Raise a Resilient Child

Today I had a great conversation about relationships with a bunch of people. We talked about how our own childhood shaped who we are as people today whether we care to admit it or not. When asked by someone if I had ever had the experience where I realized that I was turning into my own parent, I said that I certainly did. I clearly remember sweeping the floor and yelling to my child to “get out of my dirt pile” and then I gasped and said “I’ve turned into my Mother!” because that’s something that I remember her always saying. Not that my Mom isn’t great, but I don’t think any of us want to become our parents. Why is that? And is there a way that we can avoid having our own children fear that they will become us? Sure my seven year old may aspire to be me, but will I be able to say that ten years from now? Probably not, hee hee.

A few of us had grown up in households that weren’t always functional; divorce, emotional abuse, addiction and strict parenting, were some of the issues we identified among us. But the thing is…we turned out just fine, which makes me think that as parents we need to cut ourselves some slack and know that we don’t have to be perfect in order to raise happy confident children.

Something that I attribute to those who can bounce back from adversity is resiliency. I’ve been reading more on this subject lately and some ways that we can develop this trait in children.

v  Children need to feel that they are smart. You may be thinking, that’s easy, I tell my child they are smart all the time, but do they feel successful? For a child struggling at school or watching their brothers and sisters bring home A’s when they struggle to get B’s, they might not being feeling as smart as we hope. The key is to find your child’s strengths and learning style. (Future blog on learning styles to come!) It is important to share this information with your child’s teacher but also to find activities outside of school that your child can feel good about too.

v  Children should be able to identify that they belong to something larger than themselves. This can be through teaching them about the importance of family, community and/ or spirituality. By having a connection to something larger than themselves, they develop empathy and a desire to help others which keeps them to keep their own troubles in perspective.

v  A child needs to feel supported, cared about and respected. By ensuring that our children have meaningful relationships with a variety of people, they are much more likely to feel important and loved. Encourage your child to spend time with extended family and friends in order to develop close relationships with people other than just their parents. If something ever happens to you, you want to know that your child feels safe with someone else.

Remember, even if our own children can check off the list above, there are many kids out there that can’t. Reach out to a child that needs a little extra attention. A kind or encouraging word can make all the difference in a child’s day and could be remembered for a lifetime.

Honestly!

On the weekend I watched the movie ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ with my family and the Mother was writing a newspaper article about honesty. It was quite funny because she demanded her son to be honest so he decided to get back at her by refusing to lie about anything; when his Mom didn’t want to speak to someone on the phone he told them she was there so she had to. The Mom soon realized that demanding honesty wasn’t working. So how do we teach our children to be honest?

While guilt tended to work for my own Mom, I prefer to try and outsmart my kids. One day my daughter came home with something from school that wasn’t hers. She said that her friend gave it to her so I said “That was so nice of her! I’m going to call her now and thank her!” and as I pretended to dial the phone she quickly told me that maybe her friend didn’t know she had it after all. Ooops maybe this was a story about stealing! The point is, sometimes we need to be one step ahead of our children in order to teach them the consequences of their actions.

Personally, I think that some kids just tend to be storytellers, more than others and some children may go through a phase where they like to ‘elaborate’ (to put it nicely). (Truthfully, I know a few adults that like to tell ‘fisherman tales’ too.) This may have to do with their personality or birth order but I believe it all boils down to attention seeking, which my middle child has always been good at.

The important thing to remember about attention seeking behaviours like lying is to ignore it as much as possible. As hard as it may be, if we give attention to the lie, then we are reinforcing the behaviour and the child is likely to lie again. Even receiving negative attention may be preferred to the child so reacting at all (even an eye roll) should be avoided, unless of course the lie is harmful to someone, then it must be addressed swiftly and firmly.

Provide your child with lots of attention when they are behaving. By giving them your undivided attention for a set period of time every day, you may be able to quell their need to seek out your attention in negative ways. If you overhear your child telling stories to their friend, then perhaps your child needs some more activities or outings that will provide them with more subjects of conversation. And last but not least, we need to teach our children about social graces such as ‘little white lies’ and make sure that the people around them (friends and family) are modeling the honest behaviour we want them to pick up on.

