The talk I gave tonight was primarily about how babies, as well as young children, experience hyperconsciousness, something that is often considered one of the main reasons why children at these stages are ‘difficult’ to handle.
Kids man, they encompass some of the most phenomenal thought processes and it is all driven by the fact that this whole world is completely new to them. If you want to see abstract ideas constructed in a matter of seconds, talk to a child. Their grasp is unbelievable.
Even if you feel that children whine, cry, and scream too much… in considering how they’re in a world they had no prior concept of, and are subject to an uncontrollable amount of stimuli every waking moment…. I still believe they’re handling it all fairly well.
This conference made me realize how much of a passion I have for destigmatizing childhood behaviors. There’s a sort of ‘Ahh..’ moment that people come to when they see that children actually have reasons for everything they do, that they shouldn’t be viewed as underdeveloped ‘functioning’ adults but should instead be recognized as humans in a separate yet equally important stage of life.
I’ve also been doing some work in researching and writing about children as an oppressed class, I’m finding ways to incorporate my previous sentiments into that.
I really think hospitals and doctors that work with pregnancy and pediatricians need to make more literature available for how to, ya know, work with kids? Because the more conversations we have about spanking (and how it’s ineffective and harmful and does more bad than good), the more I realize that a lot of people don’t know the alternatives. Or like, anything about child development or where misbehavior stems from.
So, as someone who went through childhood development classes in college, works with kids for a living, and knows multiple people who specialized in childhood education, here are some pointers when you are working with kids:
1. Model emotional response for kids. Children are learning how to recognize and respond to their own emotions. All the way up through high school, children’s brains are still developing, and the emotions they are learning to process become more complex. So with really young kids, the easiest way to help them with this is to model emotional self awareness and self care.
“Oh wow, mommy is feeling angry because the cat made a mess. I’m going to clean this mess and then go sit in my room in the quiet for a short break so I feel better.”
“You know, I am feeling very sad about not going to the park because it is raining. I bet some hot chocolate and a book would make me feel better.”
”Huh, I’m feeling kind of cranky and hungry, but daddy won’t be home for dinner for another hour. I bet I’ll feel better if I eat a little piece apple while we wait.”
2. Understand what causes child frustration and work to preempt it.
-Transitions (from one activity to another, getting in the car, etc) can be stressful, especially if the activity or location they are leaving is fun. Give kids a warning when this is going to happen. With young kids, give them about 5-15 minutes of warning (”10 minutes until we are going to leave the park and go home. Do your last thing.”), with older kids, just give them a time frame. (We are can play at McDonalds for 30 minutes, but then we have to go grocery shopping, ok?)
Not being able to communicate what they want to is frustrating. Babies can learn simplified baby sign language months before they are verbal. Kids may not know the words for what they are trying to say. Be patient and help them find the right words. On a similar note, don’t ignore kids. If you really can’t respond to their question right away because of something else, at least tell the “Yes, I heard your question. I’ll answer you as soon as I’m done talking on the phone.”
Not being able to make choices or having too much choice can be overwhelming. Give kids a limited, reasonable selection of choices. “Do you want apple slices or juicy pears on the side for lunch?” is much better than “What do you want with your sandwich?” or just giving them apple slices. “Do you want to give grandpa a hug or a high five?” is better than demanding they hug grandpa right away.
3. Understand that kids are people to. They will get hungry, tired, an annoyed just like adults do. Sometimes you have to be flexible and give them time to self care. Talk to them, explain things to them, let them be people and not just dolls. “Because I said so” is really unhelpful for a growing kid. “We can’t buy Fruit Loops today because we are already getting Frosted Flakes. We only need one cereal at a time.” is going to do you a lot more favors. “Don’t pick up the glass snow globe. It belongs to grandma and can break easy. She would be sad if we broke it on accident.” is better than “don’t touch that.”
And look, no parent is perfect. No baby sitter, no teacher, no care taker is going to be awesome all the time. And no kid is going to be perfect. They will cry and have tantrums, and not be able to tell you what they need, and be stubborn sometimes. Sometimes they need space, or quiet time. Sometimes they need attention and validation.
But kids learn from every interaction they have, so adults need to make the effort to show all the love, and patience, and empathy, and thoughtfulness we want them to learn.
How to determine if a kids injury is serious or not
offer them “medicinal chocolate” if they stop crying it’s fine if they carry on crying/refuse the chocolate then it’s serious
From age two apparently^^
Oh wow I never heard this one.
