Build Your Child’s Emotional Toolkit
By Rick Hanson and Jan Hanson
Let’s explore how to teach
basic, essential psychological skills that all children need,
such as being able to let go of upsetting experiences or take
in positive ones.
Help your kids chill out
Especially in early childhood, a child’s reactions to things
are more a matter of the body than the mind. When the body is
more settled, the reactions usually becomes less extreme and it
is easier for him to think clearly and control himself -- and
remember what his mama said! That’s why knowing how to settle
his body down is vitally useful to a child.
One of the best ways to teach this skill is at night, when a child
is already more relaxed and open and more willing to try (or put
up with) some new things just to keep his mom or dad in the room.
We suggest leading your child through some of these techniques
and finding the ones that work for him:
• Draw letters or shapes
on his back and see if he can figure them out.
• Tense his muscles for about five seconds and then relax
completely.
• Systematically put his attention on each major part
of his body, starting with his feet and working up to his head.
• Take big breaths; one trick is to get a child to exhale
fully and then hold the exhalation for a couple of seconds.
When he inhales, he’ll naturally take a big breath.
• Imagine that he is very heavy, sinking more and more
deeply into his bed.
• Imagine that his hands are very warm.
• Recall or imagine a very relaxing scene, like snuggling
in bed with you.
You would normally spend five to
15 minutes a night on these methods. As he gains more experience,
you can ask your child to relax his body increasingly on his own.
And during the day, you can gently encourage him to recall those
feelings of relaxation or to use the techniques he has learned.
Let go of upsetting feelings
Over time, upsetting experiences form a kind of residue in a child’s
emotional memory banks. The next time a similar situation occurs,
that residue gets activated and intensifies her reactions, like
a pre-amp blasting music out of the loudspeakers. Besides being
more uncomfortable for the child and stressful for you, her big
reactions trigger more intense responses from other kids or adults,
making her feel more picked on than ever, more unfairly dealt
with, more besieged and anxious and angry, and worse about herself.
So teaching her how to filter out
painful feelings at the end of the day or as the day goes along
can be very helpful. Again at night, when you’ve got a captive
audience, you can follow the relaxation by asking your child to
recall anything that was bothersome or upsetting during the day,
and then imagine that those feelings are being released through
one or more of these methods:
• Let her vent for a few
minutes. During that time, try not to dampen her feelings (“It’s
not as bad as all that!”).
• Exhale the feelings with each breath; perhaps imagine
that the breath is like a broom that sweeps dusty feelings away:
good riddance!
• Let them drain out of the body, perhaps as if there
were tiny valves at the tips of each finger and toe.
• Imagine the feelings being swept away by standing in
a cool and refreshing stream on a beautiful, sunny day.
• Imagine putting the feelings into a jar and tossing
it into a river to be carried off to the sea, or placing them
on a rocket ship blasting off to be burned up in the sun.
• Imagine that a cord of some kind connects her to the
things that are bothering her, and then she takes a pair of
golden, super-powerful scissors and cuts the cord.
• Say to herself phrases such as, “Let it go,”
“It’s alright,” “I can feel better now.”
As with relaxation, ask your child
to use these methods increasingly on her own, both at night and
during the day.
Take in good experiences
A child has lots of positive experiences in a day, but many of
them may flow through his awareness without really sticking. On
the other hand, if the good moments sink in, they become a crucial
resource inside, a source of soothing and encouragement he can
draw on the next time things get rough. They contradict the negative,
self-fulfilling beliefs he might have, such as “I’ll
never do it right” or “No one likes me, so why bother
trying to be nice?”. They are a counter-weight in emotional
memory to the painful moments of life.
For example, paying special attention
to taking in good experiences gives an anxious child the internal
sense of being loved and safe that he of all people really needs.
It enables a spirited child -- zooming around so much that new
experiences are constantly crowding out old ones before they have
a chance to register deeply in memory -- to integrate positive
experiences at all.
You can teach your child how to
make good moments a part of himself at night as well, typically
after you have already helped him relax and let go of upsetting
feelings. As with those skills, you can encourage him to use what
he’s learning on his own, both in the evening with you in
the room, and during the day by himself. Here’s a powerful,
step-by-step method:
• Review the day and talk
about or visualize the nice moments within it, such as sweet
times with you, accomplishing something, learning a new skill
or an acknowledgement from others. Especially look for events
that are the opposite of how a child might characteristically
feel, like reminding a cautious kid who was nervous about petting
a dog that it was really fun when the animal licked his hand.
• As he recalls these, help him sense the positive feelings
that come with them, either by recalling how he felt earlier
in the day or by evoking how he’s entitled to feel right
now. It’s important that he not just recall a nice event
but that he has a nice feeling.
• Encourage him to let the positive feeling sink in to
his body like water into a sponge. (If you haven’t already,
show him how water soaks into a dry sponge.) He could also imagine
that there’s a treasure chest in his heart into which
he places a picture of your smiling face, a great time with
his father, a success riding his tricycle and so on.
Remind him that he is taking
you and his dad with him wherever he goes and that he can draw
on the memory of these good feelings whenever he wants. While
he is having this good experience, he could touch a part of
his body, such as his wrist or heart, so that he can “cue
up” the nice feelings again, in the future, just by touching
that same part of his body.
