enog:
So I was out to eat and this child(maybe 3 years old) in the booth next to us started crying loudly. The mom tried to calm him down but he started to go into tantrum mode and fussed even more. So she picked him up and walked out of the restaurant to a bench outside our window. We could hear her ask him, “look at me, what’s upsetting you?” To which he responded with more crying. So she says, “Well you’re clearly overwhelmed, so we’re going to sit out here and take a break until you can compose yourself and tell me what’s wrong.” Which is exactly what happened after a couple minutes. Anyways I just think it’s so good to speak to your children in a logical, respectful manner instead of shushing them and leaving them to deal with their stress alone.
this is such a surreal way to calm a child down like is a three year old really going to understand you like that ….
Yes, if it’s what they’re used to. It has to be consistent though, you can’t, like, suddenly start doing it one day and expect them to understand.
It also helps if you kind of narrate your own emotions when you’re upset even just over little things, like ‘oh! I just can’t get this to lay flat, but I really want to! I got mad because I couldn’t get it to work, and that’s frustrating!’
It feels silly at first, but it models it for them and helps them understand how to communicate (and recognize) their own emotions.
I think I reblogged the original post before, but I love and appreciate the further explanation. All in all this is a great practice, but some parents either don’t do it consistently, or aren’t taking in other factors (like, can your child process your words right now? Sometimes they can’t because EMOTIONS!) OR they do this without removing them from the stressor/stressful situation, and then their kid is overwhelmed and has no idea what their parent is saying to them. You need to look at your kid and make sure they’re taking in your words, and also not expect them to respond like an adult would.
You can also easily simplify the language, to something like “Hey what’s going on?” or “let’s get some space”/”I’m going to give you space” or “let’s take a break and take some deep breaths”
I’ve seen parents who just totally take this and start speaking to their children in ways that their child legitimately cannot understand, not necessarily because of their age, but because they have no context, or are too overwhelmed by outside factors, OR because their parents are expecting them to process words they’re not used to (consistency and modeling are key) and then demanding an adult response. That’s stressful. Using this kind of language with kids is GREAT to get your kids more in touch with their emotions and actions, but it’s important that you’re doing it correctly, paying attention to how your child responds, and providing them with a model in your own actions and interactions.
I work in education and how that parent in the first post helped their child calm down is exactly what we do when I work in preK through 1st grade classrooms.
I also do this with my own children and it ‘s incredibly helpful. Small children are able to tell you what’s wrong and tell you how they feel if they’re given the tools to do so.
Common mistakes parents make:
-Assuming this will work right away. It won’t. It takes time for kids to get used to this. Parents/families need to use this frequently, consistently, and using language children can understand.
-By not staying calm themselves. This will not work if you let your own emotions/frustrations get in the way. When this happens frustrated parents want the kids to ‘hurry up and tell them what’s wrong’. Kids can tell you’re upset/frustrated/impatient. This can make things worse. You as a parent/caregiver need to remain calm as well.
-Use language that the child doesn’t understand (as Enog mentioned above). Use language that your child CAN understand. A big thing you need to do even when your child isn’t upset is to identify feelings. Do this all the time. When a child can’t identify emotions, they have a hard time dealing with them. Use accessible language and model identifying as well as healthy ways to deal with various emotions.
-Failing to remove the child from a stressful situation. This is a VERY COMMON mistake parents and caregivers make. Young children in particular have a hard time focusing/calming down when overwhelmed. Some parents/caregivers expect the child to calm down while overwhelmed get frustrated with the child when this method doesn’t work. Be sure to remove your child from the stressful situation or stimulus before asking them to tell you what is wrong.
Many people won’t get it right the first time. Recognizing the frequent mistakes above will help parents/caregivers from making these errors.
My mom was also taught in my brothers daycare that you can start communicating with kids under 4 to get them used to communicating and to try and make the world seem less chaotic. They would tell the kids if they were going to stop playing in 10 minutes or change their diapers or eat or whatever. And as strange as it sounds that toddlers actually became less fussy and it really made the parents start paying attention to their kids and making sure that they were communicating. I’ve seen so many young kids have a tantrum because their parent just picks them up from playing and takes them instead of giving them a five or ten minute warning that might have made it so there was no problem at all. I’m sure it would set them up for everything mentioned in this post. I hate people that act like you shouldn’t communicate with kids or try and help them understand what’s going on around them, I just always think of how overwhelming and scary being a kid, and especially a very young child, can be.
