GYRO’S WEEKLY WELLNESS ARTICLE Improving your Child’s Self-Control It can be frustrating and embarrassing when your child has a temper tantrum while shopping in a crowded mall, at the grocery store, at a sporting event, when visiting with fiends and even at home. There are some things you can do to help your child learn how to control their emotions, be more respectful to others, follow directions, stay in their area and think through situations before responding. Teaching your child about how to manage their emotions by thinking through situations and responding based upon the potential outcome of situations is one of the most important skills a parent can teach their children. Helping Kids Develop Self-Control By learning to recognize intense emotions, understand what situations lead to them having strong emotional reactions and being able to slow their emotions down, think through situations, decide on an action and them move forward with their decision that they believe will yield the most positive outcome. For example, if you say that you child/teen will be able to play a video game or their favorite television after they clean up their room, your child/teen might pretend they don’t hear you, become angry, say mean things to you or their siblings, stomp, threaten or even cry and yell to get you to give them what they want (video games; TV) without having to clean their room. In this case, throwing a temper tantrum is their primary strategy to get what they want. Wouldn’t it be better for you and for them to be able to remain calm, think this situation through and realize that cleaning their room will result in earning the privilege you offer as well as a lot of other benefits like increased trust, a calmer and more relaxed home environment and your child or teen having a lot more free time. Here are a few suggestions on how to help your child and teen learn to control their behavior: Young children become very frustrated because they just can do some things they want to do. When you observe your child to become frustrated try to distract them with a toy or object they enjoy or eve a simple activity like patty cake. Children who are approaching the 2 year mark are ready for a brief (2-minute) timeout in a specific area like a chair or the bottom step of your staircase. Time outs allow your child to both learn that there is a consequence for their behavior and that they need to take some time away from a stressful situation and regain control. Having your child take some time away from events and think things through is still effective for children 3 – 5 years-old. Rather than setting a specific time when the time out will end, it’s best to have the time-out last until your child is able to calm down. Having them use their words to describe what happened, their role in what happened and what they could have done differently sets the stage for them to make good choices should a similar situation arise. As they get older (6-9yo), walking away from stressful situations and generating solutions to problems more independently can be encouraged and reinforced through rewards and privileges. As your child reached middle school you can encourage them to think about why they feel they way they do and to take time to think through situations before responding. As they reach the teen years, they should be able to control most of their actions. At this age you can remind them of the long-term consequences of their behaviors and choices Be sure to model good self-control yourself. Show that good emotional control and problem solving are the ways to deal with a difficult situation. Please give us a call if your child or teen has difficulty with emotional control, 360.236.0206. We’re here to help! With Warm Regards, Gyro Psychology Services 5191 Corporate Center Court SE Lacey, Washington 98503 P: 360.236.0206 T: 866.616.GYRO (4976) F: 360.236.9909 GyroPsychology “Like us on Facebook” “Follow us on Twitter”
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 03:33:49 +0000
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