Understanding Child Development and Preventing Stuck Points

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@Allce.com Counselortoolbox you I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation. We're going to be talking about milestones of child development, addressing and hopefully preventing stuck points. And what I mean by that is, you know, a lot of times we don't have the luxury of dealing with people when they're children. So we get adults who didn't have an ideal childhood or who feel they didn't have an ideal childhood and they may need to go back and relearn some things that maybe they they didn't learn or get when they were growing up, so sort of re parenting themselves. So I'm going to present it from both ways. You know, if you work with children and families, what can you do that way? And if you work with adults who didn't have great childhoods, how can you help them, you know, get past some of those stuck points? We're going to identify the major psychosocial milestones for each age group, learn about things that'll throw thwart development, identify protective factors for healthy development, and try to conceptualize behaviors as goal driven in order to better understand their purpose and provide appropriate redirection. Now remember from behavior modification, anything an organism does is the most rewarding choice at that point in time. You know, it's a cost benefit sort of thing, whether we really realize it or not. So we want to look at what is the function of this behavior, why is this person doing it? And for one of my other podcasts, I was preparing a presentation today on the trials and tribulations of time out and you know, really talking a lot in there about the fact that sometimes when children misbehave, it's for a reason. You know, they're misbehaving for a reason. Sometimes it's because they would rather, you know, throw a temper tantrum to try to get the candy or stay five more minutes or do whatever it is. But other times they may be throwing a temper tantrum. For example, maybe they don't want to take their bath because that means they're going to have to get ready to go to bed. And maybe they're afraid there's monsters under their bed. So maybe the temper tantrum about taking a bath has less to do with the bath and more to do with the impending bedtime with the monsters. So we want to look at what's the benefit. Why is it worth it to this child to do whatever they're doing. So that's obviously. Well, that can be true with good behaviors and unpleasant behaviors. So age 0 to 1, children master the use of their hands between 0 and 6 months. When I had my first kid, I had no idea that they couldn't, you know, really reach across their midline or they couldn't reach into a jar. They didn't understand they could do that at first. So, you know, those were all things that I learned with my first child. They start crawling, responding to familiar words, discover their voices, which can be really loud at times, but other times they make really interesting sounds and they can amuse themselves. They rely on parents or caregivers for comfort and to meet basic needs. An infant cannot get up and make itself breakfast. An infant cannot get a blanket when it's cold and cover up, nor can it undress itself when it's too hot. So it's reliant on parents or caregivers at that point to understand what they need by virtue of their cry. And infants have five different cries, and some infants have more. But there are five basic cries that infants have that you learn. You know, the sleepy cry from the hungry cry, from the scared cry from the uncomfortable cry. You know, you see where I'm going with this? Parents learn that cry. They learn to respond in turn. So then the child starts learning that they can trust the parent, which is where we develop. Erickson's theory says we develop trust in these early stages. And not only is the child developing trust with the caregiver saying, okay, if I have a need, if I'm uncomfortable, if I'm scared, this entity, this being, is going to make it all better. So the child learns to get comfort from that. Because when something's not right, the big person comes along and makes it okay. So the child starts associating that big person with being okay. And I mean, that can be primary caregivers, parents, but you also see developing attachments with, you know, nannies and childcare workers and things like that. So we want to have their primary caregiver, the one they spend the most amount of time with, to have a good attachment with them. But that doesn't mean they're not going to develop attachments with others. A lot of children, for better or for worse, depending on how you look at it, have to start going to daycare when they're 6 weeks old. So for some children, they start spending 8, 10 hours a day in preschool or in daycare with a caregiver there. And that's obviously not their, their parent or their parental unit, so to speak. So we're going to talk kind of generally about caregivers, but we want to make sure that the children feel like they've got a safe home environment. Whomever they live with, and they feel like they've got a safe environment the rest of the time. Just like we spend a lot of time at work, they spend a lot of time at daycare sometimes. So we want to make sure our work environment is comfortable. We need to make sure that they feel comfortable in their school daycare environment. Children will also start learning to properly interpret their own signals and get needs met. You know, when children are really, really young, they may not. Well, they don't have the vocabulary, if anything, else, to articulate I'm hungry, I'm cold, I'm sleepy, yada yada. But little kids, I mean, if you watch babies, when they start to get sleepy, they start pulling on their ear and some of them suck their thumb or put their binkies in their mouth more or whatever it is your child does. But that ear thing is almost universal for, I'm starting to get sleepy, I want to go to bed. And that helps us help the child learn. Okay, when you start feeling this way, the way to feel better is to go to bed. So the child starts learning to associate an action with a feeling and starts learning to trust their own signals. So when they get older, when they start feeling sleepy, they'll say, this is a good time for me to try to go to bed. Interferences. It happens. Very few people, if any, but we'll stay with very few just to avoid extremes. Have a perfect childhood. There are things that go wrong. Parents don't have an instruction manual. We have lots of information, but it's conflicting. And you know, and each child is different. So there's. You can't write an instruction manual that says for every child, this is what you need to do. Okay, that being said, I don't want to have it seem like we're blaming parents for everything here, because parents do the best they can with the tools they have at any point in time. But sometimes the child may not have basic food, shelter, safety, or love needs met. Now, would a parent intentionally do that? I really don't believe so. That's the humanist in me. But, you know, some parents can't afford enough food or become homeless. Some parents, there's domestic violence in the house and they don't know how to handle that situation themselves. Some parents aren't able to protect their Children from other harms that may come their way. Some, some parents are emotionally so distraught or so removed and numb that they're not able to express nurturance and love. Do they do it intentionally? Heck no. You know, I really don't believe that. But I do believe that sometimes, because