Dealing With Fears

A few days before Independence Day we talked about fireworks. I mentioned that fireworks are rockets exploding in the sky and making pretty lights, and Anna immediately got worried. Her verbal skills and emerging imagination come with a flip side – dreaming up worst case scenarios and fearing things that she doesn’t understand or didn’t experience before. Fortunately, we haven’t had to deal with monsters under her bed in the middle of the night, at least not yet. At the rate we are going, I think we will arrive there as well, because yesterday suddenly she didn’t want to go play in her room by herself, because “maybe the ghosts are playing there without me“. This is another of her pet fears – occasionally ghosts figure in the books that we pick up from the library (for example, a book about Letter H had a Haunted House in it). So how do we deal with those fears?

• First of all, we acknowledge them. I read somewhere that it’s counter-productive to tell your toddler, Oh, you are not scared. She is, and minimizing her fears makes her question her own reality.
• We try to expose her to a scary experience in small doses and in safe environments. For example, she is not a big fan of fire trucks, because of the loud noises they make. We had fire trucks coming over during 4th of July Block Party. First, Anna absolutely refused to even approach one. Gradually, I enticed her to climb in it with me. Suddenly, her fear lifted, and she was all over it, climbing up and down and flirting with firemen.
• Explaining and reasoning. I admit that long-winded scientific explanations don’t usually work well. Even my simple assurances that fireworks are fun and she will be safe didn’t work. Anna quite liked the fireworks in the sky that were launched at a distance by someone, because she only heard a faint boom. However, the minute our ground fireworks started she buried her face in my chest and promptly went to sleep. She slept soundly through 15 minutes of ear-splitting noise, then woke up the moment silence fell and asked if we’re really truly done yet. She wasn’t pleased to still hear some fireworks in the distance and at home I had to use the last resort:
• “Magic”. After our return from the fireworks, we had the following exchange with Anna:

Anna: I am still scared of fireworks. Why are they still going?

Me: Some of our neighbors are still celebrating American birthday. It will be over soon.

Anna: I am worried that fireworks come into our house, into my room and burn my blankie.

Me (firmly): They cannot do it. We have a big sign on our house that says, “Fireworks are not allowed here”.

Anna (interested): Where is this sign?

Me: It’s written with an invisible paint that only the fireworks can see.

Anna (sleepily): OK. Tell them again not to come.

Here is a quick reference that I found on dealing with fears in toddlers. I would be interesting to hear about the fears your children have and how you help them to overcome them.

July Plans

Sometimes I am jealous seeing how organized some other moms are, when it comes to planning their time and activities with their children. Of course, I don’t exactly have a homeschooling mentality and I don’t have the whole day with my daughter. When I am with her, sometimes it feels that I am trying to fit too many things at once. I am still looking for a system that would fit our busy schedule. I like the idea of workboxes, but I am still undecided if I want to do a theme of the week, dedicate every day to something or maybe try a book-based curriculum. Also, I know very well that in July our time for any kind of “formal” learning will be even more limited. Our friends with two kids will be visiting from Germany, and we hope to have a lot of playdates and activities together. Then I will be on a business trip in Israel for a week. So, based on Anna’s interests, I decided to focus on a few themes during this month and not worry too much about the systems. Here is what I plan to do:

• Increasing observation skills. Anna is very good at noticing even very small changes in her immediate environment (like a book out of place), but I noticed that she struggles with workbook pages that ask to find an object out of four that is different than others. She can do it, if the difference is obvious (e.g. a different color or a different letter of an alphabet), but not when the difference is subtle, for example, a handle on a door is on the other side. So if someone knows of any good worksheets on “same and different”, please kindly drop me a comment.
• Understanding patterns. Again, patterning activities seem very much beyond her comprehension at the moment. I am not talking about complex 3D manipulations (those IQ puzzles are beyond my comprehension as well). I am referring to simple ABAB patterns. I am curious as to why it’s so difficult for her, since she is excellent at color and shape recognition. It seems, however, that she recognizes them as separate objects, not as sequences. This is probably why our reading is also stuck on recognizing the first letter of the word and trying to guess the meaning from it (or “reading” the pictures instead). We are going to do some beading and Lego building to promote pattern recognition.
• Tracing and coloring. Anna’s fine motor skills are OK, but she doesn’t seem to enjoy painting or coloring for long. I suspect that her fingers get tired. I saw this month that she is getting better with activities that require fine motor skills – such as peeling stickers off the sticker sheet and tracing, and I want to keep the momentum going.
• As always – book reading. I have a long list of books to look up in the library. I cannot say that Anna has a particular interest in any topics yet. If it were up to her, she’d probably read every Dora and Diego book on the toddler shelf, but I happen to not believe in reading books that retell TV shows. I also got a big lot of Let’s Read and Find Out books from eBay. Some of them are way over her comprehension level, but some are more appropriate. I think we will start with the simplest of the bunch – My Five Senses, and we will do some extension activities around it – it will tie nicely with “increasing observation powers” theme of the month.
• Empathy – sharing. We expect to have a lot of playdates in July, and since our friends are coming only for a month, they will not bring a lot of toys. I already set expectations with Anna that I hope she will be a good sharer. Usually she is pretty decent, but not with our friends’ older daughter, since they had some “disagreements” when they were both toddlers. I also hope to do a lot more emotion labeling and discussions about feelings – based both on books and on real-life experiences.

Well, you can track our progress throughout the month – we’ll see how well we will do. Stay tuned

Three Steps to Building Empathy

I didn’t forget about my topic of Moral Intelligence. However, with the variety of other topics that I am writing about, it looks like the whole month of June will be empathy month I am returning today to Building Moral Intelligence book and covering three steps to building empathy. Here is an excerpt from the book:

Because the foundation for empathy is understanding of emotions, the first teaching step helps your child develop an awareness of emotions and develop a feeling vocabulary. He’ll need this skill to successfully identify a wide variety of emotions, so he can tune in to the feelings of others.
The second step provides way to enhance your child’s sensitivity to other people’s feelings so that he’ll become more aware of their needs and concerns.
The last step helps expands your child’s awareness of perspectives other than his own. Only then will he really be able to step into other people’s shoes and feel with them. These three steps increase empathic capabilities that your child will need to face a world that too often stresses apathy, coldness, cruelty and self-centeredness.

Steps 2 and 3 are for older kids, but it’s never too early to talk to your children about their own feelings and help them make sense of them. My next post in the Empathy series will be about this. Stay tuned.

The Stages of Empathic Development

I  found the following description from Building Moral Intelligence very helpful:

The first year of life – global empathy. The child cannot clearly distinguish between himself and his world, so he is unclear as to who is experiencing distress and interprets it as his own. The six-month-old baby heard another baby cry and began to cry too.

Beginning around age 1 – egocentric empathy. The child’s reaction to others in distress begin to slowly change. She now understands that another person’s discomfort is not her own. The two-year-old saw her mommy crying, so she sat next to her and softly patted her arm.

Early preschool years – emotional empathy. Around the age of two or three, the child begins to develop role-taking capabilities. He recognizes that someone’s feelings may be different from his, is better able to decipher the source of another person’s distress, and finds simple ways to offer comfort or show support. You look sad. Your car broke. You can use this one.

Cognitive empathy – early school years, beginning around age 6. The child can now see things from another person’s perspective, so there is a noticeable increase in her efforts to support and comfort those in need. The ability to use language to comfort others also substantially increases. That old woman looks like she needs help getting into the elevator. I will hold the elevator door open, so she can walk in safely.

Abstract empathy – late childhood: ages 10 to 12. The child can now extend empathy beyond those he personally knows or can directly observe to include people he may have never met. The people in Africa look so hungry. If I sent some of my allowance each week, it might make them feel better.

