Is this normal? A Revealing Look at Toddler Development
A recorded CE webinar by Dr. Dawn‑Elise Snipes explaining toddler development focused on emerging self‑esteem, autonomy, initiative, and emotion regulation. The talk links developmental theory (Maslow, Erikson, Piaget) to concrete parenting strategies and clinical approaches for repairing developmental disruptions in later life (re‑establishment), emphasizing encouragement, consistent structure, perspective‑taking, play, and teaching mindfulness/self‑soothing.
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This episode was pre recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar on demand. CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs register@allceus.com counselortoolbox so let's see. Everything's good to go. Welcome to today's presentation. Child Development 101. The toddler. We're going to examine how the child is starting to develop self esteem through initiative and independence and explore what can go wrong in this stage and what can be done to repair damages now. And when I say now, I mean if you have a client who comes in when they're in their, you know, teens, 20s, 30s, 60s, what can we do retroactively to repair any of those damages? Because I really believe that humans are quite resilient. And once we understand what's causing the anxiety, the stress, the anger, the fears of abandonment, whatever it is, we really can address them and help people go on to live much happier lives that aren't so filled with angst. So back to Maslow. You know, I love the guy. In addition to the biological and safety needs that we talked about with the infant, of course a toddler needs to be fed and needs to be changed and needs sleep and they need a safe environment. But now we're also starting to talk even more about cognitive safety. The infant, and we'll get to it with Piaget, is still thinking in or not infant, but toddler is still thinking in all or nothing and egocentric terms. So when we're talking about this, remember that everything that happens, the toddler is going to sort of file in terms of it's a yes or a no. There's no such thing as a maybe or sort of it's a yes or a no. And how is it about me? What does it say about me? If it's something bad that happens a lot of times they will internalize that as something bad about them. Not always. But it's important to understand how their minds work because their minds, they are not little adults. They are far from it. So it's important that we interact with them and communicate with them on a way that's meaningful to them. The toddler is starting to develop self esteem. They're learning. I'm lovable for who I am and I'm lovable even when I make a mistake. So think about your toddler. And this is the starting to crawl, learn to walk. They start to learn to walk. They let go of the sofa and all of a sudden they fall on their butt. And it's like, okay, that Was really unpleasant and scary. And I'm not walking anymore. And they start to cry or they get startled, and parents usually run over, move over, give them a hug and go, that's okay, let's try again. This is the time parents really need to be that cheering squad and go, you know what? It's okay if you make a mistake. It's okay if you fail and just try again. And I'm here to help, literally pick you up and help you try again. In families where the parent doesn't have the skills to know that they need to be attentive to understand what the child is going through, or if the caregiver is emotionally or physically unavailable, the child may not get this. So when they make a mistake, they fall down and hurt themselves. There's nobody to pick them up. Now. The person may be sitting on the couch, but just completely disengaged from what's going on. Again, I want to say, and I'll say it throughout the presentation because I think it's really important that you hear me when I say I'm not blaming the parents for being bad parents. I think they're doing the best they can with the tools they have. However, you know, sometimes our tools just aren't good enough. I was trying to make some shelves the other day and I was using pressure treated wood and the drill that I had was just not powerful enough to, you know, get the screw through the wood. So, you know, how does that relate? Well, my point being, you know, I was doing the best I could with the tools I had and I just couldn't cut it. Some parents are doing the best they can. They were never taught how to be parents, or they are so depressed that they're doing good just to get up and feed the child, change the child, meet their basic, basic needs. And, you know, that's awesome that they're trying and they're doing the best they can. So off my soapbox there. We do need to understand, though, that if parents aren't on, the child may fail to get some needs met. They may fail to get that comfort, that assistance in picking themselves up and trying again. They may fail to get that assistance in learning how to do it and differently. I remember one time Sean was playing with one of those little. It was a box and you put the pegs in and they're like stars and circles and ovals and he was trying to put a star in a circle place and he couldn't do it. And so, you know, I watched him try for a while and finally I took the star away from him and I said, why don't you try something else? And he tried a different shape and that didn't work. And he's very stubborn. He kept trying to put that. He wanted to put something in that hole. I'm like, okay. So I took that away from my, like, why don't you try something else? And finally he picked up the circle and he put it in there. And I was like, yay, that worked now. And I handed him another piece and I said, now that we filled that hole, let's see where this one might go. And then we started talking about problem solving. So instead of being critical and saying, no, it doesn't go there, it goes over here. I encouraged him to sort of explore and try to figure out where it went. But when he didn't do it right, you know, no harm, no foul. Children need to learn problem solving skills. They need to learn that, okay, when something doesn't work the first time, you know, maybe it's not going to work. So maybe we need to try a different approach. Children, I mean, an 18 month old, a 20 month old, a 2 year old isn't thinking like that. So we need to help them start moving along and starting to explore the possibility that there may be alternate solutions. And they need to understand that they're lovable even when they make a mistake. If they fall down, if they're out trying to learn how to ride their big wheel or whatever they ride now, because, you know, we had big wheels when I was little. But you know, you fall down and you skin your knee or you, you