what it was like to be young and to feel like there is no other care in the world. When we stop pushing them to live in the world like we do (not their job) and enter into their worlds that are full of play and pretend, the differences between us will melt and we will find a way to lead them to where we need to go. The wonderful thing about play is that it has the capacity to heal and help us all if we only let it in. •

This article first appeared in 40 EcoParent | embrace the journey, Summer 2020

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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.

20 Activities for Fun and Play

“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.

Infographic – Why Play Matters

The instinct to play is hardwired into the human DNA. When children play they develop connections between the motor, perceptual, cognitive, social, and emotional areas of the brain. Critical thinking, communication, language, and emotional expression are also developed in play through trial and error. Impairments to cognitive, language, emotional, and physical development have all been linked to a deficit in play.

Here are some of the ways you can create the conditions for play and the benefits to a child’s development.

True Play: Why Kids Need Play Sanctuaries for Their Emotions

This article first appeared in EcoParent Magazine Spring 2018. View the original article here –

Part 1: play sanctuaries Part 2: play sanctuaries

Play is not urgent. It will not wake a child up in the middle of the night like a bad dream or a bladder in need of release. Play isn’t something that hijacks a child’s attention like an empty stomach in need of food or an injury in need of first aid. While the instinct to play is inherent to all mammal species, it isn’t bossy nor does it demand the space it requires.

Play is often pushed to the side when other things take over, such as structured activities, shopping, or screen time. Play is often seen as frivolous, something that happens when more important things like math or reading are finished. While we readily accept that getting ‘lost in play’ should be part of childhood, it is often treated as a luxury and undervalued.

However, play is critical to a child’s overall development; it is like oxygen. Play gives children the space to master life skills. It also fosters brain integration and creates a networked system that will be used in problem solving and creativity. When a child is at play, they are leaping ahead developmentally and forming a sense of identity and self-agency. Play serves a purpose, but we fail to recognize nature’s intention in hard wiring the play instinct into us.

True Play

It would be a mistake to assume that all play is created equal. Based on the relational and developmental approach of psychologist Gordon Neufeld, true play does not involve work or a focus on outcomes, such as task mastery or learning. True play is also not for real: there are no consequences that come with their actions, like pretending to burn their food, get married, or crash race cars. True play allows a child to project what is within on the things that surround them; for example, animal figures may come alive with frustration while pretend babies feign helplessness.

True play also requires a sense of safety, the type where one is not subject to being emotionally wounded by others. Play is engaging and holds one’s attention, unless other pressing matters jump into view. Finally, in play there is a sense of freedom that one is not bounded by the limitations inherent to the human form, because anything is possible in our imagination.

There are many things that masquerade as play but do not meet the criteria for true play, such as video games or structured activities. Video games are built on someone else’s story line or algorithms, while structured activities like soccer or swimming have specific outcomes. The type of play children need is not based on putting things into them, but drawing out what already exists inside. In play, the goal is not to push a form onto a child but rather to free their spirit to explore, discover, and to express itself.

Play Serves Emotion

One of the most important functions play serves is in the development of a child’s emotional system and preserving psychological well- being. According to neuroscientists, emotional development is as sophisticated as cognitive development, but it needs a playground to grow and evolve in.

Children are born with immature systems and cannot differentiate among their emotions. This is why young kids are known forspontaneously spewing out intense emotion and being surprised by their own outbursts. They often lack words to explain or make sense of what has stirred them up. Sophistication in managing one’s emotions relies on being able to express emotion, translate emotion into a ‘feeling word’, feel vulnerably, and on having sufficient brain development so as to temper one’s reactions and reflect on them.

The challenge is that this type of growth occurs best when the emotional system doesn’t have to work at solving problems for a child in real life – like getting someone close to you, or when you are scared and frustrated and need help. Brain integration is most formidable when the child is not preoccupied with survival needs, like attachment and safety. The beautiful thing about true play is that it provides the brain with the rest it needs to forward development. True play is not work, not real, and is expressive, which allows it to act as a shield for emotional expression. Play is rest, and this permits growth.

Play affords a child the room to safely examine an emotion and to experiment with words and actions to go with it. For example, as a child expresses frustration in play they come to know it better in themself, and when they care for their ‘babies’, they unlock the caring instincts that will fuel their own parenting one day. As Gordon Neufeld states, curiosity is ‘attention at play’ and children will naturally seek to have a relationship with the emotional currents that move within them.

Play Allows For Emotional Expression Without Repercussion

In his book Playing and Reality, the paediatrician Donald Winnicott wrote that whatever exists needs to be expressed. Emotion is like this: it constantly seeks expression. Emotions are the workhorses of the motivational system; they are not themselves problems, but they are trying to solve them. For example, if a child is scared, the emotional system will jump into gear and launch a child to cling to someone for safety or to retreat in fear. When a child is feeling pushed or coerced, the emotion of resistance will jump to the surface to thwart being overrun by someone else’s agenda.

The beauty of true play is that it allows a child to express emotion without being judged. There should be room to express all emotions in play – from frustration to resistance – and a child should be able to ‘get behaviour wrong’ because it doesn’t count. Hitting someone in reality will bring consequences, but experiencing the desire to hit or rather to free eir hurt something imaginary or lifeless in play should not. Being scared in play doesn’t require that one hide for safety. Being sad in play doesn’t activate real tears because the loss is pretend. ‘Better out than in’ is the modus operandi of the emotional system, and it doesn’t mind at all that it comes out in play. In fact, the more it comes out in play, the less emotion needs to come out everywhere else.

The actions and emotions present in play are re ective of how a child is stirred up. When frustrated they may build and construct things, change and control how things unfold or evolve. Frustration play can also include destruction too, with crashing and burning to the ground as evidence of not everything going according to plan.

Play can be fuelled with the emotion of alarm and fear with scary creatures and villains emerging. For example, while working with a family where a mother was undergoing cancer treatment, her son was constantly frustrated and alarmed. The father started to create a safe place for his son to play out his emotions. His son loved cats, so the father played ‘lions’ which included growling, snipping and snarling, as well as dealing with the constant fear of being attacked. His son’s emotional system jumped into action, took the bait, and expressed itself all over the place in lion form. It provided much healing, rest, and resiliency for the child, and it never required him to connect the dots to cancer in his family.

