Freedom of Expression: Guiding kids’ emotions into maturity

It is not unusual to see a child stomp in frustration, yell when they’re upset, and drag their heels when they feel hurried. Even after a good or uneventful day at daycare or school, meltdowns may appear later at home in the form of resistance over chores or homework. Parents may feel bewildered by the extreme emotional reactions they witness in their kids—after all, haven’t they been told a hundred times to use their words and communicate clearly to get what they want?

Emotions are invisible and mysterious, while actions are anything but and often distract us from the real problem. What we need to remember about emotions is that they, themselves, are not problems, but they are trying to solve them. Their cries of alarm or frustration are meant to get our attention so we can help fix or change what is not working, or help them adapt. The challenge is that sometimes the way a child expresses their emotions can create problems for the people around them. If you want to know what emotion a child is experiencing, then you only need to consider their behaviour and how they are moving in the world. A child who feels secure may venture out to play, getting lost in discovery and exploration; but a scared child will run for safety to a parent and a frustrated one may angrily lash out when feeling thwarted.

When a child’s behaviour is difficult, we can become preoccupied with reinforcing rules and expectations while losing sight of how emotions, a brilliant system of communication, are driving a child from within. How we respond to a child when their behaviour is emotionally fuelled is key to helping them become more mature— but many “disciplinary” practices can make matters worse and fan the flames of upset, leaving us not only no further ahead, but actually working against us.

THE NECESSITY OF Expression

Emotional health cannot be achieved if emotions cannot be expressed. The force they exert compels them to come out of us in some way. Young children are just learning about their emotions and are naturally often at a loss for words or any insight into what they are feeling. With maturity we should acquire a vocabulary to match our feelings and use it to communicate them in (hopefully) more respectful ways. But this is the end goal and never the place we start from. This is where parents and caretakers must come in and help teach not just words, but a language of the heart.

Simply shouting, “Cut it out!” and “Calm down!” can do more harm than good. Just like a pressure cooker, when emotions are bottled up, they often lead to uncontrolled explosions. The idea that we must, from day one, suppress our emotions fails to recognize that they need to move through us so they can communicate that something is working or not working, especially when we’re too young to articulate it. Our emotional world is a source of intelligence when it come to our needs, and it will do anything in its power to meet those needs.

What many people don’t realize is that young kids can’t regulate their emotions due to immature brains. It takes five to seven years of healthy brain development to create the neural pathways required to integrate strong emotions and provide impulse control. Until that time, adults, and not preschooler brains, are the only tempering agent children have to help regulate their emotions and behaviour. The crux of this job is to prevent them from hurting themselves or others with impulsive reactions, and not to prohibit them from having feelings or expressing them. Methods like separation punishment, withholding affection, or yelling are solutions that solve nothing in the long term and only serve to cultivate a deeper uncertainty about your relationship.

THE DANGERS OF Suppression

We need to make it safe for our kids to express their emotions and convey that we are there to help them through their big feelings. The goal is not to try and make our children feelanything differently, it is rather to support and model the movement of those emotions so they can learn to understand and exert influence over their expression.

One key to supporting a child is to make sure our reactions to their emotions don’t create more distress for them (and therefore, in turn, us) nor communicate a diminished desire to care for them. If their behaviour leads to a more insecure relationship with an adult, then their brain may “press down” on their emotions in order to preserve their connection. This is a costly move—one that inhibits emotional development and prevents the adult from being able to help forward maturity in the child by creating an atmosphere of insecurity.

The prevalent forms of discipline used with children either take away what a child cares about or remove them from the people they want to be close to. These tactics communicate that there is no expression without undesirable repercussion: What you say or do may be held against you where it hurts the most. If you have to be “good”, even when you’re feeling bad, and expressing your feelings leads to separation, then emotional expression will indeed decrease, but in its place will easily grow more anxiety and aggression.

THE PATH TO MATURE Expression

The good news is there are many natural ways we can make room for our children’s emotions, nurture their brains to manage emotions well, and preserve their well-being. It is also possible to set limits with children while still conveying we are there to help with their upset. The objective is not to stop expression but to give it some room to move, and, importantly, to avoid any damage to the relationship so that development continues to move in a healthy direction guided by a capable and trusted parent.

Play it out

One of the natural ways children express emotion is during play where there are no real outcomes or consequences. As developmentalist Lawrence Cohen states, “Children don’t say, ‘I had a hard day. Can we talk?’ They say, ‘Will you play with me?’” If we want to help children release their emotions, then we need to create the conditions for play.

True play is when a child is free to engage with their surroundings and nothing is taken at face value. Their frustration is expressed through creating, building, destroying, or transforming objects around them. Emotions such as alarm can be discharged through play that incorporates some fear like pretend monsters, being chased or rescued, having to hide to avoid capture, or surviving on your own. The child is able to express themselves without repercussion in the safety of play, often emerging from it softer and more emotionally vulnerable.

