Raising Resilient Children
In This Chapter
- Discovering why anxious parents often have normal children
- Learning how broad “normal” really is
- Avoiding the common pitfalls of anxious parents
- Giving your child the gift of resilience
“Too many parents make life hard for their children by trying, too zealously, to make it easy for them.” —Benjamin Franklin
“It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings.” —Ann Landers
- Normal children have problems.
- “Parents can help them.” —Dr. Stanley Turecki
- “… Even when we struggle with anxiety.” —Dr. Joni Johnston
In Chapter 10, we talked about how babies come into the world with built-in temperaments that influence how easily and how intensely they respond to the world around them. We also looked at parenting styles and how certain biological predispositions may either thrive or suffer in response to how primary caretakers respond to them. The baby who is unusually distressed by changes in her environment, or the toddler who is stressed by situations most others would find unthreatening, isn’t destined to become a fearful child or anxious teenager. And anxious parents don’t have to raise anxious children.
As a parent, you can help your children work with their natural temperaments. You can help your children manage stress and deal with normal childhood fears. Through modeling and hands-on parenting, you can also help your children develop resilience, the strengths that allow you to prevent, minimize, or overcome the effects of adversity; the ability to connect with others; an emotional vocabulary that promotes self-awareness and empathy; and the ability to control your behavior.
Highly Sensitive Children
From birth, Jane seemed extremely sensitive; she cried incessantly whenever her mother took her to a certain department store with fluorescent lights, and the slightest noise woke her from her nap. As a toddler, she insisted the tags be cut out of all her clothes. She had a hard time adjusting to preschool and threw a fit when her mom accidentally brought home a different cereal. Her mom quickly learned to avoid too many activities at once, because Jane became overly stimulated and was prone to temper tantrums.
Highly sensitive children can be a challenge for parents. Their senses are often stronger, sharper, and more overwhelming. A loud noise can be irritating. When they cry, they may fall to the floor sobbing. When they’re angry, they may shriek and pound the walls.
Of course, highly sensitive parents often give birth to highly sensitive children. This can make parenting quite a challenge; a child’s shriek or the sensory assault of toys, shoes, and clothes all over the floor can make your own negative emotions rise suddenly. You may tell yourself you should be able to comfort your child and keep your cool no matter how bombarded or irritated you feel by the noises around you. As a result, you can be tempted to ignore or deny your feelings until they overwhelm you.
And if your child is sensitive like you, with the best of intentions, you can try to protect her from anxiety-producing situations or try to “make” her be less sensitive. In fact, one of the best gifts a sensitive parent can give a sensitive child is a model for how their natural temperament can work in her favor. This means regulating your own behavior, letting your sensitivity serve you in terms of being emotionally “in tune” with your child, but also knowing how to deal with your weaknesses. Just as too much activity can send a sensitive child into a tailspin, high stimulation levels can make it very difficult for a sensitive or anxious parent to focus on a child. Know when to take a break; leave a family gathering, shopping center, or amusement park before you’re at your limit.
As Jane grew older, her mother taught her to pay attention to stress signals. She helped Jane see the link between her thoughts and feelings and encouraged her to pace herself so as not to get overwhelmed. As a teenager, Jane has age-appropriate freedom, but a high degree of self-awareness. However, in response to her offspring’s sensitive nature, Jane’s mom could have easily taken on a different role—that of the protector.
ON THE CUTTING EDGE
Unmanaged stress doesn’t just make your life harder; it impacts how you parent. Research has found that when evaluating the same behaviors in their infants, highly stressed mothers viewed the babies as significantly more difficult than did those mothers whose stress was under control.
Beware of Overprotectiveness
Anxious adults often had difficulties as sensitive children. Some of us may have been asked to handle situations that were not age-appropriate, without the support or warmth we needed. Or perhaps our emotional sensitivity led a troubled parent to use us as a “therapist,” sharing problems with us that were too big for us to handle. Children with this experience often engage in “reverse parenting,” feeling responsible for their parents’ feelings and working hard to emotionally take care of them.
Couple these memories with a parent’s natural distress at seeing his or her child suffer, and you can easily see how you might be overprotective. “My child will never go through that. I’m going to be there for her no matter what.” You may be tempted to help your children avoid the normal trials and tribulations of childhood.
But beware: overprotectiveness can harm your children. Although you should respond to your child’s nature with understanding, you should not let their nature become an excuse for them to avoid challenges or new situations. Being overly solicitous can unintentionally reinforce a child’s belief that he should be afraid, that he really can’t handle it. What you really want him to know is that his feelings are normal, that they will pass, and that they don’t have to control him—or you.