One of the beautiful things inherent in play is that it ultimately answers to whatever expression is required in the child at the time. After my children witnessed a theft at a retail store they broke out in alarm-based play at home. Unsavoury characters like “Stick up Steve” and “Break out Bob” started to appear. When Steve and Bob were eventually caught after much crashing, banging, and screaming, they were given a lecture and trapped under the stairs so that they couldn’t hurt anyone else. In an effortless and timely manner, play answered their emotional world and provided release with safety included.

When deprived of true play, emotional expression will be thwarted, leaving a child’s behaviour increasingly restless and more prone to outbursts. The emotional system needs to move. When it comes to a standstill, it is catastrophic for functioning and well-being: pent-up emotion takes on a life of its own, leading to potential explosions of great intensity. One of the best prescriptions for a child’s troubled emotional world is play. It is nature’s true therapy.

In play, the goal is. not to push a form onto a child but rather to free their spirit to explore, discover, and to express itself.

Creating Play Sanctuaries for True Play

The late neuroscientist Jaak Pankseep argued that children need play sanctuaries to serve their emotional systems. Why? Because true play has become increasingly endangered in a work- and outcome-driven society. The idea that rest brings growth or that freedom from work is a requirement for well-being is denigrated for the sake of getting ahead, achievement, and the pursuit of material goods. While we acknowledge the need for play on one hand, we are concerned our kids will get ‘left behind’ if we don’t make them work at academics, participate in structured activities, or perform.

The word sanctuary means a place to protect and preserve something that is sacred. A sanctuary is a haven, oasis, harbour, or shelter, and is meant to provide immunity from external pressures. Just as play doesn’t demand time and space, neither will sanctuaries appear on their own. We need to take an active stance in fostering natural reserves in a child’s life, so that play doesn’t get lost – and emotional maturity and well-being with it.

Play is a spontaneous act and cannot be summoned on command. We need to provide emotional support so that kids can get there and create bounded spaces that provide the freedom to play. Here are two key strategies to do just that:

1/ Focus on relationship

The bias to explore, express, and release oneself to play is activated when a child’s relational needs are met. A child is free to play when they don’t have to worry about whether their hunger for contact and closeness will be lled. When they can take for granted that an adult will provide for them in a generous and consistent way, separation anxiety will not hijack their attention.

Children under the age of three are largely preoccupied with their attachment needs so play is typically done in short bursts with adults and others nearby. When they become more independent and want to venture out on their own, they are more likely to get ‘lost in play’ for increasing periods. By the time a child is 5 years of age, they should ideally be able to play for extended periods – on their own and with others.

To foster play, adults can collect a child’s attention and engage them for the purpose of connection. This could involve feeding them, talking to them, sharing an interest or activity with them, or telling them the plan for the day. When a child is connected, the adult can then move them towards a space created for play, and retreat when the child’s play has taken over. The space could contain anything children are free to express themselves on, from a sheet of paper for colouring, to pots and pans to bang on, to a playground with slides and things to climb on. The best environment is one that allows a child the freedom to explore without being overly prescriptive as to what this should look like, other than ensuring reasonable safety parameters.

2/ Create empty space and embrace boredom

We can set the stage for play by not allowing things that interfere with it to get in the way, such as screens that entertain or provide information, instruction, schooling, and structured activities, and by playing with others where the child is in a passive position. The key is to create a space that is free of work, responsibilities, or performance. When we do this, all that is left is for children to sit in the empty space that we have created.

When we remove all of the things that distract a child and which create noise around them, it allows them to tune into the noise that is within. Sometimes this is uncomfortable and kids might say “I’m bored”, which is really about vulnerably feeling the void that has opened up. When we allow them to sit in the boredom, the play instinct should take the lead and move them to expression.

Instead of seeing boredom as something we need to fix, we need to reframe it as the child’s internal world calling them to play.

For children who are chronically bored and their play instinct doesn’t take over in the spaces we create for them, we can lead them into play through our relationship (while also considering why a child is emotionally flat-lining). For example, while doing yard supervision at a school, I noticed a 6-year old standing on his own. I asked him why he wasn’t playing and he said he was bored. This became a repetitive story I heard each lunch-time as I checked in with him. One day I told him I had some special fall leaves to show him and that all the kids were playing in them. He still wasn’t interested but followed me to have a look. With some playful prompts from me, he followed as I marched through the leaves and copied as I threw them into the air. While he could not initiate play on his own, he could be drawn into play through relationship.

Carl Jung wrote, “The creation of something is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct.” Human development is one of those creations and won’t be achieved by thinking our way into maturity, but rather by playing our way there. We need to create play sanctuaries to protect this invisible force that lies waiting and dormant inside of us. We also need the courage to release our kids and ourselves to play, and to let it carry our hearts when they are hurting the most.

Dr. Deborah MacNamara is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, the author of the best-selling book, Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), and is the Director of the Kid’s Best, Bet Counselling and Family Resource Centre.

This article first appeared in EcoParent Magazine Spring 2018.

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Infographic – The Preschooler Personality

Preschoolers know much better than they behave, and their good intentions can be short lived. There is no better test to adult maturity than the immature ways of the preschooler. The secret to taking care of them is to understand their immaturity isn’t a mistake but part of their developmental design. This infographic summarizes the characteristics that often frustrate or baffle adults but are part of the preschooler’s nature.

Three Irreducible Needs That All Kids Need to Thrive

Raffi Cavoukian , a children’s singer, songwriter, and child advocate, wrote a song titled – All I really need – which beautifully captures from a child’s perspective their most essential needs. Raffi sings, “All I really need is a song in my heart, food in my belly, and love in my family.” Every time I listen to this song I hear an unspoken message directed at adults as to what our children really need in order to thrive.

Developmental science is also clear on the three irreducible needs of kids – the need for play, tears, and relationship. These three things are critical ingredients in helping kids grow to become socially and emotionally responsible individuals capable of setting their own goals, adapting to their environment and being resilient in the face or adversity, and feeling empathy for others. This is what maturity should look like but without the right conditions, this growth cannot be assured.