The role of adults is to provide and protect the places where children can play and invite them to experience music, stories, art, dance, or motion, all of which help their emotional systems discharge and recalibrate. The research on the correlation between loss of play and emotional problems in kids is substantial. The message is clear: Caregivers need to be play advocates when it comes to children’s emotional health and well-being.

Heart to heart

To come to a child’s side means to take a supportive role and not an adversarial one when dealing with their behaviour and emotion. While we don’t have to agree with them about their behaviour or even the “reasons” for it, we can connect with them at the heart level and try to empathize with them there. Acknowledging the emotion that is underneath their behaviour will increase their sense of connectedness to us. When we say, “You seem like you had a long day at school and are tired and frustrated” or “Help me understand what is stirring you up” we are inviting them to put into words the emotions that are driving them—which is both exactly what they need to hear and exactly what we want to teach. When we put the focus on the emotion instead of the behaviour and encourage them to express themselves, we learn to work together to find a way through the challenges.

It is also important that we don’t focus on our own emotions about their behaviour. We don’t need to communicate to our children how we feel, which could further overwhelm them and give them more emotion, not less, to deal with. It is also not our children’s job to care for our feelings. In revealing our struggles with a child, we may inadvertently convey that we don’t know what to do with them, thus alarming and frustrating them further.

As we come alongside and help them find and use words for their experiences, we will teach them a language of the heart. With words to communicate their emotional world and brain development that allows impulse control, both of which happen in supportive and safe environment, a child will naturally become more emotionally mature. I still remember the day my daughter proudly told me that her hand wanted to hit something because she was frustrated but it didn’t and that this was a good thing.

Daily debrief

There are a number of daily rituals that help us check in and debrief with our kids on their experiences and emotions. There is something unique about bedtime and having a parent’s undivided attention that makes a child want to talk. It is often here they may tell you about hard parts of their day or other stories about how they are feeling. As we listen and reflect on their emotions, we will be helping them to make sense of things and forward their emotional development.

Morning rituals can also help a child settle into their day, including reading books at cuddle time. Slowing down and making room for connection and orienting to the plan for the day without rushing can go a long way toward preventing emotional upset and upheaval. Shared mealtimes are an excellent time to check in with each other. Sometimes the after-school pick-up or ride home from daycare is a good time to connect and listen too.

There is nothing like the force of an immature child to test the emotional maturity of adults. The challenge is to not let our own emotions get the better of us and take it out on them. Emotional maturity takes time and patience and is as sophisticated as cognitive development. Kids need loving support, emotional guides, and caregivers who show they believe that maturity is around the corner by allowing their emotions to play out safely through their natural course. •

This article first appeared in the Spring 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

Taking the Lead in Sibling Conflict

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.

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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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.

Sorry, Not Sorry: Saying Sorry You Like You Mean It

“You need to say you’re sorry!” When problems or conflict arise, adults and other children are quick to demand justice by insisting on an apology, pushing a child to take responsibility for their actions. However, what isn’t often considered is whether a forced sorry is helpful, especially as other kids are great barometers of sincerity and can sense when words of contrition are devoid of true caring. They will be the first to demand, “You need to say sorry like you mean it!” instinctively recognizing what we adults sometimes forget in the pursuit of justice: apologies must come from the heart. While we can force our children to resentfully say those words, we can’t make them feel appropriate remorse.

When we tell our children to say sorry without considering if there is genuine caring behind it, we make a mockery out of caring and encourage fake performances. Simply uttering the “right” caring word will not make a child more civil and socially responsible, but sincerely caring about others will help them grow in the right direction. If we want our children to have integrity and have their words match their feelings, then we should not tempt them to give hollow “caring” performances. Ultimately, when it comes to saying sorry, only meaningful encounters will do.

The Capacity To Care

Caring is one of the most important human emotions, fueling healthy development and emotional maturity. It is at the very core of our concern for both ourselves and others. Caring is present in our desire to be conscientious in how we act and talk, and in how we feel responsible and act respectfully. It’s present in our desire to be interested and involved, to nurture and act non-violently despite being upset, and to be gracious and generous when mistakes are made. Without caring, human relationships do not work, and we are incapable of becoming more civil and mature. Caring is what tempers troublesome emotions, such as frustration and fear, because we care not to hurt another. When children feel their caring, they can self-actualize and bring their gifts into the world.

The good news is that caring is hardwired into the brain. Our well-being rests on attachment and connection with others, and as a species we crave togetherness because it offers us the best chance for psychological and physical survival. In short, we are better together. While we are born with the capacity to care, it requires support to be unlocked and expressed.

The Attachment Foundation

It is attachment to things and people that unlocks caring emotions in a child. When we are attached, caring cements the relationship and makes contact and closeness work for each person, and when adults build strong relationships with children, a child’s expression of caring will increase and deepen. To feel a vulnerable emotion like caring, we must first be cared for.

