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5 Point Parenting Plan To Relieve Holiday Stress

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Talk to any parent: The holidays bring out the best and worst in families. As parents of children whose emotions are running high, you may find yourselves struggling to keep the spirits bright. Here are 5 helpful hints for a happier holiday with your kids.

1. Remember, all children struggle with processing strong emotion. Every child learns to regulate their emotions at a different pace as they mature. In the meantime, they look to you to help them quell anxiety, so try to stay as steady and patient as possible even in the face of an eruption. If you lose your composure, your child is left feeling like no one is in control and this can heighten the intensity of a meltdown.

2. Begin by helping your child label the feelings she is experiencing. If you can put language to feelings, it helps her to  make sense of her experiences and calm down.  She will also feel that you care about her and are trying to understand.  Be sure to do this before her feelings become too intense.  Problem solving when feelings are too strong may only aggravate the problem.

3. Identify situations where your child is more vulnerable to experiencing strong emotions and losing self-control. Plan for these situations in advance. Explain what is going to happen, what emotions she may feel and how you will support her, as well as what she can do for herself to keep calm.

4. Be tolerant of your child’s feelings. That doesn’t mean let him be inappropriate or destructive. Reassure your distraught child that you are going to listen to him, but he first needs to get his feelings under control with your help. He needs to be able to discuss his feelings in a respectful manner.

5. Once emotions are under control, you can make every effort to understand the experience from your child’s perspective. Taking this approach does not mean you agree with your child. It simply means you are trying to understand how he experienced a situation and what meaning it took on for him.  Efforts invested in this process will also create more space for you to offer alternative explanations and perspectives on the situation.

Healthy Dependence vs. Enabling

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“When am I helping my child too much and when should I step back?
“Am I enabling my  child by providing help with homework or other responsibilities?”

Parents, as well as teachers, often struggle with this conflict.  Understanding that children will do well if they can and that all children possess the natural human drive for mastery will help to resolve this conflict.  My advice to parents?  If your child is struggling, chances are demands are exceeding the capacities he possesses right now.  Work with him to complete certain tasks, rather than doing the work for him.  We all learn new tasks by watching others or by collaborating with someone who has more skill.  Why should this process be any different for learning new academic concepts or completing tough assignments?

The truth is, when you don’t provide support for tasks that are over your child’s head, you run the risk of disabling him.  If you insist your child complete his work independently when he is not ready developmentally, how is he going to make sense of this struggle? Most children will assume that if they are experiencing difficulty, something must be wrong with them.  This is not the belief parents want their children to internalize about themselves.  This belief not only undermines a child’s confidence in his ability to learn, but it also contributes to feelings of frustration, anxiety and discouragement, which further interfere with learning.

Healthy dependence promotes independence in children.  If we teach our children how to approach difficult tasks and guide them through the learning process, ultimately they will acquire the necessary skills and be able to do their work on their own.

Have you found ways to decide when to let your child learn on  their own and when to help them?

 

Managing Homework Challenges Workshop

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November 6, 2013    Campbell Hall

Homework is an important topic on the minds of most parents today.  On November 6th,  I am looking forward to speaking to the parents of Campbell Hall, one of Los Angeles’ premier private, college preparatory schools for students K-12, located at 4533 Laurel Canyon Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91607. I plan to share my insight and experience on the subject with more area schools.

Schools place a heavy emphasis on children completing homework independently.  While most of us would agree that this is a worthy objective, we might not all agree on just how to move children toward this goal.  Children have a natural drive for mastery over appropriate developmental tasks.  With mastery comes confidence that allows them to take on the next challenge.  However, when challenges confronting children exceed their developmental capacities, they become vulnerable to frustration, discouragement and potential failure, unless they receive some assistance to develop the skills they need to succeed.  Many kids experience these homework difficulties, especially when you consider the volume and complexity of the work they are expected to complete.

In this workshop, I will help parents:

  • understand the various reasons students struggle with homework
  • learn when and how to assist with homework
  • understand the difference between collaborating with a child and enabling him to be overly reliant on you
  • discuss strategies for setting up an effective homework structure
  • identify when tutoring support is needed

How Do We Help Our Children Succeed?

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The first thing any of us as parents, teachers and other adults working with children can do is to improve the quality of our relationship with them.  This idea is more than a philosophical shift in approach to childrearing.  It is a scientifically supported concept that needs to be put into practice on a daily basis to foster the social, emotional and academic development of our children.

The focus on a healthy, connected relationship takes priority over considering specific strategies for managing behavioral problems or addressing specific learning issues that show up in the classroom or at home.  The quality of our connection to our children directly influences their openness to our direction and support.  It is the difference between turning a child’s brain “on” or “off” to learning.

Learning involves emotions and cognition.  The two cannot be separated.  If a child is feeling anxious about completing a difficult academic task, it will interfere with his ability to think clearly, as well as to store and retrieve information for long-term memory.  He will need help with effectively managing anxiety before much learning can take place.

Look for specific strategies to help your child manage anxiety in future posts.

Peter Murphy, Ph.D.