We all know people who look like grown ups but behave like preschoolers. There is a difference between being young at heart and being immature – such as blaming others for one’s problems, having a hard time not getting their way, demanding and commanding others as to how to take care of them, and behaving impulsively. How do we explain this lack of maturity? When there are deficits in a child’s environment in providing for their irreducible needs, then development can be impacted and maturity hampered.

The Irreducible Need for True Play

Play is the birthplace of personhood. It is where a child gets their hands on the steering wheel of their own life and experiments under the direction of their body, heart, and mind. Kids need a place that is free of consequences in order to practice and explore.

Humans come with an innate desire to make sense of things, to pursue goals, and to discover who they are. We cannot force a child to play or do it for them, it is an instinct that drives them to emerge as their own person that can only be unlocked in play. As any three year old will declare while in the process of figuring things out – “I do it myself!”

We don’t have to teach our kids how to play – it is innate. Our job is to create the space for them to play that is contained, safe from emotional wounding, and allows for the freedom of movement and expression. In other words, playgrounds often have gates and fences around them leaving kids free to explore the space that is within.

Some kids are drawn to movement and to use their bodies to jump, climb, dance, or run. Others like to explore and examine, while some like to take items in their world and design something new. Each child has a particular bent for expressing their internal world, it is our job to facilitate the expression of it by creating spaces where this can be unleashed.

What gets in the way of children’s play? One of the main challenges to play is the push towards academics, particularly in the early years. The trend towards early instruction and schooling is alarming and unfounded based on decades of research in developmental science. For example, in my community there are children showing up in kindergarten unable to play, that is, they look at their teacher and say they don’t know how when told it is time to. Upon closer examination, their preschool years have been full of instruction, schooling, and structured activities. Instead of hearing parents sound alarm bells about the loss of play (the teacher did!), there was a sense of pride that a child could read or do math at an early age. Earlier is not better – not according to science. We can train and make kids work and perform at early ages but at what cost to their development? What happens when kids are made to work instead of play?

Play affords a child a safe space for emotional expression and this is critical to well-being and maturity. Kids go through many types of emotions in play, acting out their feelings in the safety of pretend and make believe. When play isn’t ‘for real,’ then the consequences of emotional expression are minimized and offer them the freedom to release whatever is stirring them up. The loss of play has been correlated in research with increasing rates of attention, anxiety, depression, and aggression in kids. Play preserves children emotionally.

The problem is we don’t value play the same way we do work and outcomes. Play is viewed as something kids do in their spare time and even this has become endangered. Children’s time is increasingly filled with screens, structured activities, and instruction. While screens have become easy targets in bemoaning the loss of play, research suggests that one of the biggest losses in kid’s time is due to the increased amount of time they spend shopping – a 168% rise over a 15 year period.

Without play our children cannot grow. There are no shortcuts here, no substitutes, and no pill that can serve as a substitute for what play provides. Parents need to be a gatekeeper to the things that erode time and space for play. Children need to have a song in their heart as Raffi says, because this is the sound of play inside of a child that is seeking expression in the world around them.

The Irreducible Need for Tears

Humans are born with the inherent capacity to be adaptable and resilient. We should be able to thrive despite adversity, to handle not getting our way, survive lack and loss, and be transformed in the process. This is the potential that exists in each of us and it will only be realized when we have a relationship with tears and sadness.

The capacity to feel sad is one of the best indicators of emotional health in a child. When vulnerable feelings can be expressed it indicates that a child’s environment is helping to preserve or protect a child’s heart. Emotions are what drive a child to mature when they care about others and themselves, care about learning, care about their behaviour and how they act, and care enough to face their fears.

Tears signify loss and separation from something we desire or when we are up against the things we cannot change. When it registers in the brain that something is futile – it cannot be or cannot change – then there is an emotional download and sadness is the end result. It is here, in this place where we have to let go of our agenda and feel the upset around it, that we are changed by the emotional shift. When it vulnerably registers that we can’t always get what we want, it will also resonate that we can also handle adversity. Tears are not something to be feared but something to be embraced in the process of learning.

What gets in the way of supporting kid’s from expressing sadness or in crying? Sometimes adults are too impatient, busy, or frustrated which leaves little patience and room for a child’s emotional needs. Sometimes the messages we send kids is that we value happiness and ‘positive feelings’ more and suggest that sadness or upset is not welcome or warranted. Phrases such as, “turn that frown upsidedown,” or “you are not filling someone’s bucket today,” can put the focus on people pleasing instead of emotional integrity. We cannot tell our children to be honest, speak their mind, and tell us their secrets, while at the same time tell them to change or deny what they are feeling because it doesn’t serve them or us.

Many parents tell me that when they were a child they were not raised being able to cry or express sadness when things didn’t work out. They often feel that because they were not supported this way, they are therefore unable to support their own kids too. But the capacity to help someone when they feel sad or upset is not something you need to learn, rather, it is something we already know how to answer with comfort, contact, and closeness. We just need to show up and be present when our kids need to feel vulnerably and express what they are going through.

You don’t have to agree with a child’s thoughts or actions in order to help them find their tears either. We can come alongside their emotions and make room for their expression without condoning that immature behaviour is okay. We can acknowledge that something is frustrating for them and welcome the tears that need to drain the frustration that is built up. Saying no is part of an adult’s role in a child’s life – and so is helping them find their tears when they can’t change the no’s that are there.

If a child can no longer say they are sad, upset, or lose the capacity to cry, it will be the adults in their life that will need to consider how to lead a child back to a place where they can feel vulnerably. When caring feelings go missing, it can be for many reasons including inhibition by the brain in order to preserve emotional well-being. If caring about something hurts too much, the brain simply responds by inhibiting the experience of caring feelings. Sometimes hearts can harden but there is much adults can do to help them thaw.

The Irreducible Need for Relationship

Children cannot thrive without relationships. They need relationships with adults who generously invite them to be in their presence, who display an unwavering capacity to hold onto them despite conduct and performance – while at the same time, lead the child to behave in ways that are civil, mature, and emotionally responsible towards others.