This brings us to another potential consequence of focusing too much on your child’s sensitivity or shyness. A child who clings to his father is likely genuinely afraid of separation. However, being overprotective reinforces the clingy behavior in two ways. First, the child can experience the pleasure of special attention—often highly reinforcing. Second, the child learns that clingy behavior takes away his anxiety—also highly reinforcing.
Of course, as a child gets older, the plusses of having the parent’s attention are often supplanted by a desire for independence and control. Parents who continue to hover may find their child becoming secretive and aloof. This distance can make you worry even more, which can result in a vicious cycle of over-involvement resulting in rebellion, which, of course, confirms your need to control and protect.
STRESS RELIEF
Build your child’s competence by involving him in activities that contribute to a greater good, such as volunteer work or helping a kid in another class.
So what’s good enough parenting for a naturally sensitive child? You accept his or her nature. You respond with empathy when she has a tough time. Whenever possible, you divide transitions into smaller steps; perhaps you stay a few minutes longer at a birthday party or walk with her to initiate play with a particular group. You help her prepare for new situations or events, investigating with her what to expect and exploring ways to deal with problems.
At the same time, you are cheerful, confident, and unafraid in how you take these extra steps. You’re always on the lookout for signs that your child is ready to take a step toward self-reliance. This attitude—“You can adjust to any situation and tolerate some discomfort without collapsing”—is the most powerful factor in helping your child find her wings.
Perfectionistic Parenting
In Chapter 10, we talked about the link between perfectionism and anxiety. You saw how painful it can be to live under the constant pressure to be mistake-free and ever more successful. It makes sense that perfectionists might take the same achievement orientation to the parenting role. If you’re not careful, you can expect too much from your kids and yourself.
For example, some of us may think that being a “good parent” means never getting angry with your child. If you have that belief, you may feel guilty whenever you get angry, even when anger is justified. You may then try to compensate for these very natural feelings, going overboard by giving in to your child or allowing her to talk to you in a way that is disrespectful or inappropriate.
Children benefit from a parent who can accept, and appropriately respond to, all feelings. That doesn’t mean you should always scream when you are angry. It means you acknowledge when your actions and decisions are influenced by anger and correct anything that needs to be corrected. It also means helping your child accept his or her own angry feelings. “You still have to follow the rules, but it’s okay to be mad at me. I know you still love me, just like I still love you, even when I’m mad.”
Without meaning to, you can also project unrealistically high expectations onto your children. You can want so much for your children that you push too much, overscheduling chores, school work, and extracurricular activities. Or your worries about your child can lead you to over-focus on the imperfect; when your fifth grader comes home with a few B’s, you can start ruminating about how difficult it is to get into a competitive college and inappropriately phone the teacher for a “what’s wrong” conference.
Concern and advice can feel like criticism or second-guessing. You may sit down with a child, for example, with the sincere desire to hear about her day. Before you know it, you may find yourself criticizing how she’s handling a teacher or a friend, then arguing, then wondering how you got there. If you do this often enough, she may start doubting herself and her ability to make good decisions—or avoiding these chats.
ANXIETY ATTACK
Play the one-minute game to teach give-and-take. Before taking action, saying something, or joining in a conversation or activity, the child can stop (for one minute), during which he is to look (at what others are doing), listen (to what others are talking about), and then decide to join, take action, or say or do nothing.
No matter how much your children defend themselves, they often take your criticisms to heart. Of course, a child’s thinking isn’t always clear, and there are times when you need to offer some advice, but it’s possible to offer the benefit of your experience and maturity without undermining your child. For example, you can say, “I’m sure I would think and feel the same way if I were you. But have you thought about it this way?” Because it’s true: if you were your child, you would think, feel, and even act the same way. When you say so, you convey understanding and respect, even as you offer another alternative.
The bottom line is that you don’t need to protect your children by being perfect parents or creating a perfect world for them. Parents who allow their kids to find a way to deal with life’s day-to-day stresses by themselves are helping them to develop resilience and effective coping strategies. As children grow, you need to give them room. One way to maintain peace of mind as you make this transition is to know that your children have developed the ability to bounce back from tough times. Let’s look at the secrets resilient children share—and every parent should know.
ON THE CUTTING EDGE
People who doubt their own judgment are prone to mood swings, lower self-esteem, depression, and anxiety. Even if you don’t agree with them, it pays to give your children a sense that their opinions are heard.
