Discussion of "Dealing With Disappointment" by Elizabeth Crary

[canadiyank]

lol - glad you took care of Tired, mama2train...I have that issue, too.

[canadiyank]

Continuation of Chapter Four..

How to Teach Self-Calming Tools

"Teaching kids to deal with feelings is different from telling them what to do. Teaching involves introducing the skill, linking the skill to the feeling of calmness, practicing the skill in pretend, then reminding the child that he has a choice when he is upset. The last step involves backing out and letting the child remember that he has choices himself" (38).

Introduce the tool. This is more than just telling them what to do, s/he needs to practice it when life is calm. Of course, the action of the tools (i.e., take three calming breaths) is important, but they need the rest of the teaching to be able to use it successfully by themselves. For introducing tools you can use ones they already do, notice things they do where they feel especially peaceful (coloring, laying under a tree etc.) and introduce those as tools, or gather ideas from books, etc.
Link the tool to feeling calm. Once the child is successful with the action of the tool you can start linking it to feeling calm, "When I lay under this tree I feel so calm and peacefull. I'm going to soak up this calmness to use later when I need it." "When I take these calming breaths I feel the stress start to leave my body," etc.
Practice using the tool. Start by practicing the tool in pretend. "Remember when "x" happened and I felt so upset? I'm going to pretend that happened and I'll stay calm by using my calming breaths." After modelling the tool you can invite the child to remember a time, join in yours, make up a story and act it out, etc.
Prompt the child to use the tool. Once the child can use the tool in pretend, you can prompt him/her shen upset. It is helpful to offer a choice between two tools and also before the child has totally melted down.
Back out and let a child cope. When youre child can choose to calm him/herself when prompted, it is time to back out and let your child remember without prompting. Your prompting will decrease gradually until the child is able to remember without your help.

[ReedleBeetle]

Meghan,
Does it give approximate ages or developemental milestones that indicate when these steps should be able to be reached by? I just wondered so that I know when these steps become age/developmentally appropriate

[canadiyank]

It really doesn't, RiAnnon. I think she avoids it, actually. She makes a big distinction about "skill level" - that just b/c a child is x-age doesn't mean s/he'll be able to do the various things if s/he hasn't been taught and internalized them. The closest it's come is that there's one skill per year of age and that this is a very gradual process. I think she's more concerned about skill development rather than age. The examples in the book are a wide variety of ages and sometimes the child just has a name and no age.

For me, I'm finding having read the book when she was age 2 kind of laid the foundation in my mind but she was still too young for many of skills except the most easy and physical ones. Reading it again I'm picking up more of the philosophy and plan to follow the teaching (like in the post I did just above) more thoroughly, practicing, etc. Before I just mostly told her choices.

[canadiyank]

End of Chapter Four

Four Levels of Support for Kids' Feelings

This section shows how the parents' level of support changes depending on the situation, as the child grows and matures, and as s/he learns new skills. These levels are not dependent on the age of the child, necessarily (IOW, you wouldn't abandon comforting or teaching as the child grows, but realize they will need new and different levels of support depending on their situation, age, etc.).

Parent as Comforter - this is a big part of parenting as AP parents. Often I feel stuck here, not knowing what else to do besides comfort. (Obviously, comforting is essential, but sometimes it feels like more is needed when she's melting down). The author recommends showing different ways of comforting such as a hug, a song, gentle rocking, etc, so the child can experience many different ways of being comforted.

Parent as Teacher - the parent offers the child choices of how s/he could calm him/herself. This would be choices of things that have calmed him/her in the past or have been taught as a calming tool (see previous post on teaching calming tools). "Would you like to 'x' or 'y'?"

Parent as Coach - parent provides structure for the child rather than outright offering a choice. "How do you want to calm yourself?" If s/he can't think of a way, you can ask how s/he calmed him/herself in a different situation.

Parent as Consultant - at this stage the parent offers support without offering ideas or asking questions...the purpose is to let the child know s/he can ask you for help without encouraging him/her to remain dependent on you for calming themselves. She shows a few examples of this, typically with teens or more skilled children, where you can just be present but not "fix" their problems.

This is great! Thanks for sending me over here! This is all sounding vaugely familiar, maybe I checked this out from the library before and skimmed over it. I tend to do that a lot with books. It sounds like I need to give it another look.

I am wondering about the four levels of support and where I need to be with dd. In most ways I would place us in the Parent as Teacher Level, but I think I failed miserably at the Parent as Comforter stage when she was younger and I had her brothers 15 months apart. I felt I didn't have anything left of myself to give to her not to mention I think I expected much more out of her than I should have at the time added to the fact that I never learned these skills myself growing up............ I think I have guilt about that and is why I'm having trouble knowing when to draw the line with her emotional reactions now. Hmmm. Will have to consider this a bit more. Maybe we're on both levels- me offering a quick moment of comfort but then moving on to teaching her how to self- calm.

I have tried giving her appropriate ways to self calm before but some of them make her even angrier. Deep breathing does wonders for me in the heat of the moment but if I ask her to take a deep breath she starts yelling, that makes me more mad!!!! She even told me once that hearing me take a deep breath makes her more angry. Anyway, two things I realized while reading this: I need to talk to her about different methods of calming herself BEFORE she gets angry! And, there are a lot of ways I hadn't thought of! I'm even thinking of making a list so she or I can quickly get an idea in a moment of crisis.

Thanks again. I will keep checkin in on this.

[canadiyank]

Glad you're finding it helpful! That was a big revelation to me, too...teaching the tools *before* the meltdown happens. I am working on that right now, thinking of tools and ways to introduce them.

[MaiMama]

i haven't had internet for a couple of days, so i'm glad to get back. She's been screaming recently, and I've taken her outside to do that, but I know we need to work on it when she's in a good mood (and me, too). We've tried the angry dance, but these hadn't really worked until today. We were both upset, so we both went outside & ran around the car, screaming and yelling, and then we both laughed and felt better. I guess I've needed the angry dance myself. So I'm expecting to do more car laps in the days to come. Maybe we should do it in the backyard, though.

I need to work more on being a comforter again, instead of just telling her what to do. Like I said, I stopped nursing & she really didn't have anything left. I'm not sure what else to introduce. I may need to go back to nursing ( I have sometimes), and then add the next thing on to that. Hmm. Glad to see this thread again, because I need to think about these things some more.

Thanks Meghan.

I need ta pay mroe attention to what she does to relax herself

I couldn't have found this thread at a better time. Thank you, Meghan. I'll keep following this and put the book on the top of my "to get" list.

[canadiyank]

Thanks guys. I needed the encouragement today. Glad it's proving helpful.

[ReedleBeetle]

Loving this thread still Meghan! I get so excited when I see an update on it!

[illinoismommy]

Okay okay I'll buy this.... subscribing to this thread to come back later

(following along)

[euromom]

Subbing to find this later. I looked for the book in our library and they don't have it So I checked at Borders and they don't have it there either, not only that but they said the can't even order it for me So it looks like I will have to order it online sometime but not sure when I can do that just yet.

[Heather Micaela]