Misbehavior - Where does it come from and How do we deal with it?

I recently had a conversation with a friend about her two year old pitching a fit because the computer would not load  fast enough to get to his game.  I guess this might correlate to the tantrum my now 20 year old son had when he was two and I couldn’t find the exact spot for his favorite Disney Sing-a-long songs quick enough on the VHS tape!   Temperamentally, our sons sound similar...intense reactions, and persistence in their pursuit of happiness.  We were both bombarded with the same thoughts...”What is wrong with him???  Why is he acting so out-of-control?”  As first time moms, we wonder and worry about the root of our children’s misbehavior and often misattribute it to some pathological cause. It is important to remember that misbehavior is  sometimes a child’s inept way of communicating a need or emotion. 

Typical reasons for misbehavior are:

• Fatigue, hunger, thirst
• Mismatch between parental expectations and child’s ability to cope or cooperate.  Are you expecting too much?
• Power - children need to feel a reasonable amount of control over their environment.  Pick and choose your battles.  Ask yourself, “Must this be done my way?” “Can I be more flexible?” “Can I offer a choice?”
• Unaware of appropriate behavior - sometimes children are not fully aware of the rules of good conduct, particularly if limits have not been consistently enforced.
• Inconsistent follow through - how often do you make a request (such as put your books away, or stop running, or don’t jump on the sofa) and not help your child follow through with the request?  Too much inconsistency makes it very difficult for your child to know when you expect cooperation and when you don’t.  
• Attention seeking – your attention, even negative attention is important to your child. Paying too much attention to misbehavior can sometimes perpetuate the behavior
• Disruption in school or family life – situations or events that disrupt routine and stability may trigger misbehavior
• Emotionally charged situations – children sometimes lose self control when distressed

When children are upset and misbehaving, coach them through the situation so they are better off next time.

• Acknowledge the child’s feelings. It doesn’t help to criticize or yell when your child reacts with anger, fear or sadness
• Help kids learn the difference between feelings and behavior. You can acknowledge the feelings and help kids label them, but you can also indicate to children that they need to behave differently when they experience that feeling again. “I know you’re angry and that makes sense. But you cannot throw things when you are mad. Instead you can.........” Offer solutions and problem solve with your child about appropriate expression of emotion.  This type of positive discipline and emotional coaching will put your child on the right path towards emotional regulation on their own...and isn’t that the goal?!

References:

Websites Zerotothree.org 

Aboutourkids.org 

www.cfw.tufts.edu

Preparing for Parent-Teacher Conferences

As we embark on the second round of Parent Teacher conferences later this month, teachers are taking a close look at their students in order to monitor progress.  They are comparing the amount of individualized intervention the student may need to the advances they are making in any particular area.  Teachers are determining if the interventions are making a difference for the child or if there are greater concerns for their learning.  When teachers sense that there are greater difficulties, they bring their concerns to the Instructional Support Team or Child Study Team and to you, the parents.  It can be very hard to hear that your child is struggling with learning concepts in math or that his/her reading decoding is at a stand-still.  However, when you think about the effort you need to provide in order for your child to get through their homework every night, you begin to recognize that this is not the norm.  If you have these concerns about your child’s learning, going into a Parent Teacher conference can be intimidating and scary.   The following article from the National Center for Learning Disabilities can be helpful in terms of providing you with some reflective understanding of what may be causing your stress in dealing with your child’s learning difficulties and prepare you for positive interactions with your child’s teacher if there are concerns presented during the conference.   

http://www.ncld.org/parents-child-disabilities/family-coping-ld/reasons-for-stress-learning-disabilities

Play and Why It Is So Important

Here in the Northeast, we continue to live with the possibility of a snow day or two (Thanks, Punxsutawney Phil!), but instead of cringing and wondering,  “What the heck am I going to do with these kids all day!” - embrace it and know that your ability to encourage play and imagination in your kids is extremely influential in their emotional and social development.  Take this opportunity to engage in creative and pretend play with your child because the research suggests that play enhances development in several important areas.  

First off, play encourages development in learning and cognition.  Imagination and imaginative play actions allow for an increase in the capacity for flexibility of thought, problem solving and divergent thinking.  For example, you might see your child using a box as a car one minute and then when the need arises, that same box may become a house!  In this way, minds are stretched to solve the problems encountered during play.  If your child has difficulty with this, your role as facilitator in the play can encourage your child to think about multiple problem solving possibilities.  Engaging in pretend or sociodramatic play provides practice in abstract and logical thinking and a chance to reflect and experiment with problems from a number of different angles.  When a child pretends to be the mom or dad in a family, they are learning perspective taking and this is a critical skill for social development.  