• As an optional bonus, (especially for older children)
you could finish up by having your child visualize a difficult
situation -- while remaining completely relaxed, with a strong
sense of feeling good inside -- and see himself acting effectively.
Start with relatively easy situations and work up to more challenging
ones as the days go by.
For example, you could ask a
cautious child to imagine being accidentally bumped while standing
in line at preschool, and see himself staying relaxed and calm,
not worried about being hurt. Or you could ask a spirited child
to imagine another child beating him in a board game and then
see himself shrugging it off, staying relaxed and calm, not
getting mad or knocking the board over and telling himself he’ll
probably win next time.
Then, have the child imagine
the positive outcomes that would result and the good feelings
he’d have.
You can also use this technique
as the basis of a powerful, three-step exercise. First, the child
imagines the situation (while staying relaxed), sees himself acting
in an effective, positive way and imagines how good that will
feel.
Then he imagines the same situation,
but this time he sees himself acting in the old, not-so-great
ways, and he imagines the bad results and crummy feelings that
would occur.
Third, he makes a conscious choice
about which way he wants to act (hopefully, the positive approach),
and then he visualizes that and the results.
Help them take charge of
their own minds
Even young children can be taught how to gain more control over
their thoughts, feelings and wants. Adjusting their approach to
the age of the child, there are lots of ways that parents can
teach three useful skills:
• Self observation
It’s crucial for a child to be able to notice when she
is slipping into or already in a state of being that could be
a problem, such as getting rigid or revved up. Just noticing
it puts her back in the driver’s seat, like the rider
of a horse who suddenly realizes her mount is heading the wrong
way.
You can help by being like a
mirror, reflecting the child back to herself so she can see
herself more clearly; it’s simple to do this by saying
(in a gentle, non-judgmental way) what you think might be going
on, like “You've got to have the red cup, right?”
or “Are you feeling kind of zoomy?” You can also
ask a child to step back from herself and tell you what’s
happening inside: “How excited are you right now: a little,
medium or a lot?”
• Talking back to his or her thoughtsYour
child can also argue with the wrong or overly negative thoughts
in her mind. As usual, you start by doing it for the child,
and then encourage her over time to do it more and more on her
own. (A fun way to move in that direction is to take turns coming
up with a reason why some negative thought is wrong.)
For example, if she is worried
about burglars, you could help her come up with this list of
reasons why she’s safe: the house is all locked; lights
are on; no one has ever been burglarized in our neighborhood;
three dogs live next door that bark at anything that moves,
and burglars stay away from dogs like that; our house does not
look rich.
Or let’s suppose that your
spirited son was excluded from some group of boys in kindergarten,
and he thinks no one likes him and school will be horrible.
The rebuttals could include:
it happened once but it may
not happen again;
it happened for a reason that you can change (i.e. don’t
grab the ball from one of the boys in the group);
you will talk with the teacher
who will try to help out;
kids are mean for lots of reasons
that have nothing to do with you (like their brothers were
picking on them), so it does not mean anything about you if
they are mean;
you played with other kids
later that day and it was fun;
there are other kids you could
become friends with;
you are a great and special
person in such-and-such ways;
you will make lots of new and
better friends in the future;
we love you a ton;
your dog loves you;
you are lovable;
love and a sense of your own
worth are deep in your heart and will never go away.
• Making good
plans It’s so helpful for a child to be aware
of the plan that’s currently in place, the need sometimes
to make a new plan and the basic idea that it’s not ok
to change plans unless Mom or Dad agrees.
You can tell a child what the
current plan is: “We’re getting ready to leave,
and you shouldn’t be trying to do anything else.”
Or ask -- neutrally as a coach and teacher, not a scolding parent
-- what she thinks the plan is: “What are you supposed
to be doing right now?”
Or have her tell you what her
plan is for something: “How are you going to clean up
the cereal on the counter? What are the steps?” If she
gets rigidly locked on to a plan in her mind that needs to change,
such as she has to get into the car before her younger brother,
you can talk with her about the need for a different plan: “Yes,
you thought you could get in the car first. But Bobby’s
sick, he’s got the runny nose, so I didn’t want
him to stand in the wind while you got in the car. I’m
sorry, but we had to make a new plan. That happens sometimes.”
Finally, suppose your spirited,
rather impulsive daughter sometimes changes the rules in games
in order to win, and that creates problems for her with other
kids. You could say, “Did we agree you could roll the
dice twice? No, we didn’t. The plan in this game is each
person rolls once. You can’t change the plan unless everyone
agrees.”
The psychological skills you give
your child will not make a difference overnight. But if you stick
with them for several months, in most cases you’ll see a
substantial improvement. If you don’t, that would suggest
a greater extreme of temperament or perhaps other issues that
are worth discussing with a specialist in child temperament, your
pediatrician or a therapist who works with children.
© Rick Hanson and Jan Hanson
The Hansons have a
daughter and son, ages 12 and 15. Rick Hanson, Ph.D., is a psychologist
(PSY 12938) with a focus on the family. He is also a past president
of the board of directors of A.P.P.L.E. FamilyWorks. Jan Hanson,
L.Ac., is an acupuncturist (AC 5960) with a special interest in
women's and children’s health and nutrition. Rick may be
reached at (415) 459-5920 and Jan at (415) 479-2082.