While I was at a hockey game the other night, I watched a father and his 7-year old son interact as they sat in front of me. It was clear his son was excited to be at the hockey game as well as impatient in only being able to move within the narrow confines of his chair. I watched the boy move around in his seat and buzz with energy as he watched the game, engaged with his Dad, and playfully interacted with his friend. I watched as his father gave him some space to express his energy until it crossed a line where it became too much and annoying to others around him – like when he started to kick the chair in front of him. The father leaned down, brought his head to his son’s ear and gave him direction, “I need you to stop kicking the chair and to sit in your seat for 10 more minutes.” The effect was immediate but what was remarkable was the warm yet firm way the father dealt with his son. It was clear to me his son was moved to obey his father not out of fear but respect – this is relationship at it’s finest.

What healthy relationships deliver to children is the ability to rest and trust in the care of an adult to lead them. A child’s immaturity means they will behave poorly at times and express themselves inappropriately. What kids need is to lean on adults who can lead them through these impasses while preserving their relationship. It is a child’s dependency on an adult that facilitates their growth towards independence. In other words, unless you are rooted relationally, you cannot stretch and grow towards your own human potential.

There are many ways we can facilitate healthy relationships with our kids including:

Engage them in conversation and listen with full attention
Do things together that bring out your enjoyment in being with them
Remember what is important to them and surprise them with your knowledge
Get there first when it comes to meeting their needs, that is, come before they call you for another kiss goodnight or be ready to feed them before they get ‘hangry’
When they are not behaving well, convey what isn’t okay while also conveying that your relationship still is
Don’t be afraid to lead them and call the shots when appropriate, inviting tears when needed

What Raffi seems to get so clearly in his song, All I really need, is how adults are partners in playing midwife to a child’s maturity. Kids have songs in their hearts because they should be instinctively moved to play. They need food in their bellies and love in their families which is about their hunger for attachment and to be cared for. Add in some tears and the capacity to feel sad and you have the three irreducible needs that all children require based on decades of cultural wisdom and developmental science. Simple? Yes – but these three things require a great deal of time, energy, commitment, and patience on the part of adults.

If you take the long view on human development you quickly realize there is no pill that can substitute for maturity. Nature has a plan to grow our kids up and of we do our job then we can trust in nature to do the rest. We need to play midwife to the potential for maturity that lies within each of our children.

When Play Ends and Boredom Begins

Understanding boredom in kids is serious business. A mother of a 7-year old boy sat in my office, clearly distressed and said, “I take away my son’s technology and tell him to go play but he has no patience and becomes frustrated which turns into aggression directed at his younger brother.” Nothing seemed to be working to dislodge his lack of enthusiasm and it was starting to take a toll on everyone in the house.

It’s not only parents who are concerned with boredom but researchers as well. Boredom is associated with an increase in rates of depression and anxiety (3), as well as triggering binge-eating leading to obesity (1). It can interfere with learning in the classroom and contributes to school drop-out (2). A survey of US teens revealed that those who reported being bored were 50% more likely than their peers to become involved with illegal drugs, alcohol, and smoking (1,4).

Unfortunately, boredom is prone to being misunderstood and leads to failing solutions such as reducing screen time, altering structured activities and instruction, as well as trying to resolve boredom by letting kids sit in it for a while. When boredom becomes characteristic of a child, we cannot afford to take it at face value. Engagement with the world is one of the best gauges of vitality and overall psychological health. When boredom is reported on a more frequent basis by a child, it can be a sign that development may be getting stuck.

What is boredom?

To answer the question of boredom, we need to first consider what is missing in a child who repeatedly tells us they are bored. A child over the age of three should ideally show signs of wanting to ‘do it myself’ with budding autonomy and independence becoming evident. They should also indicate an interest in learning about new and unknown things.

Kids who are thriving will often be able to shift into play or creative solitude when they are apart from their adults. Signs of vitality include having one’s own ideas, initiative, intentions, and interests. Children should be known for their imagination and curiosity, all of which go missing when a child is characteristically bored.

According to Gordon Neufeld, the problem with kids who are bored is one of emergent energy (5). The bias that drives a child to become their own separate person or independent being is missing or subdued. The word boredom comes from the word ‘to bore,’ indicating an internal void where energy should be coming from. Humans are born with instincts and emotions that should propel them towards seeking and engaging with their environment. Boredom indicates a lack of emergent energy or venturing forth spirit, a necessity if a child is to grow to become independent.

One of the problems with boredom is that when kids experience this void, they start looking for things to fill the internal hole and as a result, we mistakingly believe they need more stimulation. The more stimulation we give a bored child, the more we will miss what is driving their lack of emergent energy in the first place.

What gets missed with boredom is that there is no energy coming from within the child. The bias to become their own person is missing or flat lining. Instead of springing into action there is little energy or signs that they assume responsibility for their decisions or direction for their life. The problem is that the bias to emerge is a fragile energy that thrives only under the right conditions.

How can we help the bored child?

The answer to boredom that has become characteristic of a child is not to tell them to go play or to let them sit in this state, which will only widen and deepen the child’s internal void and lead to further agitation. While it is true that we will all likely experience boredom from time to time, special attention needs to be given to kids who consistently seem to dwell in this place.

The best measure to helping a bored child spring back to life needs to aim at the level of emotions and instincts. We need to get underneath boredom and focus on fueling what propels a child forward in the first place.

The most critical human need that drives seeking and engagement in one’s life is not the provision of food or shelter but of relationship. When a child is vacant and missing it will be their relationship with caring adults that will nourish them back to life. It is releasing them from their preoccupation with relational hunger that will free them from their greatest hunger. These caring adult relationships may need to help a child find the tears they need so that once emptied, they can start the process of feeling full again.

As a child goes missing, it is the adults in their life that will need to keep them moving – from getting them outside, to playing, to reading or doing schoolwork together. Instead of expecting them to figure things out, an adult will need to take the lead and compensate for what is not there until a child is restored to vitality again. It is also important to consider the reasons for the lack of emergent energy in a child – from too much separation in their close relationships, a lack of deep relationships with adults, or wounding from peers that has hardened the emotional system.