I know one characteristic I feel is very influential in emotional development is self-confidence.  Believe it or not, encouraging creative play can provide kids with the opportunity to take on new roles which provides them with a sense of competence and success.  Physical play, such as climbing and building also provide meaningful opportunities for young children to develop a sense of control over their environments and enhance self-esteem.

You may have observed your little ones in dramatic play in which they are the omnipotent superhero or the almighty king or queen of the land.  Don’t be concerned  that you are raising some type of dictator; understand that  taking on these roles may provide your child with a sense of power that will decrease their need to demonstrate aggressiveness towards others when not engaged in play.  It is much better to pretend that you have control over all the action figures in your army than trying to constantly control your little brother!!  

Language development is another area that benefits from rich, interactive play.  Whether you are playing with your child or they are engaged with a sibling or peer, the play will be saturated with verbal exchanges  and this provides a perfect opportunity for language to be used and  for vocabulary and speech to grow and expand.  Interjecting feeling words that provide descriptions of what the characters are experiencing in the play will also help your child when they are experiencing big emotions themselves.  All part of emotional regulation skills!

So take out the sheets, blankets and pillows and encourage the building of forts and castles; get down and build a Lego tower with your child, take out the old socks (you know the ones whose mates were eaten by the washing machine) and Sharpie markers and make some wonderful sock puppets that go on an amazing adventure.  Take the lead from your child and know that you are supporting their development in many influential ways and more importantly, you are establishing a bond with your child and are making memories with them that will last a lifetime!  Let it snow!!

Reference:

Landy, Sarah (2009). Pathways to Competence. Baltimore, Maryland: Paul H. Brooks Publishing

Temperament not Disobedience

How many times have you asked yourself, "Why does this kid love to push my buttons?" regarding your own child's apparently disobedient behavior?  Like when they won't get out of the car to run a "really quick" errand  or when they completely melt down when you tell them they ran out of blue cotton candy at the fair  or when they run screaming from you when you simply try to brush their hair in the morning before school?
What if I told you this behavior has nothing to do with disobedience, but rather temperament?  You might say, "OK, but what is temperament, anyway?!"  Glad you asked!  In the 1950's, researchers Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas provided us with ground breaking research on personality development.  They were among the first researchers to identify that there are genetic influences in how your child reacts to the world around him or her.  This first and most natural reaction to the world and the people in it is called temperament.  Researchers have discovered that temperament has biological, neurological, and physiological underpinnings that affect your child in many ways, including their mood, ability to calm himself and activity level.  So now you may be thinking, "Great!  I always said this kid's wiring was a little screwy and now I know it is! That doesn't help me when she is throwing a fit and won't get dressed because of the tag in the back of her shirt!"  However, I suggest to you that  biology is not destiny!   According to David Reiss of George Washington University, "Whether and how strongly genes that underlie behaviors are turned on or expressed depends on the interactions and relationships a child has with the important people in his life."  So it is our role as parents to help our child understand their temperament, emphasize their strengths, and guide them to react appropriately.   There are positive and negative aspects of all the temperamental traits.  Parents make the difference by helping a child to shape her particular qualities in the most advantageous way.
There are nine different temperamental traits and they all fall on a continuum from a mild reaction to a strong reaction.  In order to better understand your child's behavior and be able to predict and thereby avoid major behavioral meltdowns, you need to think about your child's typical, most natural reactions to these nine traits.  You can quantify the reactions such that on a continuum of 1 to 5, 1 would mean a very mild reaction and 5 would mean a strong reaction to the following traits.

 Intensity - How strong are your child's emotional reactions?  Does he laugh and cry loudly and energetically or softly and mildly?
Persistence - If your child is involved in an activity and you tell her to stop, does she stop easily or fight to continue?
Sensitivity - How aware is your child of slight noises, emotions, and differences in temperature, taste, and texture?  Does he react easily to certain foods, tags in clothing, irritating noises or your stress level?
Perceptiveness - Does your child notice people, colors, noises, and objects around her?  Does she frequently forget to do what you asked because something else has caught her attention?
Adaptability - How quickly does your child adapt to changes in his schedule or routine?  How does he cope with surprises?
Regularity - Is your child quite regular about eating times, sleeping times, amount of sleep needed and other bodily functions?
Energy - Is your child always on the move and busy or quiet and calm?  Does he need to run, jump, and use his whole body in order to feel good?
First Reaction - What is your child's first reaction when she is asked to meet people, try a new activity or idea, or go someplace new?
Mood - How much of the time does your child feel happy and content compared with serious, analytical or solemn?