Resilience
Resilience can be defined as those skills, attributes, and abilities that enable you to adapt to hardships, challenges, and difficulties. Importantly, children are often resilient. In fact, most children reared in homes with mental illness, alcoholism, abuse—even war-torn communities—grow up to have successful, well-adjusted lives. In fact, difficulties can make you stronger.
The International Resilience Project has identified three potential sources of resilience—strong and supportive external resources; a clearly defined, positive self-concept; and effective strategies for interacting with the world. These are often referred to as the “I have’s,” the “I am’s,” and the “I can’s.” Younger children, of course, tend to be more dependent on the “I have’s”: I have a person who loves me unconditionally, who encourages me to do things on my own, who helps me when I need it, who is predictable and sets limits, and who shows me the right way to do things and behave. From a resilience standpoint, it is not as important who that person is, only that the person is accessible to them.
MYTH BUSTER
A positive attitude in the face of adversity is a state of denial. No, it isn’t. Resilient people see challenge as a normal part of life and view themselves as survivors.
The same is true for the “I am’s.” Resilient children are taught that they are lovable, important, responsible, and able. They also know what they are not responsible for. Understandably, parents are often reluctant to discuss emotional issues with their children, and there are plenty of times when they shouldn’t.
However, when a parent’s symptoms are obvious to a child, or when they lead the parent to avoid important events in the child’s life, it is better for them to have age-appropriate information than to be left to draw their own conclusions. On the other hand, a parent who helps her child understand that she has a problem, that she is working hard to get better, and that it’s not the child’s fault frees up a worried child to focus on typical kid problems.
As children get older, they rely more and more on their internal resources. The “I can” involves the child’s ability to respond effectively to the world around him or her. It’s here that parents can encourage a child’s emotional awareness, by building his or her social skills and by teaching the art of self-control.
ON THE CUTTING EDGE
Stress symptoms are different in children than in adults. Children commonly experience stress through headaches and stomach pains. They can also begin wetting the bed or pick up new (or regress to old) habits such as sucking their thumb.
Friendships
Protective factors such as a good support system and a lovable, capable self-concept help a child be adaptable, better able to hit the curveballs life throws at them. They buffer children from the emotional impact of unpredictable, distressing, or new situations. In particular, the ability to connect with others—to build and maintain friendships—is perhaps the most powerful protector of all.
From the very beginning, friendships are models for future relationships and how to negotiate with others. Your child doesn’t have to be the most popular to benefit from the stress buffer that friendship provides. It doesn’t matter whether a child has a long-term best friend or short-term regular friends. All that’s needed is the ability to initiate and maintain satisfying relationships. And as a parent, you can help your child build social and emotional intelligence by doing the following:
- Nurturing their emotional awareness. From birth you can help your child develop an emotional vocabulary and gradually help him or her start connecting the dots between thoughts, feelings, and behavior. “I can see that you’re mad because I wouldn’t buy that toy. It’s scary to go to bed without your special blanket. It’s frustrating when your brother keeps beating you at soccer.” Not only can you teach your child to label feelings, you can give the child permission to appropriately express both negative and positive feelings.
- Promoting the development of empathy and the ability to take different perspectives. Point out how your child’s actions affect other people’s feelings. If she grabs a toy and another child starts crying, ask her, “Why is your friend crying? Let’s see whether it helps to give her toy back.”
- Teaching your child how to join in. Show children there are many ways to make friends. A child can ask outright if he can play, he can offer to help with an ongoing activity, or he can invite others to join him in a new activity. This gives him a chance to practice different strategies and learn not to take it personally if one strategy doesn’t work.
- Teach your child to resolve peer conflicts. Rather than swoop in to “solve” a problem, or leave young children floundering to “work it out themselves,” act as a neutral facilitator. Let each child take a turn to tell her story. Ask questions that encourage them to brainstorm solutions such as “What do you think would solve the problem?”
ON THE CUTTING EDGE
Encourage your child’s sense of humor. The kinds of jokes kids enjoy tell you a lot about their worries. For instance, children going through potty training usually love bathroom humor.
Coping with Anger
Children who develop the capacity to identify, label, and verbalize their feelings have a leg up. Not only do they communicate better, but they can recognize and identify the intensity of their feelings, which actually helps them to regulate them. However, just like with adults, anger is an emotion that can give a child lots of problems.
In Chapter 14, you learned to rate the intensity of a panic attack from 1 to 10. This thinking activity actually helps you feel less out of control. This strategy can also help an emotionally intense child. Just as you learn to “observe” terrifying panic symptoms, you can teach your child to observe his or her anger and evaluate how intense the feelings are. If a child can learn to describe anger in words that capture the various levels of intensity—irritated, annoyed, furious, enraged—then she is developing an ability to step back and manage it.