While the reasons for a child’s stuckness varies, the pathway to finding a way through does not. It is about filling them up with relationship so that the void inside is filled with us. When we kick start their heart, it will surge back to life and bring with it the spontaneous engagement in life that we long for. When a child has their emergent energy restored, they will venture forth and figure out who they are.

What every bored child needs is an offer to fill them up with an offer they can’t refuse – that of relationship and rest. It seems so simple but is yet so profound, the place that our children spring forth from is the same one where we are firmly planted.

Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and the Director of Kid’s Best Bet Counselling and Family Resource Center. For more information www.macnamara.ca or www.neufeldinstitute.org.

References

Maggie Koerth-Baker, January 12, 2016, Why boredom is anything but boring, Nature.com, http://www.nature.com/news/why-boredom-is-anything-but-boring-1.19140
Ulrike E. Nett, Elena C. Daschmann, Thomas Goetz, and Robert H. Stupinsky. How accurately can parents judge their children’s boredom in school? Front. Psychology, 30 June 2016, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00770
Shane W. Bench and Heather C. Lench, On the function of boredom. Sci.2013, 3(3), 459-472.
Michael Spaeth, Karina Weichold, Rainer Sibereisen. The development of leisure boredomin early adolescence: Predictors and longitudinal associations with delinquency and depression. Developmental Psychology, Vol 51(10), Oct, 2015. pp. 1380-1394.
Gordon Neufeld, 2013, Level I Intensive: Making Sense of Kids. Neufeld Institute, Vancouver, BC, neufeldinstitute.org.

Three Things I Discovered Writing Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one)

For the last couple of years I have been dwelling on the subject of young children while writing Rest, Play, Grow. It has been an incredible journey that first began when my children were young and as I started working with Gordon Neufeld, studying and teaching his developmental and relational approach. As I endeavoured to make sense of what kids really needed from parents, I began to realize how confused we had become. I was personally frustrated with how experts contradicted each other. I was also dismayed to see how raising a child had been simplistically reduced into fragmented instructions, directions, or mantras to remember. At the same time I thought there was something wrong when parents felt they needed to get a degree in child psychology, neuroscience, and attachment science to raise a child. When I discovered Gordon Neufeld’s work I realized the key to parenting was insight and not skill. At the heart of becoming a parent are actually strong instincts and emotions and it is these that move us to make sense of our kids and what they need. Rest, Play, Grow was born from this place of tension inside of me. It was born from a desire to take a step back and make sense of how young children grow.

As my book is released, I thought that the best way to mark it’s passage from my computer into the world, would be to share the three things that encapsulate what I really think young kids would like us to understand about them. Of course there are many more in the book, but Gordon has taught me that three points are best when walking around a phenomena.

1.We have become pushers instead of the gardeners young children really need.

We have become consumed with how a young child acts and whether they are civilized that we have forgotten that they need patience, time, and care taking in order to grow. As Gordon states, an apple seed doesn’t look anything like the apple tree that bears fruit. We are in such a hurry and we think every moment should be a teachable one with a young child. This approach is exhausting for kids and for parents, detracting from all enjoyment in raising and enjoying them.

The immature ways of young children are not personal – they are developmental. Young children lack impulse control because their brain is not fully developed. They are egocentric because in order to share yourself with another person you first have to have a self to share. They don’t use their words when emotionally charged because they are still trying to learn names for their feelings and lack self-control. They don’t always listen because they can only attend to one thing at a time and it isn’t always us. They need to be attached to us in order to want to follow us, but they also have instincts to resist us at the same time. This was not a mistake but part of a sophisticated developmental plan aimed at unfolding a mature human being. While we may be often confused by their behaviour, they are only being true to their instincts and emotions.

When I step back to consider young children in all their baffling and immature ways along with how we treat them, I see clearly that we have lost our way somehow. We have become divided from our intuition that knows young children represent the most immature time of life. The first six years of life are remarkable but we haven’t really accepted how completely different they are from us in terms of functioning. We routinely look at their behaviour through our adult lens and miss the splendor and wonder they represent. They would really like us to stop holding their immaturity against them, give them some time to grow up, and to actively work at creating the conditions for them to thrive.

Play is endangered for those who need it most.

The second thing that struck me in doing the research on play and young children is how it has become endangered world-wide. To be honest, this was and still is, a heart breaking realization. The push towards early academics and structured activities is rampant and it is the clearest sign we are taking a wrong turn with our young children. What puzzles me is how we ignore decades of developmental science demonstrating how play is critical to healthy growth and functioning in young children. From brain development to the expression of emotions – play is where growth and development take a leap ahead. I am alarmed by the implications for young children in terms of their selfhood and emotional well-being.

As I spent some time reflecting on why we ignore developmental research and our insight as to the importance of play, I believe it stems from parents worrying about their kid’s future. Parents are worried if they don’t push academics that their child will get left behind in a globally competitive, technologically driven, knowledge based society. The pervasive underlying belief is that ‘earlier is better,’ but this is incorrect from the perspective of developmental science. We can push a child to perform but this will come at a cost to vitality and selfhood, as well as stunt healthy development. More now than ever, I am resolved to staunchly defend and protect young children’s right and need to play.

We think discipline is the answer to immature behaviour and it’s not.

If we focused just half of our efforts away from how to discipline a young child and paid more attention to how we grow them up, we would finally have the answers we seek when it comes to their problematic behaviour. Discipline doesn’t make a child more mature, this is how we intervene to compensate for their immaturity. As a new parent I had so many questions about discipline but now I see this wasn’t the question I needed to be asking. We need to focus on how grow a child up so that discipline is no longer required. We need to raise a child who doesn’t just ‘act’ mature to garner favour but actually grow a child up so they will do the right thing when no one is looking.