^Important. 😀
Omg it’s so important to talk to kids about what’s going on even if they’re newborns and you think they can’t understand, at some point (long before they can talk themselves) they do and they learn that their feelings, needs and boundaries matter, that they’re people not objects to be moved about and acted upon
Research shows babies understand the gist of what parents are saying as early as six months. Explaining things to babies and toddlers like they’re real people who can understand you (which they are) is incredibly powerful and good for their brain and social development! For example, I was recently hanging out with parents who are really good at this. The one year old was fussing as my friend tried to get him to eat, and so she communicated everything she was doing with him. “I see that you don’t want the apple sauce right now. Is your tummy full? Let’s try the noodles. No, I can see you’re making a face, so I don’t think you want those. How about your bottle?” Etc. This starts an early precedent of clear communication and showing that you care and understand a child’s needs. Even when I was saying goodbye to the family, that kiddo clearly had no idea what was going on, and mom still made a point to say, “Sequoia is going home now, so we say goodbye. Bye Sequoia!” instead of saying bye without involving him.
Tag: children
Teaching Consent to Small Children
A friend and I were out with our kids when another family’s two-year-old came up. She began hugging my friend’s 18-month-old, following her around and smiling at her. My friend’s little girl looked like she wasn’t so sure she liked this, and at that moment the other little girl’s mom came up and got down on her little girl’s level to talk to her.
“Honey, can you listen to me for a moment? I’m glad you’ve found a new friend, but you need to make sure to look at her face to see if she likes it when you hug her. And if she doesn’t like it, you need to give her space. Okay?”
Two years old, and already her mother was teaching her about consent.
My daughter Sally likes to color on herself with markers. I tell her it’s her body, so it’s her choice. Sometimes she writes her name, sometimes she draws flowers or patterns. The other day I heard her talking to her brother, a marker in her hand.
“Bobby, do you mind if I color on your leg?”
Bobby smiled and moved himself closer to his sister. She began drawing a pattern on his leg with a marker while he watched, fascinated. Later, she began coloring on the sole of his foot. After each stoke, he pulled his foot back, laughing. I looked over to see what was causing the commotion, and Sally turned to me.
“He doesn’t mind if I do this,” she explained, “he is only moving his foot because it tickles. He thinks its funny.” And she was right. Already Bobby had extended his foot to her again, smiling as he did so.
What I find really fascinating about these two anecdotes is that they both deal with the consent of children not yet old enough to communicate verbally. In both stories, the older child must read the consent of the younger child through nonverbal cues. And even then, consent is not this ambiguous thing that is difficult to understand.
Teaching consent is ongoing, but it starts when children are very young. It involves both teaching children to pay attention to and respect others’ consent (or lack thereof) and teaching children that they should expect their own bodies and their own space to be respected—even by their parents and other relatives.
And if children of two or four can be expected to read the nonverbal cues and expressions of children not yet old enough to talk in order to assess whether there is consent, what excuse do full grown adults have?
I try to do this every day I go to nursery and gosh it makes me so happy to see it done elsewhere.
Yes, consent is nonsexual, too!
Not only that, but one of the reasons many child victims of sexual abuse don’t reach out is that they don’t have the understanding or words for what is happening to them, and why it isn’t okay. Teaching kids about consent helps them build better relationships and gives them the tools to seek help if they or a friend need our protection.
I wish this post featured the OP’s name more prominently; it’s by Libby Anne of love joy feminism, and she writes fantastic stuff. A survivor of Christian patriarchal fundamentalism, she writes about parenting from the perspective of someone working through her own traumatic experiences. I love reading her blog.
I met my nephew (codename Totoro) in person for the first time when he was eight months old. Before this, I’d known him only through video calling. A few hours after getting home from the airport, my sister (codename Mystery) was holding him on her hip. I asked her, “Can I hold him?”