parents have their own stuff and because life can sometimes throw you curve balls, things may happen in a child's life. Okay, so what happens when this occurs? Well, the child may start to develop an inability to trust self or others. So if they start feeling hungry and that person who's supposed to make it all better doesn't give them food, then they start thinking, well, you know, maybe I'm not safe here. And obviously it takes a while to get there. Not if a child's hungry for two hours or something. That's far different than being hungry for days on end. They may start developing a reliance on others to tell them what they need because they're like, well, I'm hungry, but mom's not giving me anything to eat or dad's not giving me anything to eat, so maybe I'm not hungry. So tell me how to make this go away. And you know, parents usually try to get children to not be unhappy or at least not be complaining. So the parents may offer an alternate explanation which has nothing to do with food. So they start going, okay, well maybe I'm supposed to do this when I feel this way, like go to bed when I'm hungry. Maybe that means it's time for me to go to bed. So they start getting their signals crossed and they start relying on other people to tell them, you'll feel better if you. Instead of thinking to themselves, in the past, when I felt this way, what's made me feel better? They may have a lack of sense of worthiness. For basics. If caregivers are not providing food and shelter, maybe that means I'm not a good person. If caregivers are not giving me love, maybe they don't like me. Well, that's really hard for anybody to take, let alone a little kid. So think about, you know, if your primary caregivers, the ones who gave you life and brought you into this world, or you know, somebody who's your primary caregiver who wants to be your parent. You know, speaking of adoptive parents, for example, if they're not giving you the love and nurturance that you need, it can be very confusing because if anybody's supposed to give it to you, it should be them. So if they aren't, then it must mean Maybe you're not worth love. So that's where children start getting confused because they have a hard time not being egocentric. They feel that everything's about them. You know, it's not, well, mom's too depressed right now to play with me. You know, the kids like, well, Mommy doesn't want to play with me. All of these messages start getting put into the person's schema and can carry on into adulthood. So we may end up with working with adults who don't trust themselves or others. They rely on other people to tell them what they need. They don't feel worthy, love or, you know, taking care of themselves. They may have discomfort and craving for attention because they're not getting enough. We need, as humans, we need attention. That's just the way we're built. I mean, some people, introverts need different kinds of attention, extroverts need different kinds of attention. But we all need some kind of attention and love. We're not meant to be hermits. And irritability and anxiety. When you don't know what's going on, you don't know who you can trust. You don't know how to make it better and you don't feel worthy. Yeah, you're going to feel darn irritable and fear rejection and isolation and the unknown and feel out of control. All those basic fears that we talk about. So this stuff can start in infancy. This stuff can start when a child is so young. Why? Well, because at this point, above all points, this is when the child needs the caregiver most. So the impact can be a lot stronger. And a lot of times during this period, the child only interacts with a few caregivers. So their experiences are formed and based and their schemas are formed and based on the experiences with their parents, parental units, their daycare providers, if that may be the case, and maybe a couple of siblings or not. But a lot of times, you know, they're not going to, at six months old or whatever, you know, they're going to daycare and they may be playing with other kids, but those people aren't taking care of them. So the adults they interact with are often pretty limited at this age. So those limited relationships form the foundation for developing self and other trust. So what do we do? You know? Well, the first thing we want to do in an ideal situation is be consistent as caregivers when we're working with children, figure out what is it that they need and how can we meet that need instead of meeting every, every time the CHILD CRIES Instead of popping a bottle in its mouth or a pacifier in its mouth, try to figure out what's wrong and be consistent about it. Don't be like attentive one minute and then, you know, the next day. You just don't have the time or the energy or the ability to deal with it. Now that can happen. But we want to try to be as consistent as possible. We want to make sure and ensure basic needs are getting met. You know, and it's not that difficult at this age. They need to be dry, they need to be comfortable, temperature wise, not too hot, not too cold, they need to be fed, but not overfed. They need to have some sort of stimulation and, you know, interaction with other people. Those are all good things. I remember when, after I had my son, I was in graduate school and I was a graduate teaching assistant and I would strap on my Baby Bjorn and I would put him in there and I would go up and teach and I don't think my students heard a thunder. I said, but, you know, it was a time, granted I was busy, but he was there and he was interacting and you know, I would interact with him kind of while I was talking to the students. And it was good for everybody. It was a positive feeling. And we generate when we have emotions, angry, scared, whatever, happy that permeates into our children. They are very perceptive about how they, how we feel, even if they can't articulate it. Compassion. We need to be calm and accept the child's emotions and needs. And this is difficult at this point because they can't say, I'm hungry, I'm scared, I hurt here, or I don't feel well. You know, I remember again with my son, he had gastric reflux really bad and I felt so bad for him. But he would start crying every time he ate and he would scream for literally hours on end no matter what his father or I did. We would rock, we would hold, we would burp, we would whatever. And it wasn't until we were able to get the doctor to diagnose him with gastric reflux that we were able to find an intervention for him. So we felt helpless, but it was important that we were calm and we didn't get angry with him, even though it was like, oh my gosh, can you please just stop crying for 10 minutes. But we had to accept that, number one, we weren't meeting his needs and not get too upset with ourselves, but use that energy to figure out how to fix it. And being patient and compassionate with him understanding that he's little and he hurts and, you know, we need to figure out how to make that stop. Because he didn't cry for no reason. There was a reason he was crying. And providing compassionate redirection with little children. You know, when they start to crawl, they start getting into things. When they start to crawl, they start putting everything in their mouth. And you can only take away so many things. Don't do this, don't do that, don't do this, don't touch that. And the child's gonna be like, well, what can I do? So instead of, you know, constantly saying, don't do this and just leaving it at that, you, you know, don't put that in your mouth here. You know, why don't you try chewing on this? If. Give them a pacifier