know, knock over your mom's favorite pot and it breaks or something happens that's not so good. Okay. You know, it's stuff, it can be replaced. You know, I'm more concerned that you're okay. And this is what the children need to hear. Just hear that, you know, I'm lovable. I'm going to make mistakes and that's okay. That's how I learn. They're also developing self efficacy. They're learning, I'm capable of trying new things. Think about children that you've known that have been terrified to do anything. They just kind of sit right next to their caregiver or kind of stand behind their leg. I mean, this isn't in a scary situation. This is like at your house or at their house. But they're afraid to try anything because if they fail, they're afraid they might get in trouble or if they make a mistake and do something wrong, you know, they're just terrified children really want parental approval. And my daughter comes to mind with this one because with her, and I think part of it, she learned how to work the system. But if my husband would look at her with even the slightest cross look, she would well up in these big alligator tears and the lip would come out. And, you know, of course he'd be like, it's okay, and he'd comfort her and all that kind of stuff. But she wanted his approval. So it was really important that he was able to provide comfort if she did something wrong. I mean, we had to provide correction, but also letting her know that, all right, so let's learn. What can we learn from this? And then we moved on with all that. If I make a mistake, my caregiver's there to help me. Because sometimes you do. Sometimes you accidentally let the dog out of the front yard or break a dish or, you know, whatever it is. And yeah, there may be the initial reaction from the caregiver that goes, ugh. But once we reign that in and go, okay, you know, that's unfortunate, but you know what? Let's move on. You're fine. We can replace stuff. It is what it is. It helps the child learn that, all right, I can try things. Because ultimately, when they get into middle school and high school and adulthood, we want them to feel comfortable pushing outside their safety zone. Pushing enough outside where they can grow. Not so much that they're going to take a header off the edge of the cliff, but enough that they can feel like, okay, I'm going to stretch myself a little bit here, and if I fail, no harm, no foul. I can learn something from it. Psychosocial development. You love my little potty here. The child is developing autonomy versus shame and doubt. According to Erickson, this is your two and three year olds. And I find that while we call it the terrible twos, the three year olds tend to be a lot more demonstrative and set in how they think things should be. And they're more willing to say no. But I digress. They're trying to figure out, can I do things myself or do I have to rely on other people? So things that can interfere with this development is overly permissive or overly strict parents. Potty training is your key developmental activity at this point. So think about potty training a child. And a lot of us have a lot of horror stories or funny stories, depending on how you want to look at it, that we can tell about when we potty trained our children, which I will spare my children those anecdotes but if parents are overly permissive, you know, just do what you want. And, you know, whenever you get around to potty training, you can. Well, that may be good in some ways. If they are in preschool where all of their peers are potty trained, what impact is that having on them? What messages are they getting from preschool teachers if they are the only one that still needs to be in a diaper, still needs to be changed? Likewise, overly strict parents that start potty training and freak out if the child misses the potty or has an accident in their pants, Even if they've been potty training for six months, sometimes it happens, you know, so, all right, what did we miss? And sometimes, a lot of times what we missed was the we in the parents. The child may have been given all the cues that they needed to go to the bathroom. Maybe not verbal, but all the cues, and we missed it. So we need to look at encouraging children. Okay, this is a new skill. You're trying to learn how to do this. So we need to help you learn how to be attentive to your own internal cues. Be able to verbalize that when I feel this way, it means I need to go potty. And I will turn you back to mindfulness at this point. This is teaching children mindfulness, Teaching children that when I start to feel this way, I need to go potty. And this is how I need to get this need met. Basic mindfulness. Now, you may be thinking, well, that's, you know, what does that have to do with, you know, depression and anxiety later in life? Well, you know, starting to become aware of your physical sensations. Because some of us. Well, anytime you get angry, scared, happy, any of the, you know, major emotions, there are not only things that we feel that we label happy, sad, mad, glad, scared, and afraid, but we also have physical components to that. When I get scared, my heart rate starts to go faster, my breathing starts to go faster, my palms start to get sweaty. And I've learned to label that fear or anger, but I've learned to differentiate that over the years. What we're teaching children is what they're feeling and to be aware of that so they can label it before it becomes an oopsie. We also want to look at lack of praise for exploration and experimentation. The parents that are always going, you can't touch that. Don't touch that. Don't go there. You've got to wash your hands. I may have been a little bit too permissive. You know, I don't know. They turned out okay. But I wasn't a freak about letting them go outside and explore and get their hands muddy. We live on a farm. I let them pick up the chickens and that kind of stuff. Yes, we washed our hands when we came inside, but it wasn't like as soon as you put down the chickens, you need to douse from head to toe in antibacterial. I want them to explore and to not be afraid of the world. Because if they're constantly being told, don't do that, it's not safe. They either learn that the world is a scary place or they're not capable, or both. And we don't want them to learn that. So again, taking this to your adult clients. How many adult clients do we have that are afraid to push past their comfort zone because they're afraid of failure? How many adult clients do we have that perceive the world as a really unpredictable, scary place and they feel like a fish kind of out of water, all abandoned by themselves? As clinicians, we can encourage them to start taking small steps and we can be there to give them kudos