by Kathryn de Bruin | Apr 17, 2020 | Crisis
In our last post, we identified Secure Coping Characteristics. While some may fall under that category, chances are yourself or someone else in your family naturally utilizes anxious coping strategies during stressful and scary situations.
Those who use anxious strategies to cope in crisis are likely to feel extreme amounts of pain and fear, and are likely to demonstrate this visibly through feeling anxious, getting loud and possibly angry, gesticulating.
Basically, they wear their heart on their sleeve. And yes, they experience feelings more intensely than others do. They are easily overwhelmed with their emotions and need help soothing themselves. They look to others to help them to do so.
Anxious children may get overstimulated, overexcited, be more boisterous or active than usual. I think about a family member who could easily give me a long list of grievances if I asked her how she was doing right now. If you are parenting a child with an anxious strategy, you probably feel like they need a great deal from you, and you might be exhausted in your attempts to comfort them. If there is something to be fearful of, this person will be the one to pick it up. Often times, we associate terms like “Worry Magnet”, even possibly “Drama Queen” with this anxious coping strategy.
So how do you support someone who has Anxious Coping Skills?
- Physical Contact – Give hugs, massages, or encouragements to run off the energy. A couple good exercises for this are: “I’m so upset with you, let’s stomp the ground as hard as we can”, “Give me all your worry and pain right now by hugging me as hard as you can”.
- Opportunities to vent – Give them a grumble session. Some good exercises for this may be: “If you could grumble for a minute as much as you could, what would you say?” “If you could change 1 thing right now, what would it be?” journaling is helpful (how I feel; 0 – 10 how intense is the feeling; what am I thinking; what am I doing; something I would change; who am I telling about it).
After you’ve had a good talk, it may be helpful to refocus them onto something else, using phrases like “Wash your face with cold water and then let’s find something else to do”. Encourage them to focus on something that they can control: “You have control over your mind, your thoughts, your behaviors, your immune system, and certain parts of your environment.”
Sometimes it just takes someone to come alongside them in their struggles of anxiety, to show them some ways to deal with it in a healthy way, and give them tools to move forward. This can be incredibly helpful training for identifying emotions and redirecting to healthy secure strategies later on in life!
by Kathryn de Bruin | Apr 2, 2020 | Play Therapy
Some of us are really struggling at home. Others are having a wonderful time. In fact, there are a group of anxious children who are not even symptomizing right now because they are so happy to just be home with their loved ones. They feel safe and cared for, and they are relieved from the pressures of their busy and possibly over-scheduled everyday lives. This can be the perfect time to introduce therapeutic play to your children, regardless of which category they fit in.
Fact is, we have time at home, and we have time to play. So how do we get ourselves to play, and how do we play in a way that is therapeutic to everyone involved?
If you don’t enjoy playing with your children, don’t despair! You are not alone. Playing with children is very important, but it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Don’t get stuck on overthinking this. Rather, think about something that you do enjoy doing. If you had to play something, what would it be? Your child will enjoy it because you enjoy it. So, do this thing, albeit kicking a ball, playing marbles, a board game you like. Be true to yourself, and soon your child will all about it too. Because honestly, they mostly just want to be with you!
If you’re still out of ideas, there are a number of things that you can do with your child, such as the activities listed below. These are Theraplay-based activities.
To learn more, here is a link to The Theraplay Institute’s website: https://theraplay.org/
Here is a link to their Activities book: https://theraplay.org/product/theraplay-activities-flip-book/
I wanted to demonstrate some of these Theraplay-based activities with my 6-year-old daughter. It feels really good as a parent to be spending this kind of quality time with her, and I can feel the connection between us as we laugh together, and share these special moments! I also notice how her behavior changes because her love tank is filled up with this one-on-one play time.
Click on each game below to see the demonstration video:
These games can be played with children of different ages. Try them and see which ones you enjoy!
I also asked my 11-year-old son to make a scene in the sand about Coronavirus. He created a double-sided scene and asked me to guess which side I thought was the virus. Reluctantly I said the bigger, scarier side and he replied “Yes!” Towards the end of our time I asked him what he would do if he could change one thing. He proceeded to punch the virus and destroy that part of the scene. He looked so powerful as he did this.
Letting him create this scene helped me to know how he was viewing the virus. From there it led to a longer conversation between us, but it all started with simply observing his artwork and commenting on what I saw.