If you add up your ratings across the 9 temperamental traits, you can place your child's temperament on the following continuum:
9 - 18 = Low-key cool child
19 - 28 = Spunky child
29 - 45 = Spirited child

Having this knowledge can reframe the way you look at your child's behavior.  Your child doesn't get to choose his temperament and neither do you, but an understanding of temperament allows you to be better able to predict your child's typical reaction to things and plan for success.

Sources:
Kurcinka, Mary; Raising your Spirited Child; Harper; 2006

The Dance of Attachment

The dance between parent and child that we engage in from the time we bring those sweet smelling, adorably wrapped bundles home from the hospital to the college years and beyond is know as Attachment.  It is a reciprocal interaction that requires attunement to each others' needs and how the responses of each participant impacts the other.   But wait...there's more...so much more!!  We as parents, show up to the dance with our own dance steps and ways of interacting that were established when we were children.  Some of those reactions may not even be within our conscious awareness, but they strongly shape our reactions to our own children.  And what we know from research is that our attachment to our parents and the internal working model that is set within us for creating future relationships is often the type of attachment we will establish with our children.  So how do we build the most secure attachments with our children?
Through the work of researchers such as John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth, we have learned a good deal about attachment behaviors and how they influence how we perceive the world.  We also now know the importance of relationships on a child's growing neurobiology,  so in essence, our attachment patterns have a very strong influence on our brain development!  As described in Dan Siegel and Mary Hartzell's book, Parenting from the Inside Out, here are the ABC's of Attachment:
Attunement - Aligning your own internal state with those of your children.  Often accomplished by the contingent sharing of nonverbal signals.  (i.e. - your baby smiles -  you smile back!)
Balance - Your children attain balance of their body, emotions and states of mind through attunement with you.  (i.e.- your response to their skinned knee is calm, supportive and validating of the situation; rather than over-reactive - rushing to the hospital or under-reactive and dismissing of the situation.)
Coherence - The sense of integration that is acquired by your children through your relationship with them in which they are able to come to feel both internally integrated and interpersonally connected to others.  (i.e. - your infant cries and you respond to meet their needs allowing them to know that they are capable of getting their needs met and also recognizing that you are there to meet those needs early on.)  
Based on these principles, Attachment allows the child to seek proximity to the parent; go to the parent at times of distress for comforting as a source of safe haven; and internalize the relationship with the parent as an internal model of a secure base.  These repeated experiences of feeling connected, understood and protected are what create a Secure Attachment between parent and child.  We all want that for our children, but what can interfere with achieving a secure attachment are our own unresolved issues and leftover baggage from our own attachment experiences with our parents.  Here's what I consider the really hard part of parenting...self-reflection in order to determine what is undermining our goal of a secure attachment and attuned interactions with our children!  The process of self-reflection takes time and energy, but can be immensely beneficial to making the dance of attachment smoother and more beautiful rather than full of mis-steps and stubbed toes!  An activity that I would like to suggest to start the process of self-reflection would be to write in a journal when your emotions are reactive and heating up.  You may begin to notice certain patterns of interactions with your child that trigger these emotional experiences.  I know for me, I began to recognize that whenever my children approached me for help with a creative project that required some artistic ability, I reacted with agitation and impatience.  I would start to get snippy with them and put down their ideas.  Once this pattern of reaction became apparent to me, I began to reflect on why I reacted that way and I realized that whenever I brought home those types of creative projects, my mother would take over and do it all for me, leaving me feeling helpless and inadequate.  These feelings resurfaced when I was faced with this experience with my own children, thus my reaction!!  With reflection comes much greater awareness and the ability to alter the interactions that impede attunement and connectedness.    Try it...you may be surprised by the results!


Sources:
D. Siegel, &M. Hartzell, Parenting from the Inside Out - How a Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help you Raise Children Who Thrive, New York, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2003

Heads Up for MindUp

Last year, I piloted a program in Kindergarten called MindUp.  It is a program which fosters focused classrooms, mindful learning and resilient children.  I felt that implementing this curriculum would be a good first step in trying to combat some of the stressors and pressures our children face that were highlighted in the documentary, "Race to Nowhere."  And what better population to start with than our very youngest students!  I was completely amazed at how much these 5 and 6-year olds were able to take in regarding their brain anatomy and how it functions; in the process gaining insight into their own minds and behaviors as well as those of the people around them.  It provided them with terminology and an understanding of how they were in control of their emotional state.  Guiding them through activities that highlighted how much more we can take in if we use our senses mindfully, allowed them to understand that focusing their attention had quite a lot of benefits.