when they do something that was a little bit uncomfortable and succeeded or failed. And if they fail, we can say, all right, so it didn't work out. What do we need to do now? Do we need to. Do you want to approach it again? And we do this a lot with clients in addictions who come back after they relapse or after they slip. And we say, okay, you slipped, you were doing really good. Now let's take a look at what happened. What cues did you miss that you were getting yourself set up for a relapse and let's make some changes. It's a very welcoming environment. We're not going to be critical and going, well, you should have known better. Well, you're not going to say that to a two year old either, unless, you know, they walk up and they put their hand on a really hot stove and just leave it there. But you know, generally you're going to be more concerned about taking care of them at that point. And then we talk about what not to do. Manifestations later in life of not fulfilling this developmental crisis are our low self esteem and a need for external validation, needing somebody else to tell you you're okay. Because the overly permissive parent was so disengaged that they weren't there to go, hey, good job. They weren't there to criticize, but they weren't there to give praise either, most of the time. And the overly strict parents were very critical all the time. So the Child is going, what am I good at? What am I worth? What am I lovable for? And they may have a lack of motivation because they were never praised for exploration and experimentation. In our brains, you know, we learn that if we try something and there's praise for it or there's a success, then our brain secretes dopamine and norepinephrine, and it's like a woohoo experience. So we remember, this is something I want to do again. If we push outside of our comfort zone and it's punished, those same chemicals aren't secreted, and our brain goes, let's not do that again. So exploration and experimentation for that person becomes scary and becomes unpleasant. So we want to change that. We want to encourage clients to start taking small steps. And they may be really small steps, such as in group participating, maybe even just saying their name or doing the check in. Not all clients are willing to do that at first. And as they start becoming more comfortable, we want to reward that. We want to reward when they try a new skill, even if it didn't work, you know, we can say, all right, let's talk about it. Maybe it wasn't the right skill for you to use. Maybe, you know, I taught it to you, you tried it, and it's not a good fit for you. That's not on you. That just means it's a bad fit. So establishment and re. Establishment. Encourage establishment and encourage your child to explore and experiment. Ask them, you know, what would happen if. Or give them puzzles and let them try. As a parent, it was always hard for me. Even back when Shawn was really young and playing with the little blocks and pegs and stuff, it was hard for me not to just jump in and help him so he would succeed. But I knew I had to let him do it on his own. I had to let him try things and learn things without feeling that he couldn't do it. So I would always have to take over. When we're talking to an adult, we want to say explore and experiment. What is it that you like to do? What is it that you're good at? As I've gotten older, I had gotten into kind of a rut, and I was talking to my clients one day about, what is it that you enjoy doing? What are your hobbies? And I thought about that for myself, and I'm like, you know what? I don't know. I don't do much but go to work and come home and be a mom and go to school. And so once I finally graduated, I Started making a list of all the things I wanted to try, and lo and behold, I found that there are a lot of things I like to do. There are some things I like to do that I'm not really good at, but it doesn't mean I don't like to do them. So encourage your clients to explore and experiment. What things sound interesting? Try them. If they don't fit, if it doesn't feel like it's something fun to do, you know, you don't necessarily have to keep doing it, but at least you tried. And now you know one thing you don't like to do. Praise children for trying. Even if they fail, if they go. My children are in martial arts, and they go up for belt testing periodically. And sometimes it's just painful to watch because they've got to break boards, and they don't always break the boards. You know, sometimes it just. They go up and they do the kick they're supposed to do. They don't hit it right. They don't break the board the first time or the second or the third or the fourth. And it's all the parents in the room. You can see us just kind of hurting for this child who needs to break these boards in order to get to the next level. But it's important. And the grandmaster that's in charge of their dojo is very encouraging of the children. And when after they don't break the boards, the first couple of times, he will hold the boards, and it communicates the message to the child that, you know what? Maybe this person wasn't holding them right. And a lot of times you see a sense of relief come over the child. It's like, okay, Grandmaster's got this. I can do this now. And oftentimes, within one or two more tries, they are able to succeed. But he doesn't criticize them. He points out later what they might do better or what they could have done better to get it on the right, get it right the first time. And then they practice it. And he goes, okay, you still need to work on this skill. So they have some skill remediation, but there's no criticism, nasty criticism, for failing. It's all constructive. It's like, you know what? Great. And I remember there was this one little child, he's so adorable. He's four. And he was supposed to break a board, and he tried so many times. He finally did it. And Grandmaster said to him right after that, you're a very little boy. That was a big kick for a very little boy. And you know, Nicky's face just kind of lit right up. He was just like, okay, I'm not in trouble. It was okay that I made a mistake. We want to reassure ourselves even if we fail. Because you know what? Sometimes we will go into session and we'll walk out of session. We've all had these days. We walk out of session, we're like, oh, I was not on the mark today. I don't feel like we had a good connection. I mean, it wasn't that we were incapable of providing services, but sometimes there are some days where we just don't feel like we hit the mark. So what do we do? Do we beat ourselves up all day? Hopefully not. We review in our mind what happened, what went on in this session. What could I have done better? You know, I did. And then try to think