Attachment for a child can happen in many ways, but ideally develops over the first six years of life (although it is never too late to cultivate it!). Children will fall into attachment when there is a generous caretaker who is emotionally safe and engages with them in a meaningful way. As attachment forms, a natural desire will emerge to stay close, to feel a sense of belonging and loyalty, and to love back and feel safe enough to share their secrets. It is the invitation for relationship from a caring adult that opens the child’s attachment instincts and the capacity to care deeply about others.

When you realize that caring is instinctive then it should be obvious that we don’t need to teach our children to care. You only need to watch a young child care for pets, siblings, and possessions to see how these innate emotions appear all on their own. If we want our children to be more caring, then we need to work at our relationship with them and let that be the model for other interpersonal exchanges.

Safe Homes, Soft Hearts

In addition to a safe attachment to a caregiver, for children to feel vulnerable emotions they also need soft hearts. When a child feels too unsafe, too alarmed, or too much separation, the brain can move to defend them from fully experiencing the vulnerability of the moment. These defences do not mean there is a problem with their brain; rather, it is a sacrifice play by the brain in order to preserve the functioning in the child.

To put it another way, if feeling emotion gets in the way of surviving, then the brain will suppress emotions that lead to too much upset and emotional overwhelm. This is the reason why the “cry-it-out” sleep training method (without adult comfort), seems to “work.” The child’s brain will simply shut down emotional distress when it is too much to bear, but it comes at the expense of the child’s caring and desire to be close.

Cultivating A Caring Child

How do you know if your child is caring? You will see it in the way they are kind to others or the way they desire to be close to you. Children who cannot feel their vulnerable emotion don’t talk about feeling sad or scared. Indeed, they can seem flat and unaffected, or conversely, be aggressive and unyielding. If we see signs of a child not having caring emotions, then we need to reduce separation, alarm, and increase relational safety to bring back those vulnerable emotions. For example, this might mean helping a child who is struggling at school to feel more connected to their teacher by focusing on things they have in common. Relationships are the safe homes for a child’s soft heart.

To cultivate caring kids who take responsibility for their actions and words we need to lead them in making amends from a place of caring. When a sorry is needed, it is better to ask them, “Do you have any sorrys in you to give to this person?” This question directs the child’s attention to what they are feeling inside, rather than requiring them to perform as a person who is caring in order to avoid punishment. The goal is to anchor the child’s expression of caring to the emotion of caring. When emotion and expression are joined together, they form a powerful alliance that anchors the child so that they can do the right thing even if no one is watching. When their internal conscience and compass is built so that words match emotion, a child will naturally become more civil and socially appropriate.

If a child responds to the question of sorrys with a no, then the goal is to alert the child that a sorry is needed and when their sorrys “come back” then they are to deliver one. This can also happen in private so that the offended party’s immediate justice-seeking doesn’t thwart attempts for a genuine sorry. Allowing your child to play out their feelings, keeping them close and connected, are just some of the ways we can bide our time until the sorry eventually returns. When it does, we can then prompt the child to deliver it.

“When emotion and expression are joined together, they form a powerful alliance that anchors the child so that they can do the right thing even if no one is watching.”

It is important to keep in mind that children under the age of seven can only process one emotion at a time. When they are full of frustration, they do not feel caring. Conversely, when they are full of caring, they will not feel any frustration. Patiently waiting and helping to move them through frustration may be required.

If a child’s sorrys don’t ever seem to come back, then the issue may possibly be with some of the relationships they have, or that their heart isn’t soft in some circumstances. In either of these cases, take these as signs that more emotional support, a deepening of relationships, or softening of the heart is needed.

We cannot command a child to feel, as their emotions are unique to them and must come from within. However, we can lead a child to their caring feelings or facilitate their return by taking care of the child until they do. When we get our children connected to their feelings, then nature can do the rest, growing them into socially responsible and caring individuals.

This article first appeared in EcoParent Magazine, Spring 2020, www.ecoparent.ca

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 9 languages, and a children’s picture book The Sorry Plane.

The Sorry Plane is a playful introduction for kids and their caregivers to the importance of understanding and respecting our feelings. Brilliantly illustrated with captivating images by artist Zoe Si, The Sorry Plane carries a profound message about the importance of connecting with our authentic emotions. It highlights how a good sorry is one that you mean from the heart and how we adults can preserve a child’s caring spirit.

The Sorry Plane bears the Neufeld Institute Recommended seal which highlights children’s literature that is congruent with developmental science as well as with the relational-developmental approach articulated by Dr. Gordon Neufeld, PhD

“Say Sorry!” How Forced Sorry’s Do More Harm Than Good

If you are around a playground or schoolyard long enough you are bound to hear a child or adult say, “You need to say you’re sorry.” These words are meant to soothe hurts, prevent kids from taking justice into their own hands, and convey rules for behaviour.

You will also hear kids point out insincere sorry’s when they hear them and demand, “you need to say sorry like you mean it!” Forced sorry’s sound hollow because they are usually devoid of genuine caring. The problem is that while we can force a child to say sorry, it doesn’t mean that they feel remorse.