Parenting with Style

When taking a class about family dynamics I learned that there tends to be three main parenting styles, Laissez-Faire, Authoritative and Authoritarian which I see as being on a sliding scale where we all tend to fall at some point during our parenting journey.

Laissez-Faire           <->            Authoritative            <->             Authoritarian

Laissez-Faire is a French word that, loosely translated, means ‘to let be’. Parenting with this style is easy going, less structured and spontaneous. Children are sometimes treated as mini adults and given free reign when it comes to making decisions. Parents that tend to be on the strict side would be considered Authoritarian. These parents are more likely to have lots of structure, stick to routines, demand respect and have a strict hierarchy within the family. In between these two styles is the Authoritative parent. This is the style that most of probably identify with and it’s a balance between the other two. Authoritative parents are consistent with discipline and routines yet they leave room for discussion and spontaneity. Wherever we may fall on this parenting spectrum, we all have unique personalities, family dynamics and past experiences that have made us this way, yet we all tend to want the same thing and that’s to raise children that are happy, healthy and successful.

I think the connotation of “successful” is where some of us get tripped up. What we view as being successful may not be what our husband, parents or our own child sees as successful. I’m finding it very difficult having children in high school that are being pushed to select courses towards their career path. While part of me wants to push them to try harder and be the most they can be, the other half of me wants them to make their own decisions, set realistic goals so they can be successful and experience a well-rounded social life that is so important at that age. To struggle at parenting is normal, I’ve always said that it’s much easier to criticize the parenting of others than our own because we can look at their situation more logically than our own. Our emotions and ego often take over when it comes to our own children that have a direct line to our heart strings.

Parents that sway on the liberal side of parenting may make the mistake of giving in and wanting to be their child’s friend, especially during the teen years. I think that it is okay for this to be your goal when they are adults but right now, they need someone to keep them on the straight and narrow. Sometimes a child needs an adult to be the ‘bad’ guy so that they don’t have to say no to their friends when they’re invited to a party they’re uncomfortable going to. They also need to go through a stage of development where they discover who they are apart from their parents. The parent that is dressing like them, listening to teen music and hanging out with them is taking away from this ‘rite of passage’ so to speak.

Parents with high expectations and who push their children to excel, whether at school, in sports or other activities, run the risk of their child experiencing burn out and sometimes an inability to deal with failure. While it’s okay and even important to have high expectations for our children (we should be their biggest fans), we must ensure that our children are fulfilling their own needs and not our needs. By providing a variety of opportunities for our children and allowing them to fail in one or two of them before finding their niche we are teaching them to be resilient in addition to taming their ego.

Parenting is a journey, not a science, and sometimes different styles work better depending on the child and the situation, so we need to experiment. If our style is working well, meaning we are comfortable with it, it works with our partner and our children respond to it, albeit begrudgingly at times, then we’ve probably found the parenting style that works best for us.

Everyone is an Expert

Single parent families, blended families, foster families, the list goes on...

With so many unique family situations, children are having to readjust to new environments and situations more and more. Whether it is moving into Grandma and Grandpa’s house, going between Mom and Dad’s home or moving in with a foster or step family, we have children dealing with much more complexities while trying to navigate their way through childhood than ever before.

Those who have studied psychology at some point in their life, probably learnt about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and how humans must satisfy certain needs of physiological, safety, love and belonging before working on things like esteem and then self-actualization. If you’re not familiar with this triangle, Google it or go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs for a quick overview. For children who are living in chaotic environments and have suffered abuse, we must make sure that all their prior needs are met. Are they provided for? And do they feel safe? Are questions we must ask ourselves before asking if they feel loved by their family and friends and feel confident in whom they are? Once a child has their basic needs met we must go about making a youngster see themselves as valuable and important both to us and to others. When a child has a real sense of belonging within their family, it allows them to develop confidence and be respectful of others.

There are many things that families do to establish that connection with one another and for the most part this comes from simply spending time together and knowing one another very well. If a family has a new member or change to their dynamics whether it be a new baby, divorce or added member like an Uncle moving in, we must be cognizant that these changes affect children, sometimes for the better, but not always. Things that parents can do to increase family cohesiveness is to have meals together, have movie or board game night, have a TV free night, go on a walk together or other outing on a weekly basis and do household chores together.