some good things that we did in the session. When I work with supervisees, I always have them start their supervision session with tell me three things that went really well this week. And then I want to know one or two things that you think we need to talk about that didn't go as well as you had hoped. I always want the good to outweigh the bad, but I don't want them to overlook the bad. I want them to be able to look at that and go, what can I learn from it? So praise yourself if you try, even if you fail, and reassure your child again, an establishment that they're loved for who they are. You know, you're an awesome little person and okay, this may not be for you, but reassure them that they are loved as is. And reassure yourself if you try something, you make a mistake, or even if you don't make a mistake, periodically reassure yourself that you're good enough for just being you. You don't have to be any particular something. You don't have to be a CEO, you don't have to be a millionair. You don't have to be a fill in the blank. You are good enough just for you. And that's really hard for a lot of people to wrap their heads around. Another stage that they're going through is initiative versus guilt. This is your preschool, kindergarten. Some kids, first grade children are beginning to assert control and power interferences with this. Again, are overly strict and enmeshed parents that don't want children to get hurt, don't want children to become more independent or are really just very, very involved in controlling every area of the child's existence. And you know, we've seen this, we've seen disengaged parents as well. Children want to be able to assert power. So disengaged parents are a little less problematic in this particular situation because they can just run rampant with power. Creates a whole other set of issues. But with regard to initiative versus guilt and feeling like they have personal power, overly strict parents are the ones that are telling them which lessons they will go to, what they will do. Every minute of their day is controlled and they're told how they should feel and what they should think. Now with four and six year olds, obviously they're not the arising on the level of Plato or something. So we're having. It's more like on the level of play. D'oh. But sorry, couldn't resist. We do want to talk with them about what they're thinking and why they're thinking that way to help them understand their thought processes. We do want to encourage them to take risks still encourage them to assert control and say I want to X, Y and Z. Encourage them to start telling us what their preferences are, what their needs are. When this doesn't happen, they may again develop low self esteem and a need for external validation because the overly strict and enmeshed parents said, you're not okay and you're going to be in trouble unless you do exactly what I tell you to do all the time. So the child just kind of sits there kind of paralyzed, going okay, I need to be a robot and anything I think, feel or need is irrelevant unless my parent says it's okay. So they grow up into adults that don't pay attention to what their feelings are, emotional, physical, otherwise they start mindless living kind of at this age they just rely on other people to tell them when it's nap time, when it's time for them to eat, when it's time for them to do whatever. We want to encourage children to learn how to live a healthy life and stay in tune with themselves. Obviously we don't want to say, oh, just eat whenever. However, you know, if it's dinner time and the child says I'm not hungry, okay, you know, the parent may need to talk with the child about why aren't you hungry? You know, is your stomach upset or did you eat something late? And they may need to sit at the table with the rest of the family in order to not reward skipping meals. That's going to depend on the family and their parenting style and their preferences. But it's important that children start to be able to assert what they want and need. In preschool and kindergarten, things are a lot looser when they get to first grade, all of a sudden it goes from nap time and playground time and all kinds of cool stuff to sitting at a table and preparing for your state achievement test. So there's a huge, huge change for children between kindergarten and first grade. That's hard not only for teachers, but for children and for parents, because there's. It's not an easy segue. They go from loosey goosey to rigid. And this is what I've seen to be true in most public schools. Private schools have a little bit more latitude, but I tend to see the same thing in a lot of the private schools that I've been exposed to. We want to encourage people to reach out and make friends. Part of asserting control and power is not asserting control and power over people, but asserting control and power over themselves and going, hey, I'd like to be your friend and. And, you know, if it works out great, but also being able to handle rejection, they start learning compromise. Because when two people, two kids are friends, a lot of times there's not a lot of tact. And it's like, well, I want to be on the swing. No, I want to be on the swing. They need to learn how to assert control, but also to learn to compromise. And this is beginning in this stage. If we encourage the child to be in tune with what he or she likes, wants, and feels, then. Then they will be able to articulate that not only now, which helps parents and caregivers, but later, which helps them. So they're like, okay, I know I'm stressed out. I know I didn't sleep well. I know that, you know what? I'm feeling a little disorganized today. It's a word we use around our house when any of us start to feel disorganized. We have difficulty focusing. We're kind of sleepy, just not on our game. A lot of times it indicates we're getting ready to get sick. So, you know, I can pay attention to that in my kids and in myself, but they've learned to pay attention to that in themselves, too. And they'll say, you know, I think I need to take a nap, and I will do my lessons on Saturday. And, you know, that's fine with me. As long as the lessons get done, I'm happy. And they may have guilt for having their own needs. If every time they try to say, I need this or I want this, and their parent says, no, you don't, or you are such a bother, or the parent is so overwhelmed with their own stuff, they just Ignore the child. The child may start to feel guilty. They may start to feel like they're in a position for having needs and having wants. By the same token, I see in a lot of families where the parent will have periods where they're more emotionally and physically available and they can encourage the child to assert their own