In our haste to get children to look mature and to say the ‘right thing’, we have lost sight that manners must be rooted in the right meanings. What good are manners if they don’t have caring behind them and what are we really teaching a child? While we can force them to say ‘sorry’ under threat of punishment, does this translate into a child doing the right thing when no one is looking? To put it another way – if we make a child repeat caring phrases will this lead to a more caring child?

We also demand caring performances from our children when it comes to saying thank you or giving affection to others. Do we stop and consider whether a child feels gratitude and caring before they say thank you? Do we tell our children to give hugs to people or to be ‘nice’ when they have little desire to be close, thus overriding and discounting the feelings that they do have? Such actions deny a child a sense of agency over their body and their feelings. This is a dangerous practice when considering what kids need to flourish and to be safe.

There is nothing wrong or misguided in wanting our children to grow as socially responsible and emotionally mature beings. This growth must come from caring and not at the expense of it. Healthy development requires that one’s words match one’s meanings. This is the essence of integrity and authenticity, the cornerstones of selfhood. There is a way to get there but forcing our children to give false performances only becomes a mask that wears thin under pressure. The path to becoming civil and socially responsible is made possible through caring, and it is our job to cultivate it.

Focus on caring as a vulnerable emotion

What we need to focus on is whether a child feels vulnerable emotion. Does the child have feeling words to describe their emotions? Can they get to their tears when they are facing things that won’t go their way? Do they feel badly when they have hurt someone else? Many bullies have been told to say sorry to their victims, but this hasn’t changed the bully or made them more caring.

Children will be more caring to others when they are full of caring feelings. We need to get our children to their caring feelings and let these take the lead in their interactions with others. The question is where does caring come from in the first place?

The capacity to care is hardwired into our emotional system at birth but it needs support to emerge. It is ironic and yet a simple design, when we are cared for, the capacity to care opens inside us. Caring needs attachment to kick start it – you need something to care about. In other words, children need to be cared for in order to unlock their capacity to care for others and things around them.

Caring for a child is the work of attachment. When we cultivate strong connections with our children and assume responsibility for taking care of them, a child is brought to rest. As Gordon Neufeld states, “A child must not work for our love but rest in it.” When a child can take for granted that their relational needs will be met, their emotional system roars to life and they are drawn into relationship with their caretakers. Relationship begets relationship; and caring grows caring in them.

A good attachment involves cultivating a strong relationship by providing a sense of sameness, belonging, loyalty, significance, love, and sharing of secrets (see Chapter 4 in Rest, Play, Grow). When our children can take our invitation for relationship for granted, they can rest in our care and grow into the caring beings that nature intended. It is never too late to strengthen our relationship with a child and it is never too late to grow more caring as a result.

What we need to remember is that our children come with an innate caring spirit that grows them into civil, social, and considerate beings. Our job is not to force them to act as if they care, but to grow their caring from the inside out.

Our children’s emotions are in trouble

Caring has become a key focus in educational settings and in the home. We are quick to jump on signs that children have hurt others and grow increasingly concerned with the rise of aggression in schools, bullying among children that has turned lethal, as well as increasing emotional problems such as anxiety, depression, and suicide.

In 2011, researchers in the United States found that in comparison to 15 years ago, youth displayed forty percent less empathy. Along with this finding was a similar decrease in their ability to understand the perspectives of others, an essential component in empathy, along with caring. It is under these conditions that racism, homophobia, and misogyny flourish and take hold. If all you can consider is your own perspective and there is a lack of caring, then a self-absorbed viewpoint can easily become one’s reality.

As children increasingly wound each other and grow more uncaring, we have responded by becoming more preoccupied in teaching them how to care. We never stopped to consider whether caring was something that was meant to be taught in the first place?

We know through developmental science that we are born with deep instincts and emotions to care for oneself and others. This is evident in young children as they take care of their toys or younger siblings. The challenge with young children is that they can only experience one emotion at a time so if they are frustrated, their caring is eclipsed and all we may see is attacking behaviour (see chapter two in Rest, Play, Grow for more information on the Preschooler Personality).

By the time a child’s brain develops the capacity to hold onto two emotions or thoughts at the same time, coined the 5 to 7-year shift, their brain will naturally temper their frustration with caring feelings if present. In other words, nature has an answer to making us more civil and mature by allowing our children to feel caring and frustration/upset at the same time. This internal conflict puts the brakes on a child lashing out without thinking, and allows them to consider how they might hurt someone and to stop before they do. In other words, it is caring that stops behaviour that is uncivil, unkind, and threatening to others.

Humans are hard wired to care as this is key to our survival. When our children lack caring then it should alert us to the immaturity that still exists in them or that their vulnerable feelings have gone missing. While we can all temporarily lose our caring feelings, when it is more frequent or persistently missing in a child then it can be a sign that something is not working as it should in their world. In short, when a child’s caring goes missing it should alert us that they need more care from us.