It made me realize that maybe I push Anna too hard by trying to get her to comfort her playmates when they are in distress. She is still in age-appropriate stage of emotional empathy, when she tries to sort out the feelings of this other person. She is pretty observant and very sensitive to moods. Even when she looks at the pictures, she asks sometimes, Why is he sad? or Why is she worried? She always asks us why is he/she crying? when she hears someone in distress. But strong emotions of others scare her. She is raised in a quiet home, where everyone is polite. My husband and I rarely argue in front of her (and we rarely argue in general). A couple of times we did it really freaked her out, and she kept asking for weeks, What did papa say? Why were you loud? She is able and willing to offer comfort to us – when one of us doesn’t feel well, she will come and cuddle and give many hugs and kisses and tell us to feel better. But she is not willing to extend herself to playmates, because she doesn’t have any real friends yet. I now feel more comfortable that she is simply too young and empathy for playmates will come with age.

Getting to “Yes”

I am finally finishing the Principles of Happy Parenting. Y stands for “Getting to Yes!”. Yes, I can swing by myself! Yes, I can wear big girl underwear! Yes, I can please my parents. It’s about upbeat confidence, realistically appraising what you can and can’t do, not allowing one setback to deter you, and getting recognition for your competence from those who matter to you.

The last point about recognition is important to me. There is a school of thought that cautions against overpraising our children. Raising an Optimistic Child talks about the “culture of appropriate praise”. I will write a separate post about it one of these days. We praise Anna often, maybe sometimes a little too often. But it’s not easy to “get her to Yes”. She has very conservative estimates of what she can do and doesn’t want to jump out of the comfort zone. I appreciate it in the situations involving physical danger, but I would like her to learn how to try new things without worrying that she won’t do them perfectly. Even getting her to spend some time at drawing is not easy – apparently she cannot do it well enough to her own satisfaction and gets easily frustrated.

How do you encourage your children to push their boundaries?

Planning for the best outcome

I am going to continue with the review of HAPPY parenting principles today. The second P stands for Planning for the best outcome. It’s an interesting topic and deals with fostering ability to delay gratification. I read before that the research shows that children who are able to accept delayed rewards when they are very young tend to do better in school, their careers, and life in general. Anna is not bad in delaying gratification (for a toddler) and understands the concept of a prize chart when the prize comes in the end. That’s how we passed the “pooping on the toilet” hurdle. However, I agree with the authors that planning is not something that very young children can do, since they don’t really have a concept of time. The chapter offers some ways to help a child over four learn short-term planning skills:

• Give your child a part of the plan to arrange ot discover by herself or take the lead in planning for – such as the clothes she’ll wear or the best neighborhood places to walk the new puppy.
• Encourage games and activities that involve strategy and teamwork among siblings and/or the whole family, such as treasure hunts.
• Don’t rush her. Allow her time to work out what she wants and to plan for it. Don’t expect her ideas to be wholly rational and don’t mock her if they’re not. If something she planned for won’t work, explain why and make some suggestions for what would.
• Do what you  say you are going to do, or let her know when plans have changed. Her emotional security depends on knowing that people she idealizes are trustworthy.
• Don’t expect the child under age four to be happy about putting off the good stuff; just explain that it’s sometimes necessary.

Practice and Perseverance

The first P in HAPPY parenting principles stands for Practice and Perseverance. I was hoping that it invalidates my previous reaction to an advice on choosing enjoyable activities, but the explanation of this principle still unfolds along the same lines – the child will develop “islands of competence” around activities that excite her enthusiasm and curiosity. “When children discover their strengths, they are more willing to confront even those areas that have proved to be problematic. The idea is not to raise a carbon copy of you or a precocious kid, but an optimistic, resilient, and ultimately autonomous human being.”

I think that in principle it sounds good. But I wonder how this principle applies to very young children. I think that every parent in a way tries to do things with their children that they themselves enjoy doing. For example, my husband loved Lego as a child, so he builds elaborate Lego structures for Anna. I was always a reader, and I love reading to her. My neighbor shared that she always sings to her girls (something that we sadly don’t do enough), another neighbor is often outside teaching his 3-year-old son to bat and to throw a baseball. In a way we create those islands of competence at a very early stage and shape our children in our own image. When I think of my daughter, I see that her “island of competence” is definitely her language and reasoning skills, but I would like her to learn how to use her hands as well, not just her head. Unfortunately, I am not exactly a role model here, and that’s why I am trolling crafts blogs in search of easy ideas that would encourage her to think creatively. That’s partially why we decided to send our daughter to preschool for a few mornings every week - I am hoping for different “islands of competence” formed by someone who is more passionate about art or imaginative play.