needs. And then the parent goes into this period where he or she is not really able to deal with much more than just living and they can't meet the child's needs. So then when the child asserts their needs and caregiver is not able to handle it, then the child gets punished. So they become hyper aware of other people's emotions and how they're doing, and they become hyper vigilant because they're afraid that when they assert their wants and needs and that kind of stuff, they're going to get in trouble. So that causes a whole lot of other issues with relationships later in life. If as a child they always walked on eggshells wondering when or what was going to set the caregiver off. Children begin asserting control and power when they explore and experiment. And we can love this and we can also lament this at the same time. Give you an example. And you know, he wasn't four or six years old. I wouldn't have let him use the stove. But they still do occasionally when they're teenagers. My son decided he was going to try to make oatmeal by himself. And I think he was 14. Yeah, he was old enough. And he wanted to see what would happen if oatmeal actually got on the stove. So instead of asking after he made his oatmeal, he flopped some right on the stove and he watched it, and he watched it smoke because he just wanted to see if it would catch fire. And I'm like, oh my gosh. And his at the time, 10 year old sister was like, Shawn, that was really not a smart move. But you know, boys will be boys. But they explored and experimented. So we talked about what are some other ways you could have figured that out without risking catching something on fire. We want to praise children for trying even if they failed. You know, I'm glad you're curious, but let's not do that. Reassure the child that you love them for who they are. You know, again, this goes back to that unconditional positive regard. I love you for you. I may not like this particular behavior you did, but I love you as a person. You're a good person, just made a bad choice. Encourage children to develop friendships with a Variety of people. This allows them to start knowing where their limits are, where their boundaries are. And again, it talks about balancing this assertion of control and power and them realizing that they are not king or queen. They're going to have to compromise and they learn to compromise and accept trading power. Re establishment. When we're working with our adult clients, pretty much the same encourage them to explore and experiment and give themselves credit for trying even if they don't succeed. Remind themselves why they are lovable for who they are and develop effective goal setting skills. Why does goal setting all of a sudden come up? Well, four and six year olds, not real cognitively able to set long term goals. So we're not going to talk about that during the establishment period, but during the re establishment period, if this person wants to assert control and power, if they want to start getting control of their life again, what is that going to look like? What feels out of control or what's making them feel powerless right now? We know with depression we're talking about feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. Aha. So we're talking about issues of personal power. So what is it that needs to change and how can we help you? How can we work together to, to help you figure out how to change that? Piaget, you know, we're switching gears now. Psychosocial, we're moving out of. But all the while that they're developing these psychosocial skills, they're learning about control and power. They're trying to get their basic needs met. They're still in this pre operational stage where inanimate objects can be alive and dreams are real. I remember we went through this whole period with Sean where he would talk about poof up powers and you know, he was really into the star about Wars, Star wars at the time. And he would talk about poofing up X wings and you know, I could poof up Alderaan and poof up this and poof up that. And part of me every time wanted to confront him with reality versus fantasy, but that was also kind of a downer. So you know, we would talk about what he was talking about and I would join him in his, in his fantasy. And then we would talk about reality versus fiction. We would talk about, you know, what's really capable, but I wouldn't dash it all the time and go, well, there's no such thing as poof up power, so quit talking about that. They also have diffusion difficulty differentiating between creativity and reality. You know, in their mind they may come up with this grand plan and this grand scheme, but it may not actually work out quite so much. Preschoolers love to build forts. They love to play pretend. The love to be princesses and kings and cops and robbers and try on different hats, if you will, try on different roles. And, you know, that is awesome. They realize they're not actually a cop or a robber, but they're trying on different roles. So we want to encourage that. But we also want to help them distinguish between what's safe and what's dangerous and what's truth and what's fiction. So occasionally we may need to kind of pop that little bubble and go, all right, you realize that you can't really poof anything up, right? And every parent knows or tries to figure out when the appropriate time to do that is because we don't want to dash our children's creativity, but we also want them to be fundamentally aware of what's possible. Children at this age typically love to play make believe. So we need to find our make believe. And what do I mean by that? I mean, you know, get back into it and kind of try to remember what it was like to be four or five and play make believe. My grandmother used to be amazing at it, and my son's first preschool teacher was amazing at it. The child, you know, whether it was my child or any other child in her class, would start off on this fantasy of driving in a truck somewhere or something, and she would join them almost seamlessly. She would be able to contribute to the storyline in a way that I really struggled with at first. And I remember one time I had her come over and I'm like, jessica, he doesn't like playing with me. And she said, okay, you know, fine. So she came over and she observed us play for a little while and she stopped us after about 10 minutes and she looked at me and very bluntly said, he doesn't want to play with you because you're boring. I said, excuse me. But she was right. I wasn't getting into it. I was following his lead. I was kind of an observer, but I wasn't involved in it. She's like, there's too much structure. You're trying to control too much or you're not involved enough. So, you know, try to get in and remember