Illustration by Zoe Si, The Sorry Plane

So what do we do about saying sorry then?

Instead of commanding a child to give a caring performance and say “I am sorry,” we need to lead a child to their caring feelings. For some children it is about focusing on the emotion that is driving them – like their frustration. By coming alongside their emotions, we can help them express what isn’t working or what they are struggling with. When we convey to the child what isn’t okay, for example, hands are not for hitting, we can also convey that the relationship is okay. The focus needs to be on a child’s meanings first such as, “Do you have any sorry’s in you?” You could also give a child the benefit of doubt and suggest that, “mistakes happen and when they do, we need to find our sorry’s and give one to the person that got hurt.”

If we believe that children lash out because they have immature brains and that their emotions sometimes get the better of them, then we can be patient and focus on their emotion first. Instead of tackling behaviour, we will have faith that nurturing their feelings is what bears the real fruits of maturity in the long run.

In the children’s picture book, The Sorry Plane, the mother leads her children to their sorry’s. One child gets there quickly but the other child digs in her heels, protesting and claiming there are no sorry’s in her. This is a true story – these were my kids and I was that mother in the story. Instead of commanding a false performance, the mother conveys that a sorry is needed and that in time, she believes it will come. While the young child protests and leads them on a wild goose chase to find them, the mother is both caring and firm in her stance that sorry’s do come back. In the end, the child softens and tells her sister she is sorry with heartfelt caring and sincerity. There is nothing like an apology full of caring that can draw the forgiveness out of another person. The Sorry Plane is a reminder that we need to have faith that caring will lead our children to do what is right.

One day while on yard duty supervising children at an elementary school, a boy ran up to me and told me someone had pulled Thomas’s pants down and he was crying. As I reached a hoard of 7-year old boys huddled around a sobbing Thomas, I saw his brother Oscar comforting him. I told Thomas I was there to help and could see he was upset, and that I had heard what had happened. I asked the boys to find the boy who had pulled Thomas’s pants down and to ask this boy to come and see me. It was then that his brother started to cry and confessed that it was him who had pulled Thomas’s pants down. My heart went out to Oscar, now in equal distress to his brother.

When I looked at Oscar I saw a boy who cared deeply about his brother and was full of remorse for what he had done. I said to Oscar that I imagined he must have been very frustrated if he had pulled his brother’s pants down. He agreed and said, “the ball just came and hit me so hard in the stomach that I just pulled my brother’s pants down.” I thought to myself, of course you did, there was no better person to unleash such pain and frustration on than a brother that cared for you and you would be safe with. I told Oscar that I could see he was sorry, and that he needed to make amends to his brother. He readily agreed, although I think his brother needed a little more time to find his forgiveness.

The most important thing …

The most important thing is not the words “I am sorry’ but what is behind it. It is our caring feelings that make us fully human and humane. It is caring that needs to drive us forward. So what is our job then when it comes to raising kids who care?

We must nurture our children’s caring spirits by taking care of our relationship with them. This means we need to support and provide safety when their tears must come. We need to preserve and cultivate our relationship with them by playing together, eating together, and cherishing each other. We must protect against the lure of a competitive, outcome driven, work obsessed, materialistic culture, that threatens to pull us out of orbit from one another. Our greatest gifts and joys are not from things we get nor the depersonalized pursuits we follow but what happens when we show up for each other.

Our most important task as parents is to take care of our children’s hearts. Caring is our superpower and caring is the possibility that lies dormant in each of our children. We bring our children to life through caring, and in return, their caring is a beautiful gift to us all.

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 9 languages, and a children’s picture book The Sorry Plane.

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.

My preschooler wants to marry me – should I say yes?

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.

Super Shy! The Protective Power of Shyness

*This article first appeared in EcoParent Magazine, Summer 2018

Shyness isn’t a problem, but we sure treat it as one. Shy kids can be called rude and antisocial especially when their reaction to people getting too close can mean hiding behind legs, sticking out their tongues, making strange faces, or even refusing to speak when spoken to. Since we typically tend to place high value on qualities like independence and social sophistication, the actions attached to shyness, especially in children, remain terribly misunderstood. Shyness isn’t a problem to be fixed, rather it is the part of healthy development meant to ensure our children trust the right people.

Shyness is an instinct that moves a child to resist getting close to people who are outside of their relational village. Children are not supposed to follow just anyone and need to be led by those who are responsible for them. Shyness closes the door to attachments that compete with a parent for their child’s attention and guidance, and it keeps a child at home where they are safe and will be cared for.

Shyness instincts emerge between 5 and 6 months when they start to display stranger protest and separation anxiety. Before this age they can happily pass from one person to the next until their brain develops the capacity to lock onto the primary attachment who best meets their needs. When a child’s brain decides on a primary attachment, often they will automatically start to resist contact and closeness with others. The only people a child will usually accept at this point are familiar ones to whom their primary attachment has introduced them to.

WHY SHY?

