It’s so common to see little three and four-year-olds telling their peers and adults what to do with such ferocity you wonder where that gumption came from. It stops being cute when they keep demanding their way and you find yourself helpless to curb their appetites for getting what they want from others all the time. They expect their peers to play what they choose, follow their rules for as long as they want until they change the rules to suit them or change the game.
Author • Psychoanalyst • Artist
7 Effective Ways to Instantly Feel Calmer, As Backed by Science
Do yuou want to calm down instantly?
Are you stressed out, anxious, and irritated looking for some quick ways to effectively calm yourself down? Here are a few suggestions that I’ve repeatedly discovered help my patients as their psychotherapist:
- SMILE! Smiling actually releases endorphins and lifts your spirits and relaxes you.
- Look outside of yourself. This means look out a window, take a walk, focus on what’s around you and just as the smile releases endorphins, so does a shift in focus and brisk walk.
Stages in Adolescence: Early, Middle, and Late Development
Understanding stages in adolescence is very important to parents when they want to comprehend what their teens are going through. Their chronological age may not correspond to their developmental age so perceptions may be different than what is expected.
Early Adolescence
Early adolescence is a time when kids begin to separate from their parents internally and physically. This creates a kind of loss for kids who may be despondent without knowing why. To find realistic disappointments in parents who have seemed so influential and authoritative is a shift in the teen’s understanding of themselves in relation to their parents. Reality sets in. Parents aren’t perfect and powerful. It’s important for parents to recognize the change without feeling badly about it but in fact learning to collaborate more with their child in solving problems.
Rushing to Work When Your Child Has Separation Anxiety
Separation anxiety is a problem for parents when they need to go to work. This creates a conflict for a busy parent rushing in the early morning hours. What to do?
Because your child has separation anxiety, always leave at least half an hour of free time before you leave for work. This probably means getting up earlier, but it’s worth it.
- Listen to your crying child’s words of fear about you leaving. Paraphrase their worry so they know you listened and care. (“I know you’re upset I’m leaving the house now. It’s distressing.”)
Kids’ Healthy Expressions of Anger
Help your kids, children and teens, learn that anger is a healthy emotion that can be constructively shared. If kids learn this then they are less defiant, less oppositional, more open, and self-assertive. Here’s how to accomplish this feat!!
Parenting Tips for Healthy Expressions of Anger
- Let kids know early on that anger is a natural emotion that everyone has but it’s all about how it’s expressed to make a positive impact on others.
Parenting Kids with Overt and Covert Anxiety
Parenting kids with overt and covert anxiety using Parental Intelligence will ease their minds.Kids show their anxiety in overt and covert ways. For some it is obvious. They are nervous, panicky, fearful, obsessive, phobic, and socially awkward. But others show anxiety indirectly masked behind unusual irritability, frustration, annoyance, and even anger that seems out of control. The latter are kids who have trouble verbalizing their anxiety and they can be harder to reach.
Helping the Overt Anxious Child with Parental Intelligence
What Adolescents Need from their Parents
What do ad
olescents need from their parents that is different from what they needed as younger children? They actually continue to need the same loving care but in new ways that respect the growing autonomy of the adolescents. Central to the teenagers’ needs is the ability of their parents to listen to them carefully, respecting their ideas, points of view, feelings, opinions, and intentions. This requires nonjudgmental listening without interrupting or blaming the teen as they speak. When a teen feels heard, she feels respected and forms a good relationship with her parent.
Parenting Through Temper Tantrums
What is a Tantrum?
A tantrum occurs when a child’s whole system of managing their feelings and thoughts collapses. A tantrum is a communication that seems to happen suddenly for both child and parent. The child may lie down on the floor with flailing arms and legs, screaming and crying. The parent needs to discover the trigger before taking action except for making sure the child is safe. The triggers may be minor such as disappointing a child’s wish for a toy, saying “no” to requests, expecting kids to tolerate delays and be patient when they have not learned to tolerate frustration well, and rivalry with siblings.
Critical Thinking and the Importance of Plau
Play is often structured in games, sports, video games, and classes that teach something like karate or painting. But there are great advantages to unstructured play which is left to the imagination of the child. Without specific rules or an adult present.kids are left to use their own creativity to create narratives about whatever is on their minds. This may take the form of climbing a tree, building a fort out of couch pillows, or playing with superhero figures in a story. What ever form it takes, the child is the creator.
Critical Thinking
Down with Negative Self-Thought
How do you suppress negative self=thought? Some of us our chronic thinkers. It’s important to parent ourselves well. Our minds are so busy we forget to listen to the quiet around us. If you are someone with negative self-talk, that’s the first thing to do: Just listen to the sounds or quiet around you and you will realize how much constant chatter is going on inside your head. Then as if you were an observer of your own mind, listen to the chronic debates you have about your self that you are surrounding yourself with. Take a deep breath and start again. Think this time with reason not emotion. You will find that your talk changes to a more rational decision making process about whatever you are plagued with.