Similarly, it can help the child to imagine a stop sign and think about a situation before responding. Just as you learn to pay attention to stress signals, you can help your child identify his or her early warning signs of anger (rising voice, clenched fist, gritted teeth), so that she or he has a chance to choose a response.
Finally, just as relaxation is a key strategy in anxiety management, many children find that self-calming activities are a first step in getting anger under control. Teach your child to take a “time out” to allow the physical symptoms to subside: he can walk away, count to 10, take deep breaths, or use coping statements like, “I can handle this.” When the child has calmed down, he or she can decide how to handle his or her frustration—to talk it out, get help, or slow down and persevere.
If your child goes from calm to furious in the blink of an eye, you can make him an “anger thermometer” and assign different levels of anger to the various colors or numbers. This can help him regularly identify what thoughts, feelings, and sensations signal low-level anger and what it feels like as his anger intensifies.
Helping children become more emotionally sophisticated and interpersonally savvy is one way you can help boost their resilience. These are skills that come in handy during good times and bad. Another is to strengthen your child’s ability to handle stress. Stress is a natural part of a child’s life; you can’t prevent it, but you can teach them how to cope with it.
Importantly, one way children learn to deal with stress is from observing what their parents do. Parents who fly off the handle or become paralyzed with fear model these responses for their children.
On the other hand, children can handle even the most stressful situation if they understand it. A child who doesn’t understand a situation may imagine the worst.
From birth, you can talk to your children about the thoughts you have about your feelings—and vice versa. As your children get older, you can teach them to observe the connection between how they think and how they feel. “When you dropped that fly ball, what did you say to yourself? If your good friend Sarah dropped that ball, would you say that to her?”
This is a novel concept for most children (and, as you saw in Chapters 8 and 9, for adults). How-ever, when a child begins to be more self-aware, he or she will notice the self-talk. Even better, he or she will begin to see that it’s not the circumstances that determine how you feel; it’s what you say to yourself about those circumstances. And that’s something a child can control.
STRESS RELIEF
Help your child learn to recognize and identify habits of thought by playing online games. Visit selfesteemgames.mcgill.ca/games/index.htm.
Finally, the ability to take a mental break—by relaxing or distracting oneself from everyday worries and concerns—can prevent a child from becoming overwhelmed by a stressful event. As any teenager will show you, a set of headphones and an MP3 player can provide a break from the seriousness of growing up. Similarly, minimizing or denying the personal impact of teasing or rejection (“I don’t care; I’m a good kid”) can be useful in helping a child “defuse” his or her feelings and create a safe place in which to plan an appropriate response.
Distraction or denial can be great in reducing emotional discomfort when faced with uncontrollable events (much as TV watching can make the flu a little more tolerable). However, if you don’t follow up on solvable problems, you’ll feel better only temporarily.
In this chapter, we’ve talked about the role parents can play in rearing resilient children. We’ve looked at the difference between a sensitive child and an anxious one, and how the ways you parent can foster self-reliance or create doubt and worry. You’ve also seen how you can actively encourage the skills and coping strategies that provide protection from the inevitable stresses and challenges your children will face.
Yes, you can and should prepare your kids, by starting where they are and working forward. Sensitive kids do deserve special care. They don’t, however, warrant excessive worry. If you’re truly going to teach your children resilience, you have to deal with your own separation anxiety. You can do this through your anxiety support groups, chats with other parents, or work with a therapist. Ultimately, you have to deal with it by doing it, so that both you and your children can see how capable they really are.
ON THE CUTTING EDGE
New research suggests that letting a child play a video game in the operating room before anesthesia is administered can promote relaxation better than tranquilizers or holding his or her mother’s hand. That’s the power of distraction (or of giving a child control over something)!
You also have to be realistic in terms of what you can and can’t do. Normal children have fears and problems. The best-parented child can develop an anxiety disorder. Although you can help them, you can’t always give them all they need. In the next chapter, we’ll take a look at what you can do to soothe normal childhood fears, and when—and how—to bring in experts.
MYTH BUSTER
Childhood mental health problems are the result of poor parenting and lack of discipline in the home. Although certain parenting styles can increase vulnerability, mental illnesses often have a strong genetic component.
- Anxious parents can raise normal children.
- Parents can have a big influence over whether a biologically sensitive child develops resilience.
- Overprotectiveness can be harmful to a child’s mental health.
- Although children are naturally resilient, parents can encourage the skills and strengths that help children bounce back from adversity.
- Emotional awareness, good social skills, and effective stress-management strategies help a child grow up to be happy and confident.