I am a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist in New York. After practicing for three decades with children, teens, and adults I have found today’s political climate is feeling threatening to many people I treat. While many children and adults who suffer from anxiety disorders seek treatment with psychotherapy and often medication, recently I am finding children and adults are reporting increased anxiety due to what they are hearing in the news.
Author • Psychoanalyst • Artist
Be Present When it Matters
Parents need to be around when it matters for their kids – crisis times such as down days, difficult exams, relationship breakdowns, changes in family dynamics and important transition times. How do you know what stresses them out? How do you make it clear that you are available anytime your child needs to talk.
How Do You Recognize What is a Crisis for Your Child?
- Notice mood changes. If you have a usually gregarious child who has been blocking everyone out, something is probably on his mind.
- If you have a more reserved child, but they seem scattered and disorganized which is out of character, again pay attention.
Helping Kids Feel Safe By Using Parental Intelligence
Nothing is more basic to an infant, a child, and an adolescent than feeling and staying safe. This applies not only to physical safety but to emotional safety based on trust in attachment to at least one parent. Without this, all else of importance falls away. A sense of safety is at the core of Parental Intelligence.
How Do We Know If Our Children Feel Emotionally Safe?
There are two ways to learn if our children feel safe: to listen to them carefully and to observe the nuances of their behavior.
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
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.
Back to School Anxiety
Most children are stressed by the advent of going back to school after summer pleasures. But stress is not the same as back to school anxiety which is identified by avoidance of school preparation, avoidance of talking about school and irritability about the topic. Children who are naturally anxious or have anxiety disorders are the most fragile when it comes to anticipatory anxiety about school.
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.
The Joy of Breastfeeding
If you wish to breast feed let me share with you the wonderful moments that I remember with my baby. Sitting in a comfy chair in the middle of the night when all is calm and quiet and it’s just you and your baby there’s nothing like that moment of feeling your infant at your breast nursing quietly skin to skin. It’s a feeling of utter meditation that you can only learn for yourself. It’s a moment of quiet reflection focused on your baby with no one or nothing interfering. It’s a moment of peaceful joy. Yes, you are nourishing your infant. Yes, you are feeding him nutrients and imunities. But at that moment in the middle of the night, you are alone with your bonded sweetheart in a way you won’t forget. Together you feel like one being. It’s not something anyone can ever take away and you and your little soul feel like a strong breath of air surrounds you ever so gently.