what it was like to be a 4 year old. And that helped me a lot because, you know, I was trying to play with him as a parent instead of as an imaginary other four year old. So find your make believe, build that fort, crawl into it, make grilled cheese sandwiches and watch Cartoons all day, if that's what you want to do. Understand what they're communicating through their play. Sometimes it's fantasy. Most of the time it's probably fantasy. But if they start communicating something that makes you go, hmm, ask them. It doesn't. Your interpretation of what they are acting out may not be on point at all. So if they have a drawing that, you know, where one bedroom of the house is completely blacked out, ask them what that means. You know, maybe daddy works night shift and it's dark in his room all day long because he's sleeping, and that's why the window's blacked out versus whoever in that room needs to go away and die. There are vastly different interpretations of what's going on. So just ask the child, you know, what does that mean? Or if they represent a family member in a certain way, like with. With a particular animal, you could start inferring what they may have tried to mean by making mama giraffe. Or you could ask them, why don't you make mama giraffe? What does that mean to you? You'll get a lot more from the child by asking. Because we have so many more experiences, we put a lot more thought, not thought into it, but we put a lot more interpretation into it than most of the time children do. So ask them. Children focus on one aspect of a sentence situation. They call this centration, and struggle to see other vantage points. Remember basic egocentrism, where what they can see is what everybody else sees. So if you're looking at two different sides of a pyramid, what they see is what they assume you see. Same thing with social interactions. What they perceive, they assume you perceive. And I will have you stop right now and think about clients you've worked with who have difficulty imagining that anybody else saw a situation differently than how they saw it. And it causes problems because sometimes, most of the time, everybody sees situations a little bit differently. So effective interpersonal skills means being able to take all the different viewpoints and kind of mush them all together and come up with some cohesive, unified story or explanation. As a parent, when you're working with the children, we want to help them find their voice versus being a bully. Yes, this is what they saw. And yes, it's important to be able to assert what you saw, what you feel, what you think, what you need. However, what might this other person's perspective be? Jessica did a great job with this. When the children would get into an argument about something and maybe one would take the other's toy, she Would get them together and go, well, that probably wasn't very nice. When you took Tommy's toy, how did he feel? And a lot of times the little kid would go, I don't know. So she would say, if Tommy took your toy, how would you feel? Now the kid knows that, and he's able to articulate that. And then she would follow up and go, so if Tommy took your toy and you would feel angry. When you took Tommy's toy, how do you think he felt? Angry. Okay. So she helped them assert their own needs, helped them get their own power, but also helped them learn how to take other people's perspective and find their voice. I told you she was just a genius. With kids, we want to help them learn to make good choices, because sometimes what we see in our own perception and our own perspective isn't the whole picture. So we want to help them learn to look and try to explore the whole picture before making decisions, before making assumptions. We want to have them accept their part versus taking total responsibility. Because that goes back to that egocentrism when parents come home and, you know, we all come home and we've had a bad day. Occasionally, maybe you were driving home and you got a flat tire, and it was just, man, it was a bad day. And you come home and you're in a grumpy old mood. Little children often take that personally. And they're like, mommy's angry. She must be angry at something I did. And they're going through all those things that they're hoping you don't know they did, when in actuality, it was nothing to do with them. So one tool that I give a lot of parents that they don't really think about because they're not taking into consideration that children are so egocentric, is if you had a bad day, sometimes you need to come home and go, hey, buddy, I'm glad to see you. Mommy had a really rough day at the office, so I'm kind of grumpy. I'm going to go to my room for a few minutes. Now, that's perfectly cognitively understandable. The kid goes, okay. You know, maybe he or she follows you and wants to make it better. Maybe they toddle off and go do something else. You know, there's a whole realm of possibilities after that. But the parent is modeling, taking responsibility for how they feel while also letting the child know, you know what? It may seem like I'm angry at you, but I'm not. I just had a really bad day. We want to help the child Accept that everything isn't necessarily their fault or their doing. And a lot of this comes with misinterpretation of other people's nonverbal cues. You know, sometimes if they knock a vase on the floor, sometimes it was 100% their fault. But a lot of times there was some other stuff that went with it. You know, maybe the vase shouldn't have been down so low or, you know, who knows? But helping the child understand that what their part is and take responsibility for that, but also understand what their part isn't. Interventions we want to teach effective communication skills and effective perspective taking. In American society so often we're so concerned with responding and keeping the power in the discussion that as soon as we quit talking, we start formulating our rebuttal to whatever that person's saying. And we're not even listening. We're just assuming we know what's going to come out of their mouth. So communication skills is paramount. Exploring the notion of responsibility When I work with adults and children, we talk about the three finger rule. When you do something and, you know, I shake, wag my finger, I say, two fingers are pointing out at somebody else. So they may have had a part in it, but three fingers are pointing back at me. So what was my part in this? How did I make it worse? What part did I cause? What could I have done differently? And then we want to encourage people, children as well as adults, to remember to explore all aspects of the situation, including other vantage points. If your spouse comes home from work and is just in a foul mood, do you