dragonlady7

advice

via https://ift.tt/2DYXKap

vampireapologist https://vampireapologist.tumblr.com/post/628672927179603968/kids-also-just-want-to-feel-understood-whenever-a :

kids also just want to feel understood. whenever a kid’s scared of something, I think it’s our instinct as adults to tell them it’s not scary, there’s no reason to be scared, etc. but to a scared child, that reassurance means nothing. they’re scared, so telling them that’s the incorrect feeling doesn’t really accomplish anything.

instead, I often find success telling them “this scares me too, and this is how I handle feeling scared,” and then I give them some mental tools.

It works ALMOST every time. Example: when a kid’s afraid of bugs, I say “ew me too! They’re sort of creepy! What scares you the most?” Then when they tell me (the legs, the eyes, etc.), I tell them a cool fact, or I try to make the feature seem funny.

It doesn’t have to be true. I’m not actually afraid of bugs. The point is validating the emotion while teaching the child that it’s possible to exist and get on with things even while feeling the unpleasant emotion.

I’ve found some kids even have a natural want to comfort others, which can work too. During a thunderstorm, I can say “you’re afraid of thunder? Me too! Will you hold my hand? I think that will make me feel better. What will make you feel better? What about watching a movie?” Then I tell them how much better I feel being together watching our movie, and I thank them for being brave!

I think kids get a lot out of just feeling like we’re in this together. When the assumption is that adults know and can control everything but for some reason refuse to acknowledge and destroy things that scare them, the world must be so confusing. I’m not a psychologist or anything. I’ve just spent a lot of time working with children, and I get a lot of mileage out of basically just letting a kid know that grown ups feel and experience the same things they do, and that we can navigate it together.

JUST some thoughts.

Oo the sympathy thing– Farmkid Did Not Sleep for the first three years of her life, she was just a terror, constantly waking and screaming in the night, never staying in her bed, always bothering everyone.

One night her mother said, in one hundred percent sincerity, “Kid, I’m exhausted. Could you put ME to bed? Tuck me in and then put yourself to bed after?” So they went through the goodnight routine together, and then Kid tucked her mother into bed, and went off to her own bed, very impressed with the job she’d done at mothering her mom.

Her mom fell sound asleep (which probably helped, I bet Kid checked to make sure, but my sister of course does not know because she was genuinely exhausted and at the end of her rope), and so Kid went to bed and fell asleep too. (I think Kid’s dad was working late or something; he’s normally quite involved but sometimes he’s off doing things. He might even have been doing the supper dishes or something. He just wasn’t involved in this bedtime situation, and wherever he was, it was uninteresting to Kid.)

After that she was incrementally better about sleeping, and every so often her mother would get put to bed and tucked in. I think it was partly about reframing it to her, about how bedtime isn’t really just about her and how other people need sleep too. Which, when you’re three, is a revolutionary concept; your brain doesn’t necessarily have the capacity to recognize other people’s inner lives, but it can start to develop it, and it started then. She is now a very assertive six-year-old who, when she’s at her most wilful, can sometimes be swayed by a gentle reminder that the adult she’s so aggressively pushing back against is 1) a person who 2) has her best interests in mind and 3) is trying really hard.

I do have to get better at validating kids’ feelings though, I have this terrible ingrained “no it’s fine” response that isn’t helpful and I always have to try a second time to get the “oh I understand how you feel, let’s figure out what we can do about it” response. Kids can be pretty patient though! You just have to keep remembering they’re people even when they sort of don’t act like it, LOL.