or whatever it is if they want to put something in their mouth, preferably not food all the time or, you know, because babies put everything in their mouth. So you're constantly going to be feeding them. But find some other way to redirect them or take whatever it is that's attracting their attention out of their line of sight and give them something else to focus on and just change the. Change the conversation completely. And that will help the child learn at 0 to 1, explaining to them that this is poisonous. You shouldn't put it in your mouth. Ain't gonna do any good. So we want to compassionately redirect. Take a breath. You know, if the child gets up and knocks something over they're not supposed to and breaks it, they generally didn't mean to. So it's important to try to do as much as we can to redirect. When we're working with an adult, the same thing is true. We want them to be consistent with themselves, start using mindfulness and learn when they're hungry, learn when they're sleepy, learn when they're scared, and identify ways to deal with that. We want them to make sure their basic needs are met and realize that they do deserve that. And this may take some going back and looking at their family of origin and whatever happened that made them feel not worthy of love and help them dispel some of those distortions. Maybe looking at, well, are there alternate explanations for why your parent didn't provide you the love that you needed or the nurturance you needed. And, you know, as adults, they can often look back and go, yeah, mom was strung out on cocaine or whatever the case may be and articulate that. So getting them to start changing their perspective and looking at the Big picture from a less egocentric perspective can help them start feeling more worthy of love and understanding the situation. From a more adult perspective, encourage them to be compassionate with themselves. You know, some days we just are in a bad mood. Accept their emotions, you know, radically accept. This is how I feel right now. How can I improve the next moment? Instead of getting angry with themselves for being upset and compassionately redirect themselves. You know, if they get angry and they want to put their fist through a wall, that's not probably the best thing to do. So what can you do when you get angry instead of putting your fist through the wall? And obviously, as adults, they can come up with those things. So we want to help them through that process to start learning to trust themselves and learning to trust others. You know, they're going to learn to consistently know what their needs are and learn how to communicate their needs. I'm getting a little bit ahead to toddlers. Toddlers autonomy versus shame and doubt. This is when the personal control over physical skills and body comes in. The. They're potty training and they're learning the everybody's favorite word. No, I won't do it. No. All right, well, that's great. They have difficulty at this point thinking about things in abstract terms. They're very concrete, but they can think about things symbolically. Like a dolly can be mom, so you can do. And the little doggie in the dollhouse can be whatever their dog's name is. And there can be some pretend play. There are some things that you can do, especially as the child gets closer to three with pretend play, like rehearsing at the dollhouse, how you're going to do or what you're going to do when you go to grandma's house or what it's going to be like. So the child's not scared. And the child starts to begin to understand the concept of past and future. You know, what happened yesterday is yesterday. What happened today is, you know, right now. And. But we can't predict what's going to happen in the future. And they start understanding time a little bit better. And we want to continue to encourage them to develop secure attachments, continue with this consistency and compassion and positive redirection. As the. As we said in the last slide, the toddler may start getting into difficulties. And, you know, we want to make sure that they know what they're supposed to do. And we don't want to enforce rules with just the, as Zachary points out, the because I said so rule. That doesn't work with kids. And it doesn't work with adults. I remember when I ran the residential treatment facilities, if clients wanted to do something and we said no, and they said, why? And we said, because those are the rules or because I said so. That didn't go over too well. So I always told my staff, it's imperative. It's imperative to know why we tell people to do or not do things. It's imperative that you understand the rationale behind the rule. With children and adults, they can learn and they can understand, you know, why do we not hit, you know, don't hit other people. Okay, you know, why, why shouldn't I hit Tommy? He took my ball. Well, then we can start talking about how would it feel if Tommy hit you? And help the child take that perspective and learn from it and develop alternate ways of dealing with conflict, etc. Interferences with toddlers developing the ability to feel competent and autonomous, the ability to take care of themselves a little bit. And at this age, children often are starting to try to dress themselves, which can get really dicey sometimes. Thankfully, most preschools and stuff are very liberal with their dress code. But, yeah, sometimes you can end up with stripes and polka dots and zebra prints all in the same outfit. And you're just like, wow, that's interesting. Or a tutu in the middle of the week, who knows? But is this something worth correcting or is it the child exerting their own individuality? So parents who are overly strict are often going to be correcting the child going, you can't wear that. You need to have something that matches. And every time the child starts to try to separate and be individual, they're reigned back in. You can't do this. You must do what I say, yada, yada. And a lot of times it feels like that is a tide to approval. So that unconditional positive regard goes out the window. And we have conditions of worth. Now, overly permissive parents, on the other hand, who are like, just wear whatever you want. Children really crave structure. So they're going to want a little bit of structure. And depending on the child, some children need more structure, some children need less structure. And this is where that training manual for parents just doesn't happen. Because, you know, looking at my two children, they both came from the same parents and they are both polar opposite. My son needs a lot more structure, my daughter, not so much. So we want to look at what are we communicating. If the parent is overly permissive, you know, that's fine, whatever. You don't have to potty train Till you're six years old, there are going to be social consequences for the child. And the child may start feeling self conscious because his peers are getting ahead of him doing certain things and may start feeling more doubtful about his own abilities. So too permissive can keep the child from, you know, moving forward. And overly strict can keep the child again from moving forward because they're stuck. They're afraid to do anything because everything they seem to do seems wrong. Manifestations of self doubt, low self esteem and a need for external validation. Always asking, is it okay? Can, can I do this? And a lack of motivation. If every time you turn around you're being told no, because I said so, then eventually the child's just going to be like, well, screw it. On the other hand, you know, the overly permissive side, if mom and