I really think hospitals and doctors that work with pregnancy and pediatricians need to make more literature available for how to, ya know, work with kids? Because the more conversations we have about spanking (and how it’s ineffective and harmful and does more bad than good), the more I realize that a lot of people don’t know the alternatives. Or like, anything about child development or where misbehavior stems from.
So, as someone who went through childhood development classes in college, works with kids for a living, and knows multiple people who specialized in childhood education, here are some pointers when you are working with kids:
1. Model emotional response for kids. Children are learning how to recognize and respond to their own emotions. All the way up through high school, children’s brains are still developing, and the emotions they are learning to process become more complex. So with really young kids, the easiest way to help them with this is to model emotional self awareness and self care.
- “Oh wow, mommy is feeling angry because the cat made a mess. I’m going to clean this mess and then go sit in my room in the quiet for a short break so I feel better.”
- “You know, I am feeling very sad about not going to the park because it is raining. I bet some hot chocolate and a book would make me feel better.”
- ”Huh, I’m feeling kind of cranky and hungry, but daddy won’t be home for dinner for another hour. I bet I’ll feel better if I eat a little piece apple while we wait.”
2. Understand what causes child frustration and work to preempt it.
- -Transitions (from one activity to another, getting in the car, etc) can be stressful, especially if the activity or location they are leaving is fun. Give kids a warning when this is going to happen. With young kids, give them about 5-15 minutes of warning (”10 minutes until we are going to leave the park and go home. Do your last thing.”), with older kids, just give them a time frame. (We are can play at McDonalds for 30 minutes, but then we have to go grocery shopping, ok?)
- Not being able to communicate what they want to is frustrating. Babies can learn simplified baby sign language months before they are verbal. Kids may not know the words for what they are trying to say. Be patient and help them find the right words. On a similar note, don’t ignore kids. If you really can’t respond to their question right away because of something else, at least tell the “Yes, I heard your question. I’ll answer you as soon as I’m done talking on the phone.”
- Not being able to make choices or having too much choice can be overwhelming. Give kids a limited, reasonable selection of choices. “Do you want apple slices or juicy pears on the side for lunch?” is much better than “What do you want with your sandwich?” or just giving them apple slices. “Do you want to give grandpa a hug or a high five?” is better than demanding they hug grandpa right away.
3. Understand that kids are people to. They will get hungry, tired, an annoyed just like adults do. Sometimes you have to be flexible and give them time to self care. Talk to them, explain things to them, let them be people and not just dolls. “Because I said so” is really unhelpful for a growing kid. “We can’t buy Fruit Loops today because we are already getting Frosted Flakes. We only need one cereal at a time.” is going to do you a lot more favors. “Don’t pick up the glass snow globe. It belongs to grandma and can break easy. She would be sad if we broke it on accident.” is better than “don’t touch that.”
And look, no parent is perfect. No baby sitter, no teacher, no care taker is going to be awesome all the time. And no kid is going to be perfect. They will cry and have tantrums, and not be able to tell you what they need, and be stubborn sometimes. Sometimes they need space, or quiet time. Sometimes they need attention and validation.
But kids learn from every interaction they have, so adults who yell and hit and insult children when they misbehave raise kids who yell and hit and insult others when they feel like they’ve been wronged.
Another good thing to go along with giving kids choices is the ‘now I get to choose’, for situations where you have to give a ‘no’ but want to frame it in a way kids can understand. Example: “You got to make a lot of choices today. Now it’s time for me to make a choice, and my choice is [choice].” This is especially good for things kids do not like but that need to be done, like bathtime or bedtime.