Accepting Success and Failure

After picnic kick-off I am returning to the Principles of Happy Parenting. The second principle for raising an optimistic child is teaching our children to accept both success and failure. Quoting from Raising an Optimistic Child: “Success means that your child can accept doing a particular task poorly and not believe that her efforts will always turn out badly. More than that, she can fail and still keep her sense of self, be a worthwhile person…. How you “frame” or – put into context – the outcome of a particular event for your child will largely determine her reaction and teach her how to interpret such situations in the future. Praising her for trying and for how she did something rather than for outcome will help her maintain her confidence and perseverance… All too often, adults become mesmerized by end goals and lose the ability to enjoy the process. Yet most of our life is spent in process – studying for a degree, exercising to get or stay in shape, traveling toward the destination. Young children have the gift of focusing intently on the present without worrying about the outcome. Model this approach by organizing your life as much as possible around what you enjoy doing rather than what you feel you “should” do or what you believe will lead to a certain goal. Life’s journey is almost all process, and most triumphs and disasters are but punctuation along the way.”

Thinking of the last few sentences of the paragraph above, I don’t think I agree with that even though I am in agreement on keeping successes and failures in perspective. In my mind goal setting and learning that you actually have to work hard and to things that are not always pleasant to achieve those goals are still important part of becoming an adult. I will try to teach my daughter to set goals and to work towards them, but not to despair if she is met with failure. Not so easy, because she inherited her father’s perfectionist tendencies and really hates to fail. She’d rather not try.

Principles of HAPPY Parenting

I have finally finished to read the book featured in this post. Overall I liked the book despite its heavy emphasis on early attachment and clear dislike of any other childcare arrangements other than stay-at-home parents. Also, half of the book I kept thinking, Gee, I am so glad I am not depressed, because it appears that no child can grow to be a well-adjusted member of society if he/she is growing with a depressed caregiver. The chapter that I found most interesting personally was a chapter about optimistic parenting skills. The authors introduced the five keys to an optimistic outlook, which are best learned early. They promote a sense of mastery and competence by taking on realistic challenges, succeeding and persevering. In order to instill this sense of mastery in children, the book introduces the following principles of HAPPY parenting:

• Have a go
• Accept both success and failure
• Practice
• Plan for best outcome
• Yes! Making optimism and upbeat confidence a lifelong habit.

Since I am short on time (as always), I will do a short write up on these principles in upcoming posts. Stay tuned

Talking about feelings isn’t everything

I stumbled upon an interesting article published by CNN – Mothers’ talk is key to kids’ social skills. The article went first through a usual affirmation that talking about feelings and labeling them is important in social understanding and in developing social skills later in the childhood. What I found really fascinating, however, is the information in the very end of the article. I quote, “…social understanding does not guarantee good behavior, the authors said. Children who showed the most sophisticated social skills in this study also behaved the most negatively toward their mothers in the team task of steering a model car around a race track… This negative behavior probably came about because if children feel that they can label their feelings, they’re more comfortable expressing a wide range of emotions…”

I know that Western culture puts a big emphasis on expressing ones’ emotions, but I am not at all sure that we are going in the right direction by telling our children that it’s OK to be angry or sad. We also need to teach them at a young age how to deal with negative feelings. Recognizing them and talking about them is a good first step, but we also need to teach them actions – deep breathing, choosing an enjoyable activity, listening to a lively music, a burst of physical activity. We also need to model appropriate behavior. If we raise our voice when frustrated, they will too. If we spank in anger, they will eventually hit in anger too. If we are sad and helpless, they will feel it’s their fault and will eventually learn to be depressed and helpless as well. The emotional health of our children is tied really strongly to our own emotional state, so we need to be able to take care of themselves too while taking care of our young children.