dad or parental units are disengaged again, the child may feel like, well, they don't even want to pay attention to me. They don't have time to put out my clothes or make me something to eat. And you know, I've seen this unfortunately more than I'd like. Where children are often self serving themselves every single meal, even at the age of two or three because mom and dad just aren't emotionally there, even if they're physically present. And the child may have lack of motivation, too strict, they're afraid to behave because they're afraid to be wrong. Too permissive, what's the point? Nobody cares. So we want to help them develop a sense of autonomy but also motivation. So we, and this kind of moves into encouraging them to develop resilience when they're going through this stage by saying no and asking questions, they're testing boundaries and they're starting to assert their individuality and autonomy a little bit. And sometimes they're going to cross that line. But we want them to know that, okay, you crossed the line, that's okay, you're still loved. That behavior not so good, but you are still loved. And we want them to know that it's safe to take chances and safe to experiment because you can come back to this loving, warm environment. So we want to encourage the child to explore and experiment. We want to praise the child for trying even if he fails and reassure the child that you love him for who he is. You know, you're an awesome kid, maybe soccer is not your thing. And you know, you can see with 2 and 3 year olds how you would encourage them to do this and push them a little bit to try new things, to go in the sandbox, to try Climbing up the big slide to whatever. And sometimes it's going to go well and sometimes it's not. And when it doesn't, we can help them be okay with it and say, alright, that didn't work out as I thought it would. What can I do differently the next time? Or what should I do instead? So we're helping them develop resilience. The same thing is true with adults. If they don't believe that they're capable, if they feel very disempowered in life for whatever reason, whether it was because of stuck points at toddlerhood or, you know, they've just been through the ringer in adult life, they may need to love themselves. You know, develop that sense of trust in themselves and figure out ways to start exploring and experimenting and going out from that safe space again. Encourage them to praise themselves for trying even if they fail. Because failing just means you've learned one way not to do it. Failing means you stepped outside your comfort zone. There's all kinds of things that we can, that we can put out there and reassure the child or have the person reassure themselves that they are lovable for who they are, not what they do. You know, just because you tried, you know, going to school for information technology and it didn't work out all right, that means that maybe that's not the field for you, but it doesn't take away from the fact that you're compassionate, you're loving, you're giving, you're intuitive, intelligent, you're all these other things. So encourage them to embrace these sorts of things. In preschool, 4 to 6 years old, we have initiative versus guilt. So you know, preschool generally children are about potty trained. And a lot of times it's at this point that parents are thinking, maybe I'll add another one to the mix. And you know, sometimes it's a little bit earlier, but sometimes it's preschool. So that adds a whole different dynamic to everything that's going on. Children at this age are trying to assert control and power over the environment and disapproval can result in guilt. So when you have this sibling come in, for example, and you know, all of a sudden mom's paying attention to this little screaming thing, a four or six year old can feel jealous. They may try to assert control and power by throwing things. I had one client who told me that her son would pick up a shoe or a toy whenever she started nursing the baby and just throw it at him with full force. The child was very jealous of the baby and resentful of the fact that he wasn't getting the attention he used to. Other ways that children can try to reassert control, like Karen was talking about, is the fact that when children see a younger sibling, you know, an infant getting their diaper changed and you know, mom's always worried about having that diaper bag again now and you know, getting, being nursed and all those things, children can regress. They may think, well, maybe that's what I'm supposed to do in order to get love and attention. So maybe if I regress, then I'll still be loved. So it's a matter of making sure that the older child is able to understand that they're still loved. We just do different things now because you don't need to be nursed anymore and those sorts of things. Preschoolers live in a magical world where everything is alive. You know, inanimate objects can be alive and dreams are real. I remember my son went through a period where right before bed, he had to turn every single stuffed animal in his room face down because he didn't want them staring at him when he went to sleep. It freaked him out. And you know, kids think about this way, think about Buzz Lightyear. I don't. Toy Story. That was the movie. Preschools are captivated by this because in their imagination they can see their toys springing to life and they can see dreams becoming real. So the parenting challenge here is truth versus fiction. We have to help children learn. You know, what happens on Bugs Bunny isn't real life, that's fiction. You know, you can't blow somebody up with an acne bomb and have them come back later happen. A lot of kids get that part. But there are other things. Like your toys aren't actually going to come to life. So we can talk about how cool would that be if that happened. But what's reality? And always check back in. When my son was little, he went through that period and he thought, you know, how great it would be. He would always talk about how awesome it would be to have poof up powers, magical powers where he could poof up anything he wanted. And I kept having to come back and go, but you realize that's not real, correct? Yeah, you know, he realized it wasn't real and you know, truth versus fiction, creativity versus reality. The other area this gets a little sticky is when the children, the child does something wrong. Sometimes they will fabricate a story to get out of trouble, but other times they're creative self is just kind of running wild. So we need to separate. You know, this wasn't your imaginary friend that broke the lamp. It was you. You know, let's talk about creativity versus reality. I don't mind if you play with your imaginary friend, but she needs to follow the rules, too. Preschoolers have trouble distinguishing between appearance, appearances, and reality. So the parenting challenge can be helping them differentiate safe from danger. You know, my son went into Home Depot one time, and there was this man that, bless his heart, had probably been working on his house all day long and forgot something. So he was in Home Depot, and he was dirty and, you know, disheveled and everything. Clearly looked like he had been working hard that day. But my son saw that and said, you know, that doesn't fit. Everybody else around here is kind of put together. That doesn't fit. So he turns to his father, who was a cop at the time, no volume control at all, goes, daddy, I hope you remembered to bring your gun with you. Oh, my gosh. So, you know, although we were safe before, we may not be, may not be now. So he