German edition: offer the kid to blow away the pain. If it’s better afterwards it’s okay, if they refuse or still screaming it’s serious
Also a lot healthier than giving your kid chocolate everytime they cry tbh
It’s not everytime they cry it’s only if they get injured and you’re unsure if it’s serious because they are screaming but you can’t tell if they are overreacting or not
For things that are clearly a minor bump we give kisses instead
And before anyone thinks if a kid is screaming it’s not an over reaction
My kid fell off their bike and skinned their knee. Just skinned it that’s all and they went into full on scream/crying hysterical because it was bleeding and they hadn’t had an injury where they bled within their memory
It wasn’t so much the pain as the blood that made them hysterical.
In that case we could see it wasn’t serious but the chocolate helped them calm down and then I got them to tell me about Terraria until they were calm and their wound was dressed
It was absolutely an overreaction to a skinned knee but it was also an understandable one
Kids don’t have experience or pain tolerance we do and sometimes it’s hard to tell if it’s something that requires a trip to the hospital or not
Kids have to be TAUGHT how to self-regulate. Kids aren’t born knowing that being hurt, scared, or angry doesn’t literally mean they aren’t in life-threatening danger. As infants, our threat response system isn’t good at telling the difference between “my caretaker is in the bathroom peeing” and “I have been abandoned for the wolves to eat”, or between “I fell and bonked my head” and “I am being actively mauled by a mountain lion”.
Because in both events, a child’s stress response system initially responds the same way to both scenarios. They produce roughly the same levels of stress hormones for both events. It’s only after hundreds, sometimes thousands, of repetitions of “Being hungry and unattended for a little bit ends with someone coming to feed me” or “experiencing pain does not mean I am about to die” that children’s stress systems begin to learn what’s worth freaking out about, and what’s not.
So little kids who are past infancy often have the brain wiring that can go, “Okay, this is not an emergency, I don’t need to freak out,” but it doesn’t kick in very naturally when they’re hurt or scared. They need to be reminded that it exists by the attention of a trusted adult, or the reminder of physical actions or objects (food, comfort objects, kisses) of all the times it’s been okay before.
my parents’ line was “are you hurt, or are you scared?”
because sometimes you’re just kinda shocked from unexpectedly falling over or running into the door or whatever. but asking the question means you gotta stop and look at the thing you’re feeling and give it a name, something i still need prompting for to this day sometimes. but once the feeling has a name we can figure out what to do with it, and also the slow-down-and-find-a-word has lowered the shock level.
“both” is an acceptable answer, btw.
if they’re not gushing blood or obviously have a broken bone, two things that (in my personal experience working with 5-12 year old kids, anyway) are helpful:
-name their feelings, as mentioned above. “Wow, that looked like a nasty fall! I bet that hurt, let’s see what we can do to fix it” or “Oh man, it’s really scary to fall off the swings, huh?” Keep your tone calm, because kids tend to look to the adult to see how they should be reacting.
-incorporate learning about their body/how their body works with figuring out how serious the injury is. “Wow, you fell down really hard! Can you point to where it hurts the most?” or “Let’s check your hand to see how it got hurt. Can you open and close your hand in a fist? That’s good, if your fingers can still bend then it means they’re not broken!” or “I see your knee is really red where you scraped it on the sidewalk, did you know that’s because when you get hurt, your body sends more blood to the owie to help fix it?” This distracts them and if it’s not a serious injury, 99% of the time distraction and a bandaid or ice pack is all they’ll need.
(Things to NOT do, btw: “you’re okay”/“you’re fine”/“that’s not that bad” I hope I don’t need to explain why)
My law school is in downtown Chicago, and the other day I was headed in to the library to finish up a paper. I pass a daycare every day, it’s normal to see the building, but the weather was so beautiful that the teachers had brought the kidlets outside and lined them up for a walk.
They were all Very Tiny (the oldest couldn’t have been more than four) and holding onto one of those child leads with the handles. I was completely prepared to just walk past them—the teachers were counting them off and making sure everybody had their buddy, they were clearly busy. But one of the teachers spotted me, and without missing a beat said cheerfully, “Say good morning to the nice lady!”
I have never ever been so completely and unexpectedly charmed as when a bunch of tiny children grinned, waved, and chimed in with variations of “good morning.” One of them clearly shrieked “GREEN!” probably because I was wearing a bright green t-shirt.
When I finally got to the library and sat down at the table my friend had staked out, she took one look at me and asked why I was still smiling.
once at dinner this lil kid was sitting in the booth attached to ours and she kept standing up and looking over the back of the bench and I made faces at her and she’d start jumping up and down and laughing and so I’d bob my head up and down and she’d jump more and lose it and her mom would have her sit down but she’d pop back up every few minutes and this went on for like 45 minutes and when they were leaving her mom told us “thanks for being so patient with her jumping around and looking over at you” and I was like “haha I was making faces at her the whole time” and her mom was like “OH THAT’S WHY”
Making faces at small children in public is one of the great joys on earth.
i'll apple your turnover 