My goal as a parent is to raise my kids so that they will flourish as adaptive, social, and separate beings. There are no tricks, treats, or short cuts to get there except for providing for their relational and emotional needs. I want my kids to care about others, to consider more than just their needs, to care enough to strive for their goals, to have interests, desires, to be curious, to have tears in the face of adversity, and to have impulse control around their strong emotions. There is no discipline that will get me there. We treat their immaturity as a flaw and deficit to be corrected instead of seeing there is an organic solution to all of their behavioural issues. As a friend said to me, “but Deb, you are taking away my threats, bribes, rewards, punishments, and time outs – how am I supposed to parent?” I replied that it was sad day when being a parent was reduced to a tool belt of discipline skills. We are meant to be much more to our children. We are the ones to answer their hunger for contact and closeness, to nurture their hearts and ensure they care deeply. We are their place of shelter and the one responsible for ensuring they are receptive to our lessons as we guide them towards civilized relating and maturity. We cannot lead a child if we do not have their heart. Current approaches to discipline miss the mark on what is most important in raising a child and how it is about the realization of human potential.

On a final note, I wanted to share that one of the sweetest discoveries in writing Rest, Play, Grow, was in reflecting on how incredibly fortunate I was to have found Gordon when my kids were young and to benefit from his counsel while doing a post-doctoral internship with him. Gordon Neufeld is a brilliant theorist, a gift to parents, and a true champion of all children. I am indebted to him for his generosity and support in making this book possible.

What I am left with most of all after writing Rest, Play, Grow is how young children today need advocates. They need adults who want to preserve and protect the conditions that they will flourish in. What they would tell us if they could is that we need to give them the type of relationships that they can take for granted and can rest it, the space and freedom to play, and for us to stop obsessing about their growth and to sit back and watch the splendor of human development reveal itself. My sincere hope is that you are one of these adults and that you will join me in this endeavour.

Deborah is on faculty at the Neufeld Institute and in private practice working with parent of children and teens. She is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one). All work is based on the relational and developmental approach of Gordon Neufeld, PhD, please see www.macnamara.ca for more information or www.neufeldinstitute.org.

Why Your Teen Reminds You of a Preschooler

Sometimes parents lament to me in a humour filled way, that they see similarities between raising teens and toddler/preschoolers. What is it that makes them feel similar? What do they need from us as we steer them through these developmental periods? There are three key developmental dynamics that are inherent to both tots and teens, despite their differences in maturity levels and performance. The more we can make sense of what drives their behaviour, the more we can help them on their journey towards becoming independent beings.

1.Separation Alarming Stemming from Increased Independence

Both young children and teenagers can be stirred up and alarmed as a result of their growth towards personhood and increasing separation from caretakers. For the preschooler their declarations of “I do it myself” thrust them towards independence and being able to figure things out for themselves. While this growth is healthy, it serves to create distance or separation from the adults who care for them because they need us less. The antidote to separation alarm in the young child is to foster a deeper relationship with them so they can better hold onto us when apart. The deeper the attachment roots, the farther a young child can stretch towards their potential, losing themselves to play, to their interests, and discovering the world around them (1).

Healthy development in teens can also bring increased separation alarm stemming from their growth towards separate functioning. Teenage years should bring greater self-sufficiency, the need to make decisions about their future, and taking the steering wheel in their own life. A teen once told me, “I don’t want to grow up and be an adult. I feel all this responsibility to make decisions and to get things right. When I look at my parents they don’t seem very happy and all they do is work.” The teen’s reflection on adulthood was imbued with sadness and separation alarm as she moved towards assuming greater accountability for her own life.

2. Resistance, Opposition, and the Counterwill Instinct

Parents often lament how their young child seems to instantly slow down when they are told to hurry or how they become resistant to parental directions like brushing their teeth, wearing clothes, or fastening their seatbelt in a car. It is as if young children have opposite buttons that become activated at whim, sending their parents into action pressuring them to comply with commands. The instinct to defy parental orders is often the result of having activated the counterwill instinct in young kids – the automatic response to resist coercion and control by others (2). The reason young children are allergic to coercion is that this instinct paves the way for them to develop their own meanings and intentions. The first step in having your own mind and becoming your own person is countering the will of others. Their resistance isn’t personal but often developmental. They won’t ever outgrow this instinct to resist – only the need to operate out it once a solid sense of self is formed. When a young child starts to use “I” language, the counterwill instinct is on it’s way in paving the way for their growth as separate individuals (3).

When it comes to the teenage years there is also a healthy resurgence of resistance and opposition stemming from the counterwill instinct. In ideal development, the instinct to counter another person’s opinions and ideas is meant to pave the way for the teen to claim their own meanings and preferences in the midst of so many people and competing viewpoints. Teens often go through a period where they are allergic to the agendas of others and will fight against them. It is not uncommon for the teen to resist the directions of their adults, in fact, it is often best to try and communicate parental values as much as possible before the age 13 so as to avoid uphill battles afterwards. As Mark Twain once wrote, “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” There can be additional reasons why a teen is resistant and full of opposition and not all of them are due to healthy developmental, such as peer orientation where their closest attachments have become their friends. Underlying healthy resistance in both tots and teens can be summed up in Louise Kaplan’s statement, “The toddler must say no in order to find out who she is. The adolescent says no to assert who she is not.”

3. The Need for Play or Creative Solitude

Preschoolers need time to play as it forwards their development as separate individuals by fostering emotional expression, allowing creativity to surface, as well as helping them discover their particular interests. Play should be a space free of consequences that accompany the ‘real world’ so that a child is able to experiment unencumbered by expectations of others. Play is an act of self creation and adults need to foster the freedoms necessary to allow a child to play such as freedom from hunger, screens, peers, too much instruction and structured activities, as well as having to work at getting their attachment needs met. Play for the young child is meant to be an act of self creation.

Teens also need to play but it often takes on a different form due to the difference in maturity level. Ideally, creative solitude starts to appear where a teen is able of fill their time with their own personal endeavours such as music, drawing, running, writing, or some other form of expression and exploration. Creative solitude can look different for every child but the purpose is to help them discover who they are through the process of reflecting inward and outward on the world. I remember watching my 11 year old hold her hands out in the rain after a long dry sunny stretch and tell me, “Mom, I forgot what the rain felt like, it’s so wonderful.” Teens need time and space unencumbered by other people’s expectations and demands. Teens need the same freedom as young children do in order to foster creative solitude including the freedom from screen time, peers, too much instruction and activities. When a teen’s primary focus is on what other people are doing, there is little space and time left to reflect on who one is in relation to the world – the hallmark of maturity.