automatically assume it's your fault and that you're responsible for fixing it? Or do you think, well, you know, they may be angry at me for something, or they may have been caught in bad traffic and they may have had a rough day at the office. And, you know, there's a whole myriad of other things that could have gone wrong. It's not necessarily just about me. So how do I figure out what that is if I want to try to help that person? You know, sometimes it's somebody walking down the hallway and they just give you a very dismissive look and you're like, oh, sorry, probably didn't have anything to do with you. Now, that person whose name you don't even know, you're probably not going to follow up and try to figure out how to make their day better. But if it's your spouse or your child or sometimes your boss, you may reach out and go, hey, you seem to be struggling today. You want to talk about what's going on. The same thing we can do with children if they are, we can read their non verbals. If they are acting like they're tired or disappointed or upset about something, we can put it out there and say, you know, you're holding your head down or you're acting like you're kind of not feeling so hot, want to talk about what's going on. And that gives them the opportunity to use their communication skills and talk about what's wrong. And then together we can explore what's their responsibility, what's not their responsibility and how can they change how they feel right now. Children often have difficulty putting into words how they feel or what's going on inside. So they have high levels of anxiety or acting out. Perfect example is after school. Children hold it together because they know they need to hold it together at school. Most children and think back to when your children were little or if you've got grandchildren, even if they don't go to school all day long, it's almost like their circadian rhythms are set up to melt down. At 4:30, my kids would come home. When Shawn was in public school, he would come home even from kindergarten and he would be okay for the first 30 minutes or so, but then come about 3 o', clock, 4 o', clock, he would just start hitting the wall and losing his mind. He'd be running around, carrying on, getting into trouble. And I'm like, okay, little dude, what's going on here? Because he had so much energy pent up from being still when he had to be. That's just part of being a kid. So we want to help them learn that when children are around adults who are upset and they perceive that their caregiver is upset, a lot of times those children will act out. So you're like, you know, add that on top of the fact that I'm already stressed. Or you can look at it as, thank you child, this isn't your responsibility to fix what's going on with me. But the child is actually trying to protect the caregiver. The child is saying, you're really upset right now, so look at me, I'll be a distraction, look at me. Helping parents understand that generally acting out is to get structure or because they're overstimulated or because they have some other need that they don't know how to articulate. That's important. Which takes us to our next thing. A lot of this happens because children have difficulty self soothing. They don't know how, they don't have those skills we want to make sure that we teach children to be aware of when they're getting overstimulated or too tired so they can go take a timeout. Timeout wasn't a negative term in our house necessarily. There was timeout for punishment, if you will, but then there was also just timeout. I need some quiet time. And when my son would start feeling overwhelmed, he would put himself in timeout. He's like, mommy, I'm going to go take a timeout. Or he would say, I'm over stimulated and that was all I needed to hear. And he would go into his room and when he was ready to come out, he would so the parenting challenge at this point is to pay attention to non verbal verbal cues to help children label their feelings early before they lose all control and they're hysterical. Just like we talked about with the infants, we want to help them identify sensations, urges, and feelings associated with emotions. So what does angry feel like? You don't have to do this when the child is angry. You can have a talk about it sometime. When you're angry, what does that feel like? When you're sad, what does that feel like? And what do you want to do when you're sad? You know, some children want to cry. Some, some children want to go in their bedroom. Learn what your child wants to do so you can help them identify when you start feeling this way. This is what you may call sad. Teach children to check in with themselves periodically. As parents, we generally do a pretty good job of this checking in with them when they get up in the morning, hey honey, how did you sleep? How you feeling? And when they get home from school and hopefully again before they go to bed, tucking them in. Is there anything you need? Are you doing okay? But it's important to help them start checking in on themselves during the day too, just so they can start getting used to it. Just ask themselves, how am I doing? Am I feeling stressed? Is there something I need? Create a validating environment. If the child tends to be one who is highly emotional, that doesn't mean they're wrong. That doesn't mean they shouldn't feel that way. And again, a throwback to or transfer over to DBT skills. We want to create an environment that says how you feel is how you feel and that's okay. Now let's figure out how to deal with it. But how you feel is how you feel and not tell them that they're wrong for being upset or they're overly dramatic or drama queens when they get upset. We want to say, all right, I can tell this is really hitting you hard. Let's talk about what you can do. This helps the child learn to tolerate emotions. They may be very emotional. It doesn't mean they can't learn to tolerate and regulate them. The earlier kids start learning how to do this, especially ones that tend to be more emotionally reactive, the better off they'll be later, and the fewer problems they'll have with emotional self control and anxiety and depression and helplessness and hopelessness and so on. Later in life, children use everyday objects in conventional and unconventional purposes. So we want to honor their creativity in the right time and place. We don't want them to just be walking through the museum and all of a sudden pick up a display and start hypothesizing about what to do with it. But we do want to encourage them to be creative, encourage them to solve problems, encourage them to get outside the box. One of my favorite activities that I used to do with my classes at uf, I would break them into groups. Each