Another way of making a child feel connected and an important member of their family is by making them an ‘expert’. A boy that lived with us when we were fostering, loved watching the weather network and always had his ‘eye to the sky’. We embraced this interest of his by making him our ‘weather expert’. We’d ask him what we should wear that day or if we were going to need an umbrella and when it stormed, he narrated it for us. Another young man that I know through work has become our ‘bicycle expert’. He isn’t employed and has had a rough upbringing but he loves BMX biking and knows everything about bikes. When I was looking to purchase a bike for my son, he gave me tips and this past spring he held a bike tune up day at our office.

While we don’t want to ‘pigeon hole’ our children or label them, it is important to nurture their natural talents and help them to develop skills. By allowing our children to try many different activities from baking and sewing to horseback riding and cycling, we are allowing them to find things they are passionate about and are happy to share with others. This will go a long way in helping them discover not only their place in their family but their place in their world.

Raising A Reader

I was asked not long ago by a colleague what I did to help my kids learn to read. Having raised a child with Dyslexia (a disorder which makes learning to read difficult) this is a bit of a loaded question but without getting into too much detail, here is some of what I shared with her.

When children are babies and toddlers I think that we all do pretty much the same instinctual things like talking baby talk, singing the ABC song and reading them stories. Once they turn three is generally when I like to start pushing them to recognize their alphabet and learn phonetics (the sounds that the letters make). Rather than drill your child with flashcards, which often isn’t much fun for either of you, turn the learning into a game. You can use flash cards to do a memory game, play bingo with them, use playdough to make the letters, draw the letters in sand or even rice! There are so many new toys, etc. for teaching the alphabet but one of my favourites is ABC magnets and a magnet board. I kept track of my child’s progress with a chart, you can turn this into a reward chart (see my blog on 'Give me some Motivation') and once your child has learned to identify each letter and what sound it makes then you can reward them and go onto the next letter.

A great way to teach your child without them becoming frustrated, especially if they are very young or are struggling with a learning disability is through the use of errorless learning. This is when you give your child the answer and they repeat it. For example, with 3 letters in front of them, AB&C you would point to the letter A and say “show me the A” and then they’d point to it. Once they can identify all the letters of the alphabet without you pointing to it (you’ll point to it slower to give them a chance to point to it before you) then you can go onto the letter sounds. With one letter at a time you’ll say “Aaa, what does the letter A sound like?” And have them repeat the sound until they know it on their own. After that, with AB&C (or whatever letters) in front of them, you’ll say “A sounds like Ahh, show me the one that sounds like Ahh” and after that step you can stop telling them the answer and just point to it or put it in the middle until they are able to do it all on their own. This process may take your child a week or two, or it may take them a month or two. Don’t push them too hard, too fast, as you don’t want to frustrate them and you want them to retain what they’ve learned make it fun and reward them!

Once you’re child knows their alphabet and sounds you can begin with some easy phonics books and computer games. I personally like www.starfall.com and www.raz-kids.com and www.tumblebooks.com which you can access for free through the Halifax Library at http://www.tumblebooks.com/library/asp/home_tumblebooks.asp

It’s important at this stage to read a lot to them and have them follow along. If your child is struggling with reading, don’t stop reading to them because you think they’re too old, keep reading to them. I found that my son was unable to read the chapter books his friends were reading but he still wanted to be able to talk about what was happening with Harry Potter, etc. so I read these books to him every night. Find books that interest your child (I bought comics for my son and found websites that interested him). Take them to the library to check out different books every week.

Please note that if your child does have a reading or other disability, then pushing them to learn phonics may not make sense for them. Phonetics doesn’t come naturally to some people, like my son; he had to teach himself to read whole words which is basically memorization, which must be extremely frustrating for a child. Some things we did to help him learn to read fluently was to skip over words that didn’t make sense and then come back to them and see if he could fill it in after. For example if he didn’t know the word ‘bounce’ in the following sentence, he’d skip it and continue reading and by the end of the sentence he would probably know what it was through process of elimination. “Can you bounce the ball to the net?” We also utilized reading software and games on the computer which read to him and got him a tutor. Having a tutor helped to decrease our frustration with his lack of progress and he really enjoyed getting the special attention. Something else that really helped my son’s reading and spelling and may surprise you is online chatting and texting! Although kids use some acronyms, for the most part, they type out full words and my son was forced to learn to spell, at least well enough that his friends can understand him!