perceived somebody who didn't fit as being dangerous, and he wanted to make sure that dad was ready to protect him. So we need to help people, help children understand safe versus danger. Think about some of our clients. Some of our clients have difficulty interpreting safe people versus people who don't have their best interests at heart. So we need to continually work on fine tuning that radar. Children at this age focus on one aspect of a situation at a time, which is called centration, Struggle to see other vantage points, which is egocentrism. So they're on the playground. You know, Johnny and Billy are on the playground, and Billy steals Johnny's ball because Johnny's been playing with it for 30 minutes, let's say, and Billy steals the ball because he wants to play with it. Now all Johnny's gonna see is, Billy stole my ball. He's not gonna see the fact that he'd already been playing with it for 30 minutes and Billy had asked him three times and recess was almost over. He's just focusing on billy stole my ball. And he's going to struggle to see other vantage points. He's going to struggle to see why Billy was unhappy and resorted to stealing the ball because he was having a grand time playing with it. So why did Billy come over and make him unhappy? He's having difficulty seeing how he made Billy unhappy. So we need to help children at this age take perspectives, find their voice versus being a bully, because sometimes children don't understand. So from Billy's perspective, we want to help Billy understand How could you have asked for the ball? Or what could you have done instead of stealing the ball? Because maybe that was kind of bully like behavior. How might Johnny see that as being bully like? And, you know, how could you do it a little bit differently? You want to do that for both children and encourage the child to say, you know, to understand, even if it says, even if you have to say, how would you feel if you were playing with the ball and Johnny came and stole it from you? You know, help them take that perspective, and this will help them learn to make good choices at this age. You know, cognitively, they are unicentric and egocentric. So we can't expect them to regularly be able to just jump from this to, oh, okay, and suddenly start taking everybody's point of view. That's a couple years down the road. So we're going to continue to have this discussion, but hopefully not over the same topics. Hopefully the child will learn. Each time with our clients, think about some of our most common cognitive distortions. Seeing only one aspect of the situation and making decisions based on it, or personalization, thinking everything's all about us being egocentric. These cognitive distortions came from somewhere. And many times, even back to preschool, people were not stopping and trying to take someone else's perspective first. So we can help them function better now and be happier now if they can look at the bigger picture, look at all the facts, not just this little piece, but what other facts are going into the situation that might contribute to the interpretation and, you know, how might the other person have perceived it? Encourage them to go back and forth, because, you know, sometimes even as adults, we'll do something and somebody else will react in a way we didn't expect, and we're kind of taken off guard. So we need to stop and think, how might they have perceived what I said or what I did that triggered that reaction? You know, my boss, whenever something used to go wrong on the unit, his first question to me was always, well, what did your staff do to trigger this? Well, it's not always them, but a lot of times, you know, both parties played a part in it. So we need to look at what we can do from a risk management situation. Children at this age are typically love to play make believe. So the parenting challenge is to find your make believe. And you know what? I don't have a make believe. I have a hard time finding it. I can find beauty in bumblebees buzzing around a sunflower or, you know, what are they called? Dandelions. I love Picking dandelions and blowing them. But when it comes to tea parties and playing with race cars and stuff, I never did find that make believe. But I knew that and, you know, so I worked around it. My children, thankfully had enough other people who had great imaginations that enjoyed doing those things. But kids know, if you really hate what you're doing, we need to understand what children are communicating through their play. You know, even if you don't enjoy doing it, if you're watching them, what are they communicating? Sometimes they're modeling, sometimes they're mimicking. Sometimes they are trying to communicate something inside that they don't have the words for. If they're angry, you know, maybe they're having a really angry fight with their people. Sometimes it's just a fight, you know, they're having two people duke it out and, you know, that's okay. If you see that as a pattern in the play, you might want to start thinking, what is the child trying to communicate? Preschoolers love to ask the question both to learn facts as well as to learn how to interact with others. This is when they learn, you know, what are the limits? How many questions can I ask before I start getting the go ask your father response? So the parenting challenge is not getting impatient with the mommy, why is the sky blue? Mommy, why does the dog bark instead of meow? Mommy, fill in the blank. Which can get, especially if you're in the car going somewhere and you're kind of trapped, it can get really intense really fast. But not getting impatient. What I used to do is try to focus on the questions the child was asking and how observant they were being. You know, a lot of times he would notice things I didn't observe. And, you know, it was really cool to see the world kind of through his eyes and what caught his attention. We want to help children learn how to answer their own questions. Sometimes we'll have the answer and we don't need to give it to them. Sometimes we won't have the answer, but we can say, you know, I don't know the answer to that. Let's go look it up on the Internet, or let's call grandma and ask or whatever the case may be. Help children learn to self regulate in mutual conversations. So they ask a question, you give an answer, and then maybe you ask a question back of them. So it becomes more of a back and forth. Instead of them asking a question, you answer them asking another question, you answer. You want it to become a dialogue like a tennis match, not like golf. I don't know and encourage the child to figure out their own answers. You know, figure out how to answer their questions and then decide what is the right answer. Same thing with adults. Now, most adults don't ask that many questions, but we want to help adults learn how to answer their own questions. You know, is this the right thing to do? Well, where can you go to figure that out? How can you figure that out? And sometimes they need to learn to self regulate in mutual conversations. But a lot of times, adults. The biggest thing I've seen is adults need encouragement to solve their own problems instead of waiting for somebody to just hand them the answer. Preschoolers use everyday objects in conventional and unconventional purposes. Parenting challenges is to honor their creativity in the right time and place and get out of the box ourselves. You know, the first time my son, the sole fell off of my son's shoe, he just found some duct tape and taped that puppy up. And I looked at it and my eyes got all big because they were. We were