What Tots and Teens Need From Their Caretakers

As adults we can celebrate our child’s evolution as a separate being but for them it will involve some sadness and alarm as their identity shifts towards greater independence and away from the security of good caretaking. There are a number of things we can do to help make this journey better for them.What is true for all children despite differences in age, is that the deeper their relational roots with caring adults, the greater their capacity to grow as socially and emotionally responsible people.

Collect their attachment instincts – Both tots and teens still need adult relationships and although this may be expressed differently at each age, the need is still there. Our children need to see there is a desire to be close to them, warmth as we listen and give them our undivided attention, and tangible signs that we are holding onto to them. We need to find our way to their side and continue to cultivate our relationship with them, from shared hobbies to activities like eating dinner or playing together. There is no right way to communicate to a child we care, it is about letting our relationship evolve so that we are still the refuge they seek and are positioned to help them with feelings that arise as a result of healthy growth.
Structure and Routine to Counter Resistance and Opposition – The counterwill instinct to resist and counter directions is strong in both tots and teens as a result of being in the midst of critical periods of identity development. Focusing on more implicit ways to direct them is less likely to provoke strong resistance and opposition, for example, instead of saying – “you need to brush your teeth,” a parent could ask, “what story do you want to read once you are done getting ready for bed?” This naturally implies that teeth brushing is part of the routine. For a teen, the regular structure and routine around homework or chores is often a better strategy than telling them each night to do their work. Structure and routine are more subtle forms of control that can be decided on by parents in advance and are less likely to provoke strong counterwill reactions when they become habits.
Carve out space and time to play – One of the most important roles a parent has is to create a healthy environment for a child to grow in. For parents this means buffering against societal expectations, cultural pressures, and their own child’s desires as they foster time and space for them to play or engage in creative projects. Controlling the amount of screen time a child or teen has, the number of playdates or sleepovers they go on, and ensuring they have time to be bored and to play or engage in creative projects is critical. While we can’t make our kids play, we can try to lead them there by making sure nothing competes with their attention and giving them the materials they are naturally drawn to. Whether it means getting out the lego pieces to help them create their structures, having paper on hand so they can fill it with pictures or stories, or getting them out into nature and away from competing stimulation – we need to lead our children to the places where they can express and reflect on who they are.

What is remarkable about both tots and teens is how they are developmentally being thrust forward to evolve as separate beings. For the toddler a sense of self is just beginning, while for the teen, they should be moving to assume a critical role in their own unfolding as a separate self. Despite the age difference between them, the goals in parenting them are still the same: to support them and be patient with their immaturity, offer warmth, and be generous in our caretaking. While their bodies and psychologies are getting more robust, they still need what they have always needed from us. As I watch my two children move into their teenage years I feel as Jodi Picoult once wrote, “I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.”

Deborah is on faculty at the Neufeld Institute and in private practice working with parent of children and teens. She is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one). All work is based on the relational and developmental approach of Gordon Neufeld, PhD, please see www.macnamara.ca for more information or www.neufeldinstitute.org.

Notes

(1) Gordon Neufeld, Neufeld Intensive I: Making Sense of Kids, course (Neufeld Institute, Vancouver, BC, 2013), http://neufeldinstitute.org/course/neufeld-intensive-i-making-sense-of-kids/.

(2) E.J. Lieberman, Acts of Will: The Life and Work of Otto Rank (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993); E.J. Lieberman, “Rankian will,” American Journal of Psychoanalysis 72 (2012).

(3) D.W. Winnicott and Claire Winnicott, Talking to Parents (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993).

Why Shyness is Not a Disorder or Deficit in Kids

Shyness in children can be viewed negatively, especially in cultures that value gregariousness and extroversion. What isn’t well understood is that shyness is an attachment instinct that prevents children from being led by people outside of their village of connection. Shyness isn’t often celebrated nor seen as part of nature’s design to ensure that a child’s closest attachments will have the most influence over them.

The shyness instinct can makes its first appearance in a 6 to 7 month old child as stranger protest if development is ideal. Instead of being easily passed from person to person, a baby will start to show clear preferences for their favourite people, and greater signs of upset when separated from them. Attachment to others becomes highly polarized for a child with the world splitting into those they seek to be close to as well as those they shy away from. In other words, shyness is not a deficit in a child but a strategic move on nature’s part to ensure a child stays close to the people that are responsible for them (1).

Shyness is often also confused with social anxiety – fear or avoidance of social or interpersonal situations. The alarm experienced with social anxiety is intense, chronic, pervasive, and must exist for over a 6-month period in order to be diagnosed. Only ½ of the people diagnosed with social anxiety claim they are shy. Shyness on the other hand is viewed as a personality characteristic that varies in intensity among individuals. One can be shy but not be bothered by it (2).

Why Are Some Kids More Shy Than Others?

Research suggests there is a genetic predisposition for shyness instincts to be stronger in some children in comparison to others. After 30 years of research Jerome Kagan, a Harvard psychologist discovered temperamental differences in a child’s response to their world as young as 4 months old. Approximately 15 to 20% of children are born with more inhibited temperaments and demonstrate more reactivity to their environments giving rise to stronger shyness responses. As babies they were more upset by loud noises, had greater hand and leg activity, and displayed a higher heart rate in comparison to other children. By the age of two these children were more likely to hide behind a parent’s leg when a stranger entered their play area and were more likely to engage in solitary play by the age of seven. These children were more likely to be labeled as shy by their parents and teachers but only ¼ of them still demonstrated characteristics associated with shyness in adulthood (3).

This research has resonated with my experience as a parent in caring for my two very shy children. When they were 4 and 2 years of age I was in a store grocery shopping when a friendly older lady came up to us and smiled at them. She proceeded to ask them their names, telling them they were very cute and lovely. My eldest immediately stuck out her tongue while the youngest screamed as they both ran to hide behind my legs. The lady looked at me stunned and said, “Oh my that wasn’t very nice!” I turned to her and replied, “they are shy and don’t respond to strangers,” while proceeding to comfort my children. As I reflected on the incident later, there was part of me that wished I had said: “Children come with natural instincts to shy away from people that are not in their attachment village and have not been sanctioned by their closest attachments. There is nothing wrong with shy children but with a society that expects children to follow, be gregarious, talkative, and friendly with people they do not know.”