She smiled and said, “Ask him.”
“What?”
“Hold out your hands to him and see if he leans toward you or away from you.” So I did, and he leaned away, and I dropped the subject. Five or ten minutes later, he was leaning towards me, overbalancing and almost falling out of Mystery’s arms, and she said, “He’s asking you to hold him now.” So I did, and it was magical, getting to introduce myself to my nephew and the firstborn of the Sybil family.
I am all about respecting children’s agencies and teaching good boundaries. I didn’t ask at the airport, when Totoro was surrounded by new stimuli and needed the reassurance of his mother. I didn’t ask when we first got back either; I gave him time to settle down, get used to his surroundings, and get used to me in person instead of a moving picture on a cell phone screen. I thought I was respecting his boundaries. But it had never occurred to me that an eight month old, who couldn’t speak or even understand most speech, might be able to establish his own boundaries.
A year later they came to visit again, when he was 19 or 20 months old. The weather was what we Northwesterners call “a bit nippy” and what thin-blooded Midwesterners like my sister call “fucking freezing, are you kidding me?” As we were getting ready to leave the house, Totoro objected vehemently to the need for pants and a coat. Finally Mystery had me stand by and hand her things as she near-literally wrestled him into his clothes. He was screaming and kicking and saying, “No pants, no no, don’t wanna, no Mama.”
And as she worked, Mystery kept talking to him soothingly. “I can hear you saying no, and I understand that you don’t want to wear your clothes, but it’s my job to keep you safe and warm. I know you’re saying no, I can hear that, but it’s very cold outside and I have to keep you safe and warm.” Over and over, reassuring him that she understood what she wanted and that she had a good reason for ignoring his wishes.
And it hit me all over again, an aspect of respecting children’s agencies and boundaries that had never once occurred to me. Because sometimes it is necessary to override their wishes. Part of being a good guardian is keeping them safe even when they want to play in traffic or eat nothing but candy. But I’d never thought about it from Totoro’s point of view, how frightening and how helpless it would feel to scream “no” into an unhearing void. Mystery made sure he knew he was being heard, he wasn’t being ignored, he was important enough to have people react to his words.
It’s just, geez. Every time I watch Mystery interact with Totoro I learn something new about agency and boundaries and just plain humanness. It blows me away.
When my kid was 5 we were on holiday at a holiday camp and we were in a play area and kiddo attached themselves to an older girl in the play area.
Kiddo was following her around and chattering at her. I watched for a little while because most of the time things sort themselves out without intervention but then she hid in a tunnel and Kiddo plunked themself down in front of the tunnel effectively trapping the girl. I walked over and knelt down and asked “Are they making you uncomfortable?” to the girl. She said yes so I apologised and removed Kiddo from the situation.
I then explained to Kiddo that their behaviour wasn’t okay because the girl didn’t want to play with them. Kiddo didn’t get it and expressed a desire to go bug the girl some more so we went back to our room and me and my husband had a long talk with kiddo explaining that no means no and that you need to read body language and how to read it.
We got through to Kiddo by relating it back to themself (you don’t like being hugged when you’re not in the mood for it) and Kiddo realised that what they had done was wrong.
What we said was “no one owes you their time or their friendship and no always means no”
Consent isn’t actually hard to teach. You just relate it to a kids own experience “You wouldn’t like it if someone did x without your permission would you?” And kids get that and they learn. Kiddo loves hugging people but we’ve taught them to ask first and to respect the no.
Watching my toddler figure out how to language is fascinating. Yesterday we were stumped when he kept insisting there was a “Lego winner” behind his bookshelf – it turned out to be a little Lego trophy cup. Not knowing the word for “trophy”, he’d extrapolated a word for “thing you can win”. And then, just now, he held up his empty milk container and said, “Mummy? It’s not rubbish. It’s allowed to be a bottle.” – meaning, effectively, “I want this. Don’t throw it away.” But to an adult ear, there’s something quite lovely about “it’s allowed to be a bottle,” as if we’re acknowledging that the object is entitled to keep its title even in the absence of the original function.
Another good post to read for those writing small human characters.
wow does this post have perfect timing
blackash26 