Play doesn’t need to be long and complicated, it can simply be bringing your child to do something you love together, giggling over some games, or creating a scene to see how they view the world. Hopefully this helps give you some ideas to do together when the days seem extra long, and create some positive bonding memories in the process!
by Kathryn de Bruin | Oct 31, 2019 | Anxiety
I hate to say it, but we live in a culture of bullying and teasing…
I remember when I first arrived in the States twenty years ago and watched shows like Saturday Night Live, and really struggling with the satire. I just couldn’t understand how a group could make fun of others. Having lived in two other countries and traveled to countless places, I can’t say that I’ve experienced this the way that I have here. In America, we seem to take things to an extreme and we seem to make fun of everything. I wonder to myself when all of this came about, when did it become ok to be mean and to rip people off. When did this become the definition of closeness and of friendship. Is this a result of playfulness due to closeness? Or is this an avoidance of intimacy? I suppose it could be both or either, but deciphering that as a child, must be challenging. Teasing and endearment have become entangled and have added to anxiety in school. Isn’t that what we often tell our children, he wouldn’t tease you if he didn’t like you?
When you’ve been raised in a culture that is very different, with messages like “If you can’t say something nice then don’t say anything at all”, and “Be ladylike” and “Sarcasm doesn’t become you”, then you inevitably face a clash when entering this culture. It’s made for an interesting adjustment for me. Now that I’ve adjusted and can enjoy and take part in the teasing, I don’t fit in quite as well when I do travel back to South Africa. There I get flack for being so sarcastic.
We’ve faced so many school shootings, and I work with so many young children who are being bullied in elementary and middle school and who come to my office depressed and often suicidal. This means I’ve given a lot of thought to these problems, and they stand out to me as seemingly particular to this country, even more so than to others I’ve spent time in. And I wonder if these issues are related to the larger culture, and not just to a particular school and problem with bullying alone. Are we contributing to this problem as a larger culture? It’s a hard question to ask, because of course the “buck stops” with the person who actually took the action of committing a crime. But, it’s also important to look at the larger context, and ask what context this child was raised in, including the school climate, their family climate and their larger community and country. School bullying and middle-school nastiness has become a trend, a norm. And for that reason, it’s something that we need to educate our children about, and prepare our children to deal with. It’s certainly on my mind, and my children haven’t even entered middle-school yet. It’s certainly not something that I grew up with, and so knowing how to navigate these challenges, from personal experience, doesn’t come naturally for me.
So what are the ways we can better combat this for ourselves and our families?
Educate Yourself
I recently watched 13 Reasons Why and as horrifying as the series is, I would recommend this show to any parent. My experience growing up and in school was very different to what my children are experiencing today, and I need to know they are facing so that I can be ready to help equip them for the possible challenges in their social environment. Getting a feel for the pressure children feel and a sense of how the peer system is set up has been helpful to me.
Role Play
One of my favorite ways to engage children in learning emotional and social skills within the family context, is using role play. Ask your children what the meanest thing is that they have seen or heard at school, and then act it out. They love it when you switch up roles, and you’re the mean kid first, or the one being picked on. So switch it up and get them engaged. Teach them the difference between a passive response (being the doormat), the aggressive response (punching the other kid) and the assertive response (standing up for yourself, in a firm and clear way). Try each of the responses and ask them to reflect on what it’s like on the other side of these. Have them try the assertive response until it’s believable. Does their voice line up with their eye contact, facial expression and vocal tone. Would you take them seriously?
Utilize Sibling Rivalry
Luckily when you have multiple kids and they are close to each other in age, sibling rivalry is par for the course. And so there is ample opportunity to watch how your children handle their siblings meanness. I love thinking about the primary family as a microcosm of the rest of their lives.
How they learn to handle these relationships at home, will mirror how they handle their friendships, and then their colleagues at work, and ultimately their romantic partners in life.
The opportunity lies in these sibling relationships to teach respect, assertiveness and compromise. I think one of the most used phrases in our household is – ‘Find Agreement’. The three kids are sitting own to watch a show, and if they can’t ‘find agreement’, well
then there’s no show to be watched at all.
The social context our children are growing up in is entirely different, and it can be tough to relate and help. Understanding it ourselves is the first step in helping our children cope with it. Helping them to be resilient, and to be assertive are the most important tools as they face any teasing that they are bound to experience growing up.