This year, we are continuing the program in Kindergarten and we are branching out to provide this instruction to our second graders as well.  It thrills me when a student approaches me after learning about the parts of their brain with a comment like, "My amygdala was going nuts and made me 'flee' when I heard my house alarm go off last night!", or "I did great on my last math test because I was using my Prefrontal Cortex!"  They are now connecting brain activity with their own behavior and performance.  This provides them with a great deal of control over their reactions to life events.  

Over the last 24 years that I have been in this field, I have seen a tremendous increase in the number of children who suffer from some form of anxiety.  It may be transient in relation to a particular life event, or it may be more chronic anxiety stemming from persistent familial or financial difficulties within the family.  Either way, these stressors interfere with a child's ability to learn and interact appropriately with others.  MindUp addresses these road-blocks to learning and living by providing children and teachers with tools for self-regulation and self-reliance and optimistic thinking!

2nd graders visualizing how to calm an excited brain.

Goldie Hawn is a part of producing this innovative, researched based program.  To learn more about this program, please visit http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/mindup/

A Day In The Life of This School Psychologist

As the long rays of the summer sun dwindle and I begin to hear the squawk of a bird that in my mind signifies the end of the cicadas' summer party, I think about getting back to work.  I think about this prospect with enthusiasm and excitement (even after 23 years on the job!!) That's because I happen to have one of the most rewarding and exciting jobs on the planet!  I am a school psychologist. 

To many people, the school psychologist might be someone who shows up to meetings in fancy clothes and goes over reports regarding "Intelligence Quotients"

and "Standard Deviations".  Believe me, I like dressing up as much as the next gal, but if that was all I did, I'd be missing out on so much of what this job has to offer!  On a daily basis, I am amazed, challenged, frustrated, educated, and loved! 

Unlike my colleagues in the classroom who can and usually do follow a pretty prescribed schedule of daily events...8:20 -Science, 9:15 -Computers, etc., my schedule may look like this: 8:20 - Observe Johnny in Math, but at 8:00 I might get a call from a frantic parent who can't convince their child that coming to school would be a great idea today!  Now we need to come up with a plan to help reduce the child's anxiety, reinforce coming to school and provide the support that the distraught parent needs to get through this harrowing event!  So I wind up catching up with Johnny a little later after our School-Resister has stopped hyperventilating and their parent is fully convinced that we will be able to provide the safety and security that their child needs to feel comfortable at school.  Mission accomplished! 

After that, I get to engage with Kindergarteners to teach the importance of being Mindful and how the different parts of our brains are responsible for our emotional reactions and our memories!  Heavy stuff, but you would be amazed at how excited they are to learn about it!  Next, I might get a call from a teacher regarding an on-going struggle between three girls in her second grade class.  Could I do a mediation with these ladies to get to the bottom of the problem and encourage more positive interactions between them? Of course I can!  Allowing these young ladies a safe forum for sharing their feelings of insecurity and loneliness enables them to get a deeper understanding of each others’ perspectives and a healthier relationship emerges!  A team meeting may follow which enables all the service providers, i.e. Speech Therapist, Learning Center Instructor, Reading Specialist, and me, to collaborate with a classroom teacher to construct behavior modification plans to help improve a particular child's attending skills or reduce impulsive/disruptive behavior.  Strategies are shared, data is reviewed and we walk away with a better understanding of the student's needs and what we will do to address them.  One of my favorite parts of the day is lunch time and not just because I'm a food-junkie!  It is because it is my chance to work with students in small groups to improve social skills, build communication skills and encourage friendships all while eating and playing games!  When an impulsive group of first graders remembers the group rules for not interrupting each other and compromises to solve the problem of what game to play with win-win results, I'm like a proud momma watching her children "play nice" with each other!

Of course it's not always a smooth ride and there are times when all my best efforts and practices are not enough to make an immediate difference for a child who has lost a parent, for example. But knowing that I will be there to support and listen to this child as he or she processes the loss is something I can do over time to help the healing begin. 

My day might end with another lesson in the Kindergarten classroom using a program called DUSO (Developing Understanding of Self and Others) in which I use a Dolphin puppet to tell stories and teach children valuable life lessons.  I leave the room with the most adorable little people shouting, "Bye DUSO, see you next week!"  They may even run up to give me a hug as I leave the room.  I truly feel that these hugs have a life-giving force and I sincerely can't get enough of it!  So I say goodbye to the summer days of sunbathing on the bow of our boat on Highland Lake because I must get back to my happy place, my job as a school psychologist.