Give Me Some Motivation

How many of us would get up and go to work every day if we weren’t getting paid? I hear some laughing out there! Children are no different than we are, while we may be motivated by money, recognition and a multitude of other things that we like, children too like to feel that they’ve done a good job, feel important and get to have and do things that they like.

Before teaching a child new skills or attempting to change their behaviours, we should do an inventory of what motivates them. Most parents can list off a couple of things that their child really likes but if you can make a detailed list of what they enjoy then you’ve got more ammunition in your back pocket.

Once we have a list of these reinforcing items or activities we can use them to increase desired actions or skills through a reward system. While it may be appropriate to give a toddler a goldfish cracker every time you catch them playing nicely with others, for older children you don’t want to be handing over a brand new video game every day so that it where a reward chart can come in handy. If you Google ‘reward chart’ you will find many that you can print out and use or you can make your own with a piece of paper or a white board which allows you to reuse it over and over.

The idea of a reward chart is that a child receives stickers or check marks for achieving a desired behaviour. Many parents use this for toilet training but really it can be used for many things from doing homework and chores to learning how to swim. Below are examples of different ways to use a reward chart. Remember not to put everything on a child’s reward chart. It’s not always an easy task to teach our children that as part of a family certain things should be done just to help out, but the earlier they learn this, the better. If Saturday is cleaning day, then have the child help out and give them a big Thank You but that’s it. Let them see how happy you are that the house is clean and what that means…i.e. that there’s room to play on the floor, that now you can have company over or that Mom and Dad now has free time to spend with them.

It’s always good to write down what the child is working for or even put a picture of what it is on the reward board. I’ve included some examples of creative and inexpensive rewards below if you’re having trouble of thinking of more than the obvious video games, candy and money.

A few things to remember about rewarding are that you should have a number of different items or activities to offer so that your child doesn’t get tired of the same thing. Also, the list of rewards should be things that your child doesn’t have free access to. This means that a goldfish cracker isn’t rewarding if the child can go to the pantry and help themselves to them or if they eat them for a snack every day. A trip to Grandma’s may not be rewarding either if she is going to show up the day before and take them out on the town. I knew of a parent whose son loved ‘moon sand’ so she kept a bin of it with toys up high in her kitchen and he only got it when she was teaching him a new skill like toilet training. She had that child toilet trained in 2 days flat and he was diagnosed with autism!

The final thing to remember about rewards is that nothing should be more powerful than social praise. Remember that whenever your child gets a tangible reward, they should also get a social reward (high five, hug, pat on the back, “great job!” excitement). The last thing we want to do is raise a child that expects to receive something every time he/she does a good job but at the same time we also want to use their motivation to our advantage J

Rewards

-          Day at the beach

-          Picnic at the park

-          Trip to the library

-          Splash pad or public swimming pool

-          Petting zoo

-          Play date/ sleepover

-          Board game or movie night

-          Special outing by themselves with Mom or Dad (this can be quite appealing to those with siblings!)

-          Part of a collection (train set, cards, etc.)

-          Eating out/ making homemade pizzas/ favourite meal

-          Having a spa day at home (doing nails, hair, etc.)

-          Planting a flower or vegetable garden

Daily Routine Chart

ACTIVITY	M	T	W	Th	F	S	S	25 stickers =REWARD
Brushed teeth independently
Brought home agenda from school
Helped empty the dishwasher
Did 15 minutes of homework
Was in bed at 8 pm
Total points

Homework Chart

For Every 5 Minutes of Homework Completed 5 Minutes of Staying up is earned

5	10	15	20	25	30

Learning to Swim

Played in the water	Put face in the water	Learned to Blow Bubbles	Floated on belly with help	Floated on belly by self	Kicked feet with a flutter board	Front crawl with flotation device	Front crawl without a flotation device	REWARD for learning to swim!
								A Day at Canada’s Wonderland!