Helping young kids to deal with frustration

Our girl is an angel most of the time, but as every toddler out there she has a low tolerance level for frustration. I was thinking of various strategies to help her (and myself) during the I don’t want to! times. The book that I am still reading, Einstein Never Used Flash Cards, gives some interesting insights on this topic in the chapter on Social Intelligence.  

Researchers at Temple University of Philadelphia conducted a study on how parents help their children cope with disappointment and how successful children get in regulating their emotions later. The study was done on 4 year-olds, but I found it fascinating nevertheless. The researcher observed four types of parental responses to their children’ frustration. What kind of parent are you?

1. Do you shift your child attention from a frustrating event?
2. Do you comfort your child by holding her or verbally soothing her?
3. Do you “reframe” the situation by pointing out possible positive outcomes
4. Do you encourage your child to change the situation by “sticking for himself”

It turns out that the strategies we use with our children can lead to distinctly different emotional responses in them. Shifting the child’s attention and cognitive reframing were associated with lower levels of both sadness and anger. These children were learning to see the silver lining. This was especially true if the children perceived their parents to be warm and responsive to them. Surprisingly, the children who were encouraged to change the situation had more anger and sadness than  those in the other conditions. Researchers think that if you can’t control your anger and you merely vent, you are not regulating your emotion in a positive way. The most important thing, however, that we learn from this is that we, as parents, do matter. We help our children regulate their emotions by working with them and serving as models.

By the way, thinking of this, I am probably too much of “type 2″ parent. I try to soothe the hurts away. The book didn’t talk about this outcome, but I can see that it’s not a good strategy, because it leads to too much dependence. I need to try and help reframing more. Here is my first (not very successful) attempt.

Anna (chanting). I want more chocolate, mama! More chocolate, please! More chocolate!

Me: But, Anna, I already, gave you two candies. They were good, and you enjoyed them. You can have more later.

Anna: I don’t want these two! I want another one!

Who is the boss?

A friend of mine post a link to the CNN story on Facebook. The title of the story is Becoming a Take-Charge Mom. I found it very useful, especially considering that I have a toddler in the house. Terrible twos seem to arrive and settle here. I am convinced now that this trying time has nothing to do with inability to express oneself. Anna can express herself quite well, and her whining is very articulate. It’s all about desire to control and first attempts to negotiate for what she wants. I think of myself overall as a take-charge mom, but sometimes I am at a loss in situations when Anna tries to negotiate ”nicely” for something that is not of an utmost importance to me. For example, shall we read another book on the potty? Shall we first water the flowers, then play with fallen flower petals. It seems that everyone I give in, we still end up with a confrontation about yet another book or more time in the park. Giving her more freedom comes at a cost of her thinking that she is a boss in the situations when she really doesn’t have any choice but comply. This leads to more confrontation. It seems that all I’ve been doing lately is showing her who the boss is – threatening, disciplining and bribing. Of course, there are moments of pure sweetness through this all, but if anyone has good advice, I am very ready to listen to it.