You might wonder why nature created shyness instincts in the first place. To understand shyness, you have to make sense of how it protects and preserves a child’s greatest need: attachment. Shyness is meant to close the door to relationship with some people, so that it can bring the people you are attached to into better view. Shyness sets up exclusivity in a relationship, allowing it to become deeper and more personalized.

When a young child is shy with other children, parents may worry that their child isn’t making friends or fitting in socially. Young children don’t really need attachments with peers in order to grow; they need deep connections with adults. The pressure for early peer socialization is not in keeping with developmental science, which tells us that children need to first know who they are before they can be a good friend to others.

The focus for young children should be on knowing their own dreams, desires, needs, and preferences before they are made to focus on other people. Shyness with other children in the early years keeps the focus on their development and cuts out competing stories that would prevent them from forming their own.

Labels of shyness usually come from adults who don’t know a child and who are held at a distance by them. My children’s teachers would often remark at how quiet my children were only to be shocked to learn they were loud and boisterous at home. What we fail to realize is that children should be wary of sharing themselves with just anyone – shyness ensures they can trust the people they open up to.

Shyness isn’t a mistake. It’s nature’s way of ensuring that the adults who are responsible for a child have the most influence on them. The biggest mistake we make is trying to talk a shy child out of their instincts – making them feel uncomfortable with who they are. This is a dangerous message that can serve to override the natural instincts that are meant to guide them, keep them safe, and allow them to operate with integrity. The real problem is our own impatience with and misunderstanding of shyness.

WELL THAT DIDN’T GO WELL…
There are many unhelpful responses to shyness – notably ones thatnsuggest there is a problem with a child.

Some people will crash into a shy child with forceful interactions, making statements like: “Look at me when I’m talking” or “What is the matter with you that you can’t say hi?” When we force a child to engage and don’t honour their shyness instincts, it can lead to pushback or alarm in the child.

With my own kids out in public, it was inevitable that a friendly person would say hi to them. Their responses ranged from yelling, “Go away!” to hiding behind my knees, or my eldest would move in front of her sister to protect her. I often wanted to tell people that while I understood their intentions were friendly, kids are not programmed to warm up to strangers for very good reasons. When strangers push a young child’s boundaries, threatening their sense of self, it makes them more resistant to connecting with new people.

When we don’t understand the function that shyness plays, it can make it hard for other family members who want a relationship with a child. If Grandma or Grandpa hasn’t seen a young child in a while, there can be a strong shy response when they visit. Hurt feelings can ensue with complaints that there are not enough visits happening. The solution is to help them develop relationships rather than disparage their shyness.

The more adversarial or demanding a person becomes for a child to speak up, the more a child will resist talking or sharing their ideas. This is often the case in the classroom when a child feels coerced to speak up but doesn’t have a solid connection with the people they are speaking to. Shy children are often mislabelled as anxious in these contexts when the truth is they lack a relationship that would bring them out of their shell. It is not a child’s job to build a relationship with an adult – it’s up to the adult to invite the child, patiently, into a relationship with them.

A NATURAL TRANSFORMATION

Just as nature built shyness instincts into kids, it also provided a natural resolution to it. While the instinct to shy away from others may never leave, the simultaneous push towards wanting to relate to others helps to counteract it.

The more a child becomes their own person, the more they form their own ideas and desires, many of which include interacting with others. If they love playing soccer and want to join a team, natural shyness instincts will take a backseat. The more a child loves to act and sing, the more their shyness instincts will be overrun by the desire to be seen and heard on the stage. There are many young children who, despite the instinct to shy away from others, will proclaim that they are ready for school and bravely climb on the bus for that unforgettable first time.

Healthy development is the answer to dealing with shyness instincts. As a child’s dependency on their adults decreases, their willingness to seek the guidance and company of other people increases. The more mature they get, the more they can disagree with their shyness instincts as well. While one part of the child might be inclined to avoid contact, another part longs to reach out and share experiences with others around them. We don’t have to force a child out of their shell – nature has a plan to help them emerge naturally.

CONNECTING WITH SHY KIDS

When you understand the purpose of shyness instincts, you are less likely to make matters worse and can use these strategies instead.

Be a matchmaker

The key to matchmaking is to use current attachments to form new ones. New people need to get an introduction to a shy child through someone they know and trust. When we share our childcare responsibilities with others, we cannot leave it up to chance that a relationship between the child and the caretaker will form.

We can foster relationships between a child and an adult by focusing on something they have in common and by having the child see that we like the person we are connecting them to. When the child notices that the caretaker is endorsed by their trusted adult, their shyness instincts won’t be as necessary and they will be better able to follow and connect with their new person.

Develop transition rituals

When shyness instincts are present, rituals and routines can help a child feel comfortable and settle more easily into someone’s care. When we take time to say hello to their caretaker, allow some time to adjust before leaving, and then head out in a predictable manner, it can help a shy child feel more at ease with their teacher or babysitter, knowing how the day will progress.