supposed to be going out in public. I didn't want him going out in public with duct tape around one of his shoes. But I had to honor his creativity. I mean, he was supposed to put his shoes on and he did, and bada bing. So he did the right thing, not how I would have chosen to do it. And it was important for me to respect his creativity. And if you've got kids, you can think back to all the different times when they've been super creative with solving problems, whether it's homework problems or problems at home, they can be really creative. May not be the way you choose to do it, but if it works, it works. They're little scientists trying to see what happens. A lot of times they're thinking, if I drop my ball of play doh. Into the aquarium, what'll happen? In the same way, they test rules and boundaries to make sure it's the same across different situations. My son, when he was about 18. No. Yeah, I think it was his second birthday, we were at my grandmother's house, and she had all kinds of knickknacks and breakables and stuff around. And he knew he wasn't supposed to touch the television, but he got there and he promptly walked up to the television and he looked at me and he said, mommy, no touch. I said, that's right. No touch. He looks at me, looks at the tv, reaches out, touches the tv, looks back at me. He goes, mommy, timeout. I said, yep, you're right. Timeout. He toddled his happy little self over there. Sat down for a minute and then came out of timeout. He just had to check, make sure the rules were still the same in this situation. So children want structure. They want to know how they're supposed to act and what they're supposed to do. So we want again to be consistent with what's going to happen, what's expected. You know, you can be really loud and run through the house. At home maybe, but not at grandma's house. So we need to explain that to the child ahead of time so we're not scolding them for something they didn't understand they weren't supposed to do. Children at this age crave structure. So again, we want to be consistent and steadfast. If we say don't do that, then it's don't do that. Don't do that on Tuesday, but on Thursday it might be okay. That's confusing to children. If they're expected to come home and sit down and do their homework, then that's what they're expected to do. Okay, occasionally something's going to come up, but hopefully those occasions are very, very infrequent and we need to be steadfast. You know, if the child's dragging their feet and going, I don't want to do my homework or I don't want to take a bath, we can't give in one out of every 17 times because that'll just teach the child. I just have to, you know, resist 17 times and eventually I'll get my way. Piaget uses the term pre operational to describe the reasoning patterns typical of children in this group. They're usually easily fooled by appearances. So we want to help them see that appearances can be deceiving. The guy who's trying to give away puppies out of his van may not be safe. Puppies are very cute. Men trying to give away puppies from the back of a van. Not necessarily safe. And not everything happens the way you expect. You can get a book on science experiments from the library and, and do cool little science experiments in the kitchen, like dropping, mixing baking soda and vinegar and creating a volcano. The child may not expect that. First mix vinegar and sugar and shake it up. Nothing happens. And then you mix vinegar and baking soda. Sugar and baking soda are both white powders. Have them speculate about what might happen. Put the baking soda in the vinegar and you'll get a much different result. So encouraging them to understand that they've got to fine tune what they think. They can generalize to a certain extent, but not over generalize. Things. Same thing is true for our adults. Encourage them to differentiate between situations. You know, when this happens, you know, what led to it and how could it have been predicted? How is this similar to things in the past? How is this different from things in the past? And in what ways could appearances be deceiving? Here, maybe you're being offered a really awesome job and it's one of those that's too good to be true. Well, too good to be true usually means it is. So this is where appearances can be deceiving. They often have difficulty putting into words how they feel or what's going on inside. So the parenting challenge is to pay attention to nonverbal and verbal cues and help the child label her feelings, teaching them to check in with themselves periodically. Mindfulness for adults. Enough said. Children begin to use strategies for remembering, but they often use inappropriate and ineffective strategies. So again, they're trying to remember, but they may forget certain things. They may say, you never told me that, or, you know, I didn't do that. We need to differentiate truth from fiction and help children and adults develop effective strategies for remembering, which may be writing things down. Interferences in preschool, overly strict or enmeshed parents can keep children from exploring and developing their individuality, their sense of competence. And a lack of encouragement to take risks may leave the child just sitting there going, yeah, I don't know if it's safe to try that. Children are going to have a little anxiety, just like adults do getting out of their comfort zone. So it's up to us as caregivers to nudge them along and encourage them to just try it. If you don't like it, all right, that can work with vegetables, jumping off the diving board, any of those things. A lot of times they'll find they enjoy things by doing that. Manifestations, low self esteem and the need for external validation, difficulty making or maintaining friends, and lack of clarity about what they like, want and feel. So this is when it's good. Start practicing mindfulness with kids, even in preschool, because they can start articulating their feelings. You know, they're not going to be Shakespeare, but they are going to be able to start putting labels. Get one of those face diagrams that shows the different feelings and have them point to the feeling that they're feeling each morning before they go to school and talk about why. In order to get them back on track. Encourage the child to explore and experiment. Praise the child for trying even if he or she fails. Encourage people to praise adults, to praise themselves for trying even if they fail. Reassure the person that they are loved for who they are and encourage the person to develop friendships with a variety of people, not just one or two. Now, industry versus inferiority, 7 to 12 years. This is where we're talking about middle school. Children are coping with new academic and social demands. When they have success, they develop self confidence and a sense of self efficacy. Their thinking is less egocentric, so they're able to take multiple perspectives. They begin to realize that their thoughts and feelings are unique to them. You know, just because they're happy doesn't mean everybody else is. Just because they find something funny doesn't mean everybody else will. And they have the beginning of logical thought. Age 8 is a milestone across cultures, and children are perceived by adults to have attained a new level of competence at this age and are often permitted to be on their own more often. Now, that doesn't mean leaving Johnny at home while you go to the grocery store, but there's much less supervision at age 8. So the parenting challenge is figuring out how to create a safe, stable environment for the youth to fledge, to leave the