What is the Answer to Shyness?

Over the years I have been told at most parent and teacher interviews that my children are too quiet or shy in the classroom. Teachers typically request that I ask my children to speak up more and encourage them to put up their hand to answer questions. I am typically told that the remedy to their shyness, (as if it were a problem in the first place), is for them to have more playdates with their peers. I once joked with my daughter’s teacher that if she came over for a playdate I was sure it would help her settle into the new school year.

Parents of children with strong shyness instincts may compare their kids with their more gregarious same-aged counterparts. A shy child can appear less outgoing and more apprehensive in engaging in new situations. They may prefer to hang back and observe the field as well as withdraw when feeling threatened or overwhelmed. Many parents of shy kids tell me they wish their child would engage more and be less stirred up with angst as they struggle with separation anxiety with each new school year. As you might imagine, parents of shy kids remember being painfully shy themselves and don’t wish the same for their own children.

The good news is there is a natural solution to shyness. As Kagan argues, biology is not destiny. While some kids have a stronger genetic predisposition to shyness, healthy development as separate, social, and adaptive being is the ultimate answer to growing out of it. In truth, the shyness instincts don’t ever leave us, only the need to operate out of them as much.

The answer is to work at creating the conditions for healthy growth to unfold in a child. This requires deep attachments with adults and the freedom to play. The combination of rest and play will create an internal force in a child to become one’s own person and to express oneself on the world. By the time they are in grade 4 and 5 (approximately age 9 and 10), a shy child may seem to take a leap forward and become more adventurous. The more developed their ideas, meanings, intentions, interests, preferences, and desires have become, the more there is a desire to step into the world with these guiding them.

At the end of grade 4, one of my daughter’s announced to me that she wanted to go to a summer camp for two weeks full time, where she didn’t know anyone, and that involved being part of a play and producing it. At the end of two weeks I sat in the dark auditorium and watched her sing and dance across the stage, full of life. The same shy child that used to yell at strangers to stop looking at her at 18 months was now smiling and bursting with joy in front of over 200 strangers. While I was moved to tears she seemed to stand a little taller that day, more confident, more emergent, and assured that venturing outside her comfort zone had been worth the effort.

How Can We Support the Shy Child?

When a child operates out of their shyness instincts it is a cue to their adults to consider the context. Are they are attached to the people they are being left with? Do they consider these people to be part of their attachment village? Shyness instincts are present in every child and preserve the rightful place of their closest attachments to lead them. What every child needs when they are shy is an adult who can make sense of them and to consider the following strategies.

1. Non-shaming approach – When a child feels there is something wrong with who they are for not being more gregarious or engaged it can foster a sense of shame. A non-shaming approach might require giving them time to warm up and to settle into their new surroundings. It would mean not pushing them, but supporting them in taking steps forward when they are ready. There were few birthday parties that we attended when my children were young that didn’t require sitting on my lap for awhile before they felt comfortable to engage with other partygoers.

2. Let them play – The more developed the self becomes, the more force there is to express oneself and push through the instinct to shy away. Selfhood is cultivated in hours spent in play where a child is free to explore, discover, and hear echoes of who they are resonate in the world around them. In order to play kids needs spaces that are free of structured activities, schooling and instruction, devices that entertain or inform, and the pressure to perform or produce outcomes. Children are free to play when their hunger for contact and closeness is satiated and they can take for granted their adults will care for them. It will also help if adults have patience to draw out the shy child and listen to them as they report back on the world they see. Far too often the shy child is glossed over with the more talkative children grabbing adult attention. Taking the time to notice and attend to the quiet kids who also have rich internal worlds helps forward their individuation as separate beings.

3. Match-make them to adults in their attachment village – Matchmaking is an attachment ritual that serves to introduce a child to the adults in their village that will care for them. Parents need to take the lead in cultivating relationships between their children and grandparents, aunts and uncles, teachers, coaches, to dentists and doctors. When the dentist told my young daughter to open her mouth he was met with her steely eyes, pursed lips, and arms crossed in an act of refusal. I told her the dentist was someone Mommy liked and had asked for help in caring for her teeth. I told her to open her mouth for him so that he could make her teeth clean and she obeyed, albeit hesitantly. Children need to feel that there is an invisible matrix of adults surrounding them for the purpose of caretaking but it is their parents that must be the ones to forge ahead in building this village for them.

Shyness is a natural attachment instinct that is often treated as a deficit in a child rather than a strategic move on nature’s part to keep them attached to their caretakers. While the instinct to shy away from others never leaves us, the conflict we feel about this, along with healthy growth and development are the ultimate answers to being able to express ourselves more fully. If we truly want to help our kids with their shyness, we would start by not shaming them for something that is natural. Nature has an answer if we are patient and support the conditions for good growth.

Notes

(1) Neufeld, G. (2013). Making Sense of Kids Course, Neufeld Institute, Vancouver, BC, Canada, http://www.neufeldinstitute.org.

(2) Burstein M, Ameli-Grillon L, Merikangas KR. Shyness versus social phobia in US youth. Pediatrics. 2011;128:917-925. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51721428_Shyness_Versus_Social_Phobia_in_US_Youth

Heiser NA, Turner SM, Beidel DC, et al. Differentiating social phobia from shyness. Journal of Anxiety Disorders. 2009;23:469-476. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2692184/

(3) Kagan, J. (1994). The nature of the child. New York: Basic Books.

Kagan J, Reznick JS, Snidman N, Gibbons J, Johnson MO. Childhood derivatives of inhibition and lack of inhibition to the unfamiliar. Child Development. 1988 Dec;59(6):1580-9. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3208569

Kuo, R. (March 4, 1991). Psychologist finds shyness inherited, but not permanent. The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved from http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1991/3/4/psychologist-finds-shyness-inherited-but-not/

Copyright 2016 Dr. Deborah MacNamara is on faculty at the Neufeld Institute, in private practice supporting families, and author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one). Please see www.macnamara.ca for more information.