A daycare director I work with was delighted at the new pick-up and drop-off area she had renovated in her centre. One staff member was always assigned to greet kids and help with the task of putting their things away, saying hello and goodbye to their parents, and leading the child to their classrooms. Having a special space to orchestrate this transition and a ritual around it was transformational. The staff, parents, and kids all found their rhythm in entering and leaving the centre.

Build bridges and normalize shyness

If a child is reluctant to talk to you then wait some time, chat casually with their parent, and convey that you understand that it just doesn’t feel right to say hello yet.

When I went for a meeting at a colleague’s house one day, he tried to say hello to my young child and engaged her eyes to get a smile. When he was met with a “stay away from me” face, he gently said, “She has lovely shyness instincts in her,” and he let her be. As my daughter saw me engage with my colleague, who wisely bridged the distance by showing acceptance rather than opposition, she naturally let down her guard and followed suit.

Our children need to feel secure with the adults who are responsible for caring for them – this wasn’t meant to be left to chance or move from person to person, but is part of nature’s design to ensure they don’t follow people to whom they are not attached. If our social expectations were in keeping with what children really need, we wouldn’t see shyness as a failing but would recognize it for the important role it plays in allowing them to develop their values, relationships, and sense of self at their own pace and under their trusted caregivers’ watchful eyes.

The Emotional Roots of Anxiety

Originally printed in the Summer 2018 Edition of EcoParent Magazine – www.ecoparent.ca

The Emotional Roots of Anxiety: Healing Through Connection

From waves of panic to uneasy feelings that rise up from the gut, anxiety is a universal human experience. It comes as no surprise then, that anxiety continues to be one of the most commonly diagnosed mental health issues in children and adults today, with the World Health Organization naming it as one of the leading concerns among children ages 4 to 17 worldwide.

What is anxiety? It is usually accompanied by symptoms such as agitation, incessant worrying, trouble focusing, panic, feeling full of fear, nightmares, and clinging behaviour. My 5-year old daughter once asked, “Mommy, why does it feel like my tummy is making butter?” That churning feeling that comes with anxiety, along with many other physical and emotional symptoms, alerts us to the fact that we are stirred up. Despite reassurance from others that there is nothing to worry about, anxiety can sink its teeth in deep and hold on.

When the mind and body are in turmoil, anxiety will follow wherever you go – from your bed to the dinner table, and to school. The problem is that its symptoms tell us very little about what is at the root of the feelings. Parents often turn to their kids for answers asking, “What is the matter?” When they are met with blank stares, puzzling explanations, or protestations of, “I don’t know!” it can elevate a parent’s anxiety as well.

The problem with anxiety is we cannot make headway unless we can make sense of it at its root level, as asserted by Gordon Neufeld, an internationally respected developmental and attachment-based psychologist. There is an epicentre to anxiety, but we often dance around its symptoms instead of reaching into its core, where the real problem lies.

Perceiving past the symptoms

The key to understanding anxiety is to name the emotion that drives it: alarm. When a threat is detected by the brain’s surveillance system, it responds by releasing a cascade of chemicals that literally changes our physiology and enables us to quickly respond. When separation has opened up, the brain will respond with increased alarm, frustration, and pursuit in order to close the distance.

To do this, we need to first identify the most fundamental need of all humans. The one non-negotiable thing that all children and adults require for healthy emotional growth and well-being is attachment. As an interdependent species, we were designed to hunger for contact and closeness from each other, and it is through attachment that we are able to raise children, to care for each other, and create a civil society.

The purpose of attachment is to ensure that children depend on their adults to guide and protect them and that we, in turn, provide these things. When children lean into you for caretaking, they are willing to follow, listen, attend, orient to, and obey. The deeper a child’s attachment roots, the greater their capacity to reach their potential as a social, separate, and adaptive being.

If relational attachment is the greatest of all human needs, then what is the most impactful and alarming of all experiences? The answer is separation—to find yourself apart from your attachments, which pushes the brain’s alarm system into full tilt as it tries to close the void that has opened up. You can witness a young child’s desperate pursuit to get back into attachment when you tell them it’s time for bed and they begin clamouring for one more drink of water, a snack, a trip to the bathroom, another story, or plead, as one clever boy told his father, “Please come back—the spiders keep throwing me out of bed.” Separation is provocative because attachment is key to our survival.

What sets off alarm bells?

There are many sources of separation that children can experience, from the obvious ones like moving houses, starting school, parents divorcing, or the loss of a loved one. But there are other surprising sources such as healthy growth, which pushes the preschooler to explore and use their imagination, the middle-schooler to try new things, and the teenager to figure out who they are and what they want to do with their life. At every age there are different developmental issues to face, each bringing an element of existential alarm with it. As Gordon Neufeld states, we don’t teach 3-year-olds about monsters which they then become afraid of, it is their fear that creates the monsters in the first place.