nest, to start becoming more independent. We need to figure out what is it that our kids can do, how much can they feed themselves and be expected to dress themselves and all that kind of stuff? They acquire the logical reasoning associated with concrete operations. The parenting challenge is to help them understand that not all things are logical, especially when it comes to dealing with other human beings. Not all things are logical and being able to accept that fact that there are going to be things that you just don't understand. Children begin to use advanced strategies when they learn new material and gain much from teachers or who help them cultivate useful learning strategies. No two people learn the same exact way. So teachers who can help students cultivate their learning style are going to help them succeed in school. And they've done a lot of studies that have shown that if a child's academic success starts to decline, their risk for depression goes up, their mood starts to decline. As parents, we can help children identify their temperament or their learning style, whether it's auditory, kinesthetic, or visual. You know, do they do best reading, hearing, or seeing? My daughter's dyslexic, so reading is difficult for her, but anything she hears, she memorizes. You know, movies, comedians, soundtracks, whatever. So we encourage her to get books on tape, record her lectures, etc. In order to learn her material and active or reflective. Not all people learn in the middle of things. Not all people. Maybe not all of you, while I'm talking, is this really sinking in. You're just hearing a bunch of words and you're getting a bunch of information and it's going in there, but it's going to be 15 minutes after class is over, when it's all had a chance to settle out and fit together, that you have that aha moment and you're like, oh, that makes sense. Or that doesn't make sense. But reflective learners take all the pieces and then have an aha moment. Active learners tend to think and put things together on the fly. Effective Teaching, Effective Learning by Alice Fairhurst looks like this and you can get it on Amazon real cheap. It's an old book, but I highly recommend it for parents as well as for teachers because it will help parents help their children thrive in School. At 7 to 12, they're able to be fairly logical and organized when working on problems with concrete objects. That's why when doing math, they still use manipulatives. They have difficulty with dealing with abstractions, hypothetical situations and multiple variables. So we want to help children learn how to meaningfully conceptualize hypotheticals. And this is going to be the scaffolding thing that we talked about last class. Initially, they're not going to understand the hypotheticals. You know, if one train leaves the station at 5:30 and another train leaves the station at 7:30 and they're both headed towards each other at 75 miles an hour, that's really difficult for children at this age because that's hypothetical. They need to hold the trains and be able to move them. We want to teach children how to organize and solve multivariate problems though. So if you look at the math curriculum as it progresses, not until the child is towards the end of this stage are they able to solve those multivariable problems. Perspective taking skills increase greatly during this period, which is awesome. But it can also be heart wrenching because children are really developing social skills and can be really mean to one another and very hurt when, when somebody's mean to them. So it's important for us to help them take other people's perspective instead of just telling them, you know, that must have made Sally sad. We don't want to tell them that. We want them to think about, you know, how do you think Sally felt and how would you feel if Sally did that to you? Same thing we've been doing since they were knee high to a grasshopper. But it becomes a little bit more important and a lot of the things become more abstract at this age, school age children acquire a relatively stable and comprehensive understanding of themselves. It's important to help them appreciate their physical characteristics and support them in exploring their values and reactions to things. Same thing is true with our adult clients. Children acquire a set of standards and expectations with respect to dealing with others. The formation of friendships and close affiliations with peers is a hallmark of this period, which these days, with the seeming upsurgence of bullying and the constant input from, from social networking and Instagram and Snapchat and all that, it can get just overwhelming. For children. We need to help them define a realistic and healthy set of standards and expectations for other people. Other people are not going to agree with you all the time. Other people are not going to be perfect. Other people are not going to not get angry with you. Make sure they understand that other people are human and fallible, just like they are, and identify in yourself what standards and expectations you model for a child. So if we have unreasonable expectations of our friends or of them, then they're going to have those same expectations of their friends. So we want to check ourselves at this point, because they're watching, they're aware. There's a new appreciation of authority and interest in understanding and abiding by the rules. This goes back to Kohlberg's theory of moral development. Parenting challenge here. Still, make sure you have an explanation for every single rule, not because I said so. I mean, even if it's, you know, because I need you home by curfew, because when you're not here when you're supposed to be, I worry that you're dead in the ditch somewhere. That's a reason that's better than because those are the rules. At least they can say, oh, I see, I'm impacting somebody else, and pick your battles. At this age, children are really starting to spread their wings a little bit, and we can nitpick and nag at them until doomsday, and then they will kind of shut down. So we want to pick our battles. Which rules are most important to enforce, where can we allow them to be a little bit more individual, etc. There's a reciprocal relationship between cognitive development and social interaction and interpersonal effectiveness. So as social interaction and interpersonal effectiveness goes up, so does cognitive development. If they are not interacting socially or effective interpersonally, cognitive development may lag. So we want to help children make sure that they're developing in all of these areas and think about, you know, cognitive development. When a person, you know, doesn't have a lot to talk about because they don't have many interests and they haven't developed Cognitively, it's hard to have a lot of social interactions with them. Sometimes it's hard to carry on a conversation if they can't take other people's perspectives. It's hard to be in a relationship with them. So it's just as important to work on the cognitive development as it is the interpersonal skills. Interferences, lack of consistent support and encouragement even with failure, because it happens more in middle school, socially, interpersonally, physically trying out for teams. This is when you start trying out for cheerleading and football and all that stuff. And lack of successes. You know, sometimes they just aren't going to make the cut. Manifestations again, low self esteem and a lack of motivation. So we want to encourage the person to develop skills in areas they can excel. They're not going to be great at everything, so focus