Also, if you give a kid a choice (like, between juice or milk with lunch) and they are not making a choice/trying to choose something that you have not offered, use this: “That was not a choice. [restate choices]. If you do not choose, then I will choose for you.” And then if they don’t make a choice then, you make the choice for them and follow through with that choice. But be sure to give kids time to process all of this, they need time to think about it and come to a conclusion. If we’ve reached the ‘you make a choice, or I will choose for you’ part, I usually give them 15 seconds or so to make a choice before I intervene. And I don’t count down out loud either, I give them time in silence to think and choose. (This is with 1st graders btw, you may need to lengthen or shorten that wait time based on the kid)
Clearly spelling out consequences for unwanted behavior really helps too. You can frame it in a positive or negative light as well, whichever works better for your kid. “If you keep hitting your sister with that stuffed animal, then it will go on top of the fridge until after lunch.” or “When you choose to play nice, then you may join us for a board game.” Make the consequences fit the behavior, and clearly spell it out like that, and you will get results. I use a mix of the positive and negative versions, depending on what fits the situation.
Yes. You should be raising kids to be thoughtful, self sufficient, empathetic people. Not trained dolls.
Posts tagged education
Asked by Anonymous:
Were you a child prodigy?
No.
I was a reasonably good elementary school student (although certainly not the best in my class), and then a not-very-good middle school student, and then a poor student for much of high school. (I failed my junior English class, and had to write essays about The Bluest Eye and Twelfth Night over the summer to get a D.)
Some of this had to do with intellectual challenges: I was a bit behind the curve when it came to abstractions. Like, I could not handle the idea of the equation x + 2 = 4, because x is not a number, so how is that even possible? My struggle with abstractions was also seen in my study of literature and anything that couldn’t be, like, memorized. (I’ve always been a pretty good speller, for instance.)
Some of my troubles in school also had to do with what in retrospect were social and mental health challenges. But I was very lucky to have teachers who saw a lot of potential in me and refused to give up on me, even when I was defiant and annoying and set off fireworks outside their bedroom windows. (Do not do this. It is not cool. It is just annoying.)
That said, I think it’s an oversimplification to say that I was a “troubled child” or whatever. By college, I was engaged and interested in many of my subjects and became, as my favorite college professor once called me, “a solid B+ kind of fellow.”
I don’t think it’s fair to see some kids as merely smart and others as merely troubled, or to think that kids who are performing poorly in school are simply miscreants/stupid/whatever. (It’s also unfair to portray kids who perform well in school or who have expansive vocabularies or whatever as inherently untroubled.)
Of course, none of this should be an excuse to give up. It can be really hard to try to stay engaged in school/learning/anything, especially when you don’t have the kind of support I was lucky to enjoy. But it’s also worth it. Learning is hard, and learning how to learn is hard, and it doesn’t happen overnight. It really is something that we have to do for a lifetime—or, more optimistically, that we get to do for a lifetime.
Sesame Street reaches out to 2.7 million American children with an incarcerated parent.
Last week, Sesame Street added a new character, to whom more than 2.7 million American children can now relate. The show introduced Alex, a child whose father is in prison, in a video included in the online interactive, “Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration.”
The “Little Children, Big Challenges” feature aims to reach children facing complex challenges, including bullying, sibling rivalry and parental incarceration.
Recent reports indicate that more than half of inmates in the US have children under the age of 18. As a result, there are more than 2.7 million children with a parent that is incarcerated (that translates to 3.6% or 1 in 28 American children). Most of the parents (66%) are incarcerated for non-violent crimes.
The Sesame Street website provides tips for caregivers to help the growing number of children affected by incarceration and features videos of both real-world children and Sesame Street characters sharing their own experiences with the subject.
Check out their tool-kit here. Well done Sesame Street, well done.
When the media does things right.
The U.S. has the world’s highest incarceration rate*, more than five times that of China.
Non-white offenders receive longer sentences, particularly young non-white males.
Crime rates have been falling for decades in the U.S. but incarceration rates continue to skyrocket. Is that because prisons are keeping “bad people" off the streets? Not if Canada (and Europe and Australia and etc.) is any indication.
I’m glad that Sesame Street is doing this. But as a nation, we need to start asking ourselves how we ended up living in a country that imprisons six times more of its people per capita than any other country in North America or western Europe.
* Except arguably North Korea.