group would get a different thing, and they would have to hypothesize 10 ways they could use it. We would use bubble gum, sticky tape, duct tape, a wire coat hanger, paperclip, rubber band. And then I would usually figure out one other thing. So there were six groups, and they would rotate through the stations and try to figure out what to do with these things. It just encouraged their creativity to not get stuck in the box. And then we would move on to exploring. All right, you were creative with this thing. Now, when you have a problem, how can you get outside the box? How did you figure out all the different ways you could use duct tape? All right, when you have a problem or when your client has a problem, how can you figure out how to help them? Because it's not always going to be the first thing that comes to your head. Preschoolers love to ask questions both to learn facts as well as to learn how to interact with others. We've all been through that phase. Mommy, why is the sky blue? Mommy, why is the dog barking? Mommy, why? Okay, sweetheart, I love you dearly, but mommy doesn't know all the answers. Thankfully, now we've got Google. No, I'm kidding. Do not make Alexa answer all the questions. But we don't want to get impatient with them. We want to applaud them for their curiosity. Another thing we can do during this phase is also learn how to tell them. I don't know. You know, we can look it up. Let's figure out how to look that up. But it's amazing how far it goes when you teach children how to assert that, you know, I don't know something, and that's okay to not know everything. We want to help them learn how to answer their own questions, whether that's going on the Internet for older children or asking a parent for younger children. We want to help them learn how to self regulate in mutual conversations. So if they're asking a lot of questions, that's great, but we also want to encourage them to hear what the parent says or what the responding person says and engage in a dialogue instead of just a barrage of questions. We want to encourage children to figure out their own answers. They may not find the answer somewhere. Maybe it's something they've got to dream up, but encourage them to be creative. We want to do this with our, with our adult clients too. We want to help them learn how to answer their own questions. When I start feeling depressed, what are some things I can do Now? Of course I can give them a laundry list of things, but I'm also going to encourage them to explore different things on the Internet and in self help books and bring them into therapy so we can talk about them and go, okay, why might this work or not work for you? There are little scientists trying to see what happens, what will happen if I drop my ball of play doh. In the aquarium. Let's check it out. In the same way, they test rules and boundaries to make sure everything's the same. So the parenting challenge is first and foremost in this situation. Cleaning the aquarium, but also being consistent and trying to understand the child's motivation. 95% of the time, the child is not trying to be malicious. Every once in a while they get a streak and they're just acting out. But 95% of the time, the child was trying to either get your attention or they were trying to figure out an answer to a question or a problem. So then we want to talk to them about why did you do that? And how else could you have gotten that need met? Children at this age crave structure. So we need, as parents, we need to be consistent and steadfast and not let them sneak away, get away with something once every seven or eight times. Because that just teaches them that, you know, I just have to wait it out. Same thing is true for our adult clients. We need to teach them to be consistent with themselves and not let themselves get away with having that one drink, or okay, maybe this weekend I can just stay up and party all night long. They need to be Consistent with their self care and steadfast in working toward their goals, children begin to use strategies for remembering, but often use inappropriate and effective strategies. So we want to help them again differentiate truth from fiction, identify intentional lying from an ineffective recall. And sometimes that's difficult, especially with children this age, and help them start learning to be more mindful and aware so they can remember what happened, remember what they said and remember what they were told to do. Toddlers and preschool age children are learning that it is okay to have their own wants and needs, to communicate those wants and needs and try new things even if they fail. While they're doing all this, they're learning all this stuff. They're also developing emotional regulation skills. So when they fail, it may hurt a lot. So we need to help them figure out how to deal with frustration and anger and fear and all that stuff that happens when we try things and they fail. Children are learning that they're lovable for who they are, reducing the need for external validation and fears of rejection, isolation, failure, the unknown and loss of control, which we'll talk about more next week. Adults who received excessive criticism or who weren't provided sufficient emotional support can enhance their self esteem by identifying what have you been successful at? And what do you want to learn or what do you want to achieve? And let's learn how to set smart goals which will increase their self efficacy. And we can help them deal with grief and resentment issues that may surface regarding parents who failed to meet their needs as adults. They can look at that middle ground and go, okay, maybe it wasn't because they hated me, maybe it was because they were barely surviving themselves. But it takes a while to get to that point and they can develop the ability to identify and regulate their emotions. But first they have to be able to identify them. So we want to help people start learning to be more mindful. Ultimately, children who are raised in ineffective environments are not doomed to a life of misery. They can re parent themselves. But if you're working with parents, helping them identify some of the things they can do and some of the reasons their children may be doing what they're doing helps them get more successful resolution a lot faster. If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube. You can attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes by subscribing at allceus.com counselortoolbox this episode has been brought to you in part by allce.com providing 24.7 multimedia continuing education and pre certification training to counselors, therapists and nurses since 2006. Use coupon code counselortoolbox to get a 20% discount off your order this month.