on the things that you're good at. Praise the person and encourage them to praise themselves for trying even if they fail. And make them reassure themselves and you reassure them that they're awesome and they're lovable for who they are, even if they make a mistake, even if they fail. Adolescence, high school years, role confusion. Successes lead to the development of a sense of self and personal identity. This is who I am, this is what I'm good at. Failures provide an opportunity for learning coping skills and compassion. This is where we fall short as parents a lot because we say, oh, you failed, you know, sorry, try again later. A lot of times we're too dismissive and we need to make sure that we address how the child feels about failing and turn it into an opportunity to learn and get stronger. And they develop the ability to think about abstract concepts and, and logically test hypotheses. You know, all right, so you're debating whether to go to this party on Friday. You know, let's think about what are the possible ways it could turn out and what do you want to do? Interferences include lack of support for individual wants, needs or goals, a lack of stable, consistent, positive relationships, lack of successes, lack of education about or opportunity to develop coping life and interpersonal skills. So we need to make sure that kids have the ability to interact with others, the ability to be mindful, and the ability to develop coping skills. In order to help children and youth move past this, encourage them to develop skills in areas they can excel, provide support when the person's world seems chaotic, and in high school and element elementary school or middle school, it can always seem very chaotic. But even in adulthood, if we're dealing with adults, it may seem chaotic. Help the person Learn to identify and set smart goals. Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time limited. Reassure the person that they are loved for who they are. Develop that unconditional positive regardless Model and reinforce positive coping skills and encourage opportunities for the development of interpersonal skills. If you're working with a youth, encourage them to take part in extracurricular activities. If you're working with an adult, encourage them to take part in, you know, meetups or you know, some sort of club or hobby or even community education classes where they can get out and meet other people and start working on developing those skills. So preventative and protective factors that can help prevent stuck parental involvement or caregiver involvement. Caregiver consistency, connection to positive adults and peers. Connection and involvement in an organized community. You know, children don't live in a vacuum. They live at school, they live in a community and everything that goes on around them does impact them. Development of a positive view of self and the future. So even if things are not going so well, we want to make sure that children and people maintain a positive view of themselves and see some hope for the future. Because without hope, we're going to go down that depression rabbit hole really quickly. And we want to expose people to opportunities where they can develop coping skills, interpersonal skills, life skills, including goal setting and time management. Are there any questions? One question that comes through is do I often find that today's parents are too busy or too lazy to be consistent? And you know, I shy away from the word lazy. Yes. I find a lot of times today's parents are very, very busy because most families have to have a two parent working in order to make ends meet, which means there's kids going to daycare a lot and after school care and all that kind of stuff. Now do they attend to their child? Yes. Do they ensure that their children are being attended to when they're not there by competent, caring people? Yes. Most of the time. Yes. When the child comes home at night, a lot of times the parents are emotionally just and mentally just like, blah, I'm done, I'm wiped out. So their ability to interact with the child during the week is often stretched or tried because they are exhausted. But a lot of parents, you know, they can squeak out story time or you know, it's not the most enriching family activity. But even watching a television show together at the end of the day, some sort of family activity where you're spending a little bit of time together, but then focusing on the, during the weekends, on, you know, the weekends are playtime the weekends are time to really focus on the family. Is it ideal? No. Does it work? Yeah. And some parents and a lot of times you can see trends that, you know, today's parents learned from their parents, who learned from their parents or who may have rebelled against their parents. So we can see a lot of patterns in parenting. And if their parents were very permissive and open and disengaged, then they may be very permissive, open and disengaged because that's what they think they're supposed to do. So which is why I kind of shy away from the word lazy, because in my mind lazy is the parent going, well, I really should get up and intervene. But no, I think a lot of parents, you know, the majority of parents have the kids best interest at heart. But you know, sometimes they just don't know what they're supposed to be doing. And I wish we did more in the schools with teaching some of these skills, going, going throughout school in health class and those sorts of things. I don't even know if they still have home. And I would encourage, if you're working with parents and they have a child who is acting out or regressing, really look at the function of that behavior. And actually I think I have that PowerPoint right here. No, we're not going to go through the whole thing. But children often do things because they don't want to do something fun. So they may act out, they may do things to get attention, they may not understand the rules. You know, why does Johnny get to do this and I don't? Especially if they have older or younger siblings. They may do things out of fear. You know, like I said, they may refuse to go to bed because they're afraid of the monster under the bed or they may not want to get into the car to go to the doctor because they're afraid they're going to get a shot. They may test limits to try to get the same privileges as older siblings. And I kind of call this privilege creep because sometimes we let that line move a little bit. Okay, you can stay up 15 more minutes and then 15 more minutes and before you know it, bedtime's moved from 7pm to 9:30. Trying to assert power and control. You know, they want to go home now. My son did this one time in Walmart. He was not happy. He was sitting in the buggy and he wanted to go home. So he hauled off and he punched me in the arm. I promptly got his happy little self up, left everything in my buggy. Felt bad about it and we left. We went home and I came back to Walmart later and did my shopping, but he was trying to get me to go home so he could play. Unfortunately for him, he got to go home and sit in timeout Lack of Skills to Control Behavior Sometimes when kids get overstimulated, they don't know how to rein it in. So sometimes it's up to us to help them figure out those skills and or develop the emotional vocabulary to let us know how they feel. Alrighty everybody. Thank you for being here today. Have an amazing weekend and I will see you on Tuesday. 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@Allce.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. 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