Other sources of separation for kids include discipline that uses what a child cares about against them, euphemized as “consequences”, “tough love”, or “time-outs”. These techniques use separation to alarm a child so that they will behave better but they backfire as they render an adult an adversary and, with this, reduce a child’s desire to please or work towards meeting their adult’s expectations. Relationship is the vehicle for getting a child to drive in a different direction, but separation discipline throws this off course and leaves relational insecurity in its wake.

Separation alarm is also created when our children fuse with friends to the exclusion of their adults. Referred to as “peer orientation”, this gives rise to children with alarm problems because their peers are largely immature and impulsive, sometimes hurtful, substitutes. One day your child belongs in the group, the next day they don’t, and the fickle friendships and wounding ways of kids especially hurt those who are more dependent on their same-age friends than their adults. Friends are important, but children weren’t meant to be the answer to each other’s fundamental attachment needs.

Separation alarm can also be attributed to physical separation like the loss of a parent to a new job, travel, injury, sickness, or the introduction of a new partner. Even success can create alarming feelings as the child lives in fear that they could lose the advances they have gained. Sensitive children who feel they are too much for their parents to handle are often full of anxiety because exasperated adults convey they don’t know how to take care of them, leading to insecurity.

Separation alarm has the power to drive temporary anxiety symptoms to more chronic levels that can pervade all areas of life. The fall-out from chronic anxiety may lead to additional behavioural problems such as anger, agitation, feeling overwhelmed, disconnection, and depression, which can be misinterpreted, or overreacted to, by adults. While the symptoms of anxiety and sources of separation for kids become better understood, concurrent research suggests that if separation is the problem, then surely connection will be the cure.

Bridging the void

What if we stopped for a moment and considered whether anxiety was, in fact, exactly what the brain wanted and intended? What if we looked at the emotion of alarm as having a very important job to do by noisily alerting parents that something isn’t right in a child’s world? And what if the brain is actually working well when it is alarmed and the problem is not the alarm, per se, but rather how long and how hard the brain has to work to gain our attention by way of anxiety symptoms, which serve to draw people close to increase connection and close painful separation voids?

There are many things adults can do to increase connection and reduce alarm, but the guiding objective should be to bring a child to emotional rest. This can be facilitated by coming alongside and conveying a desire to be with them, to show care and read their needs, and take the lead in fulfilling them wherever possible. For example, if they are anxious at night-time, being generous with contact and closeness will help them rest better. When a child closes their eyes at night, they are separated from you. Bridging this divide can involve telling them about the plans for the following day, staying with them until they fall asleep, or tying invisible strings around your beds to hold you together; if only in your child’s imagination. Making room for their alarm and letting them know it’s your job to worry about their sleep—not theirs—can go a long way in helping your child see you as in-charge, and able and willing to care for them.

If a child is anxious, it is also important to shield them from further causes of frustration wherever possible—from relationships that don’t work well to avoiding introduction of new sources of separation. When a child is alarmed, it is a time to prune out unnecessary separations and focus on tethering them to the adults in their life. This can be achieved by orienting them to the invisible matrix of adults that will care for them. For example, telling a child, “When I take you to school, your teacher will take over for me. They are in charge, I trust them to care for you, and they know how to reach me if you need me. I will look forward to picking you up, too,” helps to assure them that they are safe and loved, can feel connected to the adult who will take your place in your absence, and that you are never far away for long.

If separation discipline is being used in the home, it is also necessary to move away from time-outs and punitive consequences to more attachment and developmentally-friendly discipline, such as collecting a child before directing. This involves getting into their space in a friendly way, interacting with them in a positive manner, engaging in conversation, or paying attention to what they are focusing on, until you can feel the child warm up, start to listen, and want to follow. Using structure and routine to help them navigate their day also helps them feel safe. Kids who are anxious love ritual because it’s predictable, thus, providing security.

Letting out

Tears are the antithesis to alarm because they serve to drain the system and allow rest by neutralizing the chemicals associated with it. One of the most important ways we can bring our children to emotional rest is to facilitate tears when they are up against things that frustrate them. From the small things to the big upsets in their life, if an adult is willing to come alongside a child and make room for some tears, this can temporarily reduce restlessness, fear, and agitation.

To help a child to their tears, we need to meet them with empathy and warmth. Focus sincerely on what is upsetting them, despite how small or insignificant it may seem to us. Sometimes a parent may become upset by what they hear from a child, but it is best not to show these emotions and to find another adult to debrief with. Every child needs to feel confident that they are not too much for their adult to handle, that their feelings aren’t too big or scary to express, and that there is no situation that they won’t receive support with.

When a child is anxious, what we cannot lose sight of is how separation instigates the alarm behind it and that relationship is the vehicle through which healing occurs. When a child can safely feel their fear in a vulnerable way, they will be on the road to making sense of the emotions associated with alarm. When they can see and name what it is that stirs them up, and can freely express their emotions, they will be brought to emotional rest and find the courage to face the hard things. This process of holding onto and guiding them through alarming feelings and times will help them reaffirm the faith they have in their caregivers to love and take care of them exactly as they are.

Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a counselling and resource centre for families.