How to regulate a child’s emotions and behaviour

12/11/2015

Anxiety, Fears and Phobias , Behaviours and Discipline , Parenting Skills , Resilience and Self-confidence , Social Skills

Changes Psychology Team

Children are generally less able to regulate, or control, their emotional expression and behaviour than adults.

Everyone experiences emotions – the feelings we have in response to situations and events. It is healthy to have a spectrum of emotions but the way our responses are expressed to others can cause difficulties, especially with children. This is due to brain development, is age related and also dependant on the levels of resilience the child has.

However, supportive adults can help children express their emotions and associated behaviours in socially acceptable ways and improve a child’s resilience and ability to deal with things better now and in the future.

Some ideas include:

Talking about emotions with your child in your everyday conversations. Using a variety of words to describe emotions encourages children to verbalise what they are feeling rather than act it out. Normalising ALL emotions is also important so your child feels ok about themselves, even when they are experiencing unpleasant emotions.
Setting up realistic expectations and boundaries for behaviour. Children have very little control over what happens in their lives but being able to predict the outcomes of their behaviours helps them to make choices about how they express themselves.
Guiding behaviour with attention and acknowledgement of efforts to behave appropriately and safely. Pay more attention to the behaviours you want and less to the behaviours you don’t want (considering safety needs).
modelling the expression your own emotions with appropriate words and behaviours. Children learn from those around them so your ways of expressing and managing emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant, are ideal opportunities to show kids that emotions can be felt and expressed safely and appropriately.

Promoting resilience -making decisions

09/11/2015

Anxiety, Fears and Phobias , Behaviours and Discipline , Parenting Skills , Resilience and Self-confidence , Social Skills

Changes Psychology Team

When our children struggle we often want to try and fix things for them

However doing this all the time can undermine our child’s belief in their own ability to make decisions and confidence in their problem solving skills. The ability to problem solve and make decisions is paramount in life as humans are constantly faced with choices and challenges. The ability to solve their own problems is a huge part of resilience for kids.

When your child is faced with a problem, listen to their perspective on the issue and let them know you are willing to help and support them before looking for solutions.

Problem solving involves a few basic steps that you can help your child to learn and implement:

Define the problem – it is very difficult to manage an issue if your child (or you) are unclear as to what the problem actually is. Also consider whether your child needs or wants to do anything about this problem
Brainstorm ideas to deal with this problem – write down any ideas no matter how silly they seem.
Look at each idea and discuss what might happen if your child did each idea.
Encourage your child to choose which ideas he or she may like to try out. Support your child in picking out a few ideas.
Encourage your child to put their chosen ideas into practice – try the first idea, see if it works. If not, try the second idea (and so on).

The fact is that kids learn to make decisions by making decisions, not by following directions~ Alfie Kohn

If your child seems stuck on choosing poor ideas, offer gentle guidance by helping them to think about the potential consequences of their actions. As your child practices these problem solving steps, he or she will become more confident in making decisions for themselves, and willing to try out their ideas knowing that they have backup plans if things don’t turn out as expected. And that fosters resilience as they know they can try things another way.

Read more: How to regulate a child’s emotions and behaviour

How family and community create resilience in kids

28/10/2015

Anxiety, Fears and Phobias , Behaviours and Discipline , Parenting Skills , Resilience and Self-confidence , Social Skills

Changes Psychology Team

Resilience in our children ultimately will be something that comes from within themselves, but our support and that of the support networks around them will aid that growth and offer them ongoing places for advice, guidance and help.

Obtaining support from other people and experiencing some predictability in life promotes resilience by building a child’s sense of being valued, competent and having some control over situations that may arise.

Humans are naturally sociable creatures and helping our children connect with other people strengthens resilience by providing the opportunity for social support and the belief that such support is available when needed.

It can be helpful to discuss with your child who they identify as people they can access support from and how they would get the assistance they need in various situations.
- Encourage your child to pick at least five people then assign each person to a finger or thumb on one hand. This can help your child remember who those support people are, e.g. my teacher is my pointer finger.

Role play various scenarios with your child to help them figure out who they would contact for support, how they would contact them, what they would say to explain the situation, etc. This can help build your child’s confidence in managing situations that may arise.

Encourage your child to be a friend in order to make and keep friends. Being involved in social, sporting, cultural, school, or spiritual events and groups can also promote a child’s sense of belonging, self worth, and belief that they are surrounded by people who will support them when in need.

How to promote resilience in kids

26/10/2015

Anxiety, Fears and Phobias , Behaviours and Discipline , Grief and Loss , Parenting Skills , Resilience and Self-confidence , Social Skills

Changes Psychology Team

Not everyone displays the same characteristics of resilience, however there are a number of predictors of resilience which can be encouraged and taught.

People with good resilience adapt to difficult situations and stress by using a variety of resources and protective factors that are either external-in the environment around the person, or internal -personal attributes or beliefs. Parents can help their child develop resilience by promoting a mixture of both external and internal factors.

External factors that have positive influences on a child’s resilience include:

Establishing and maintaining connections with other people, e.g. family, friends, community group, school.
Having caring, competent adults in their life
Experiencing success in areas of interest including sport, music, arts
Helping others
Having predictable but flexible routines
Being involved in cultural beliefs and practices
Participating in school events

Internal factors that have positive influence on a child’s resilience include:

Problem solving skills
Emotional and behavioural regulation
A positive sense of self-worth
Believing that life has meaning and hope
Feeling valued for an ability or skill
Being aware of, and able to implement self care
Experiencing success with setting reasonable goals and moving toward them
Learning from experience
Accepting that change is inevitable and can be positive

Why we need more Resilience in our children

24/10/2015

Anxiety, Fears and Phobias , Behaviours and Discipline , Grief and Loss , Parenting Skills , Resilience and Self-confidence , Social Skills

Changes Psychology Team

Resilience is a skill that can be learned and practiced throughout life and a skill we need to be teaching our children.

Teaching children resilience facilitates their ability to cope with difficulties, whether they be daily events like stress of schoolwork, or infrequent trauma like losing a loved one.

Some people face more adversity in life than others, but the ability to cope and draw on protective factors benefits every child.

Research suggests children with low resilience tend to be more socially isolated, have poorer social skills, be more vulnerable to mental health problems, be more likely to become involved in criminal activities and/or violence, experience school failure, demonstrate challenging behaviours, have poorer physical health, lower self esteem, and hold a negative view of the future.

Children with higher levels of resilience have healthy attachments and connections with others, feel valued, believe in their own abilities and strengths, learn to set realistic goals, have healthy self esteem, are both physically and psychologically healthier, and have a positive and hopeful outlook for the future.

While the degree of resilience differs between individuals and circumstances, it makes sense then that parents and significant adults in children and young people’s lives help promote protective factors that can increase our children’s ability to cope with situations and successfully adapt for the future.