Left out: Helping your child cope with social exclusion

At some point in our childhoods, nearly every single one of us was left out of a friend group, not invited to a party, excluded from the lunch table, or experienced social exclusion in some other way. The sting can linger for years and even decades. As adults, we experience social exclusion on occasion as well, and if we didn’t deal with it effectively as a child, it can be painful even if we’re well-adjusted and emotionally mature. So how can you help your child if–or, rather, when–this happens to them?

When your child is left out of a friend group, it can be a painful experience, but there are several ways you can support and empower your child to navigate this challenging situation.

Validate their feelings. First and foremost, listen to your child and validate whatever emotions your child is experiencing. Let them express their hurt, anger, or confusion without interruption or judgment. You might say something like, "I understand you're feeling upset about being left out. It's okay to feel that way."

Encourage self-compassion. In addition to maintaining a supportive home environment where they feel valued and loved, remind them to have compassion for themselves. This may look like asking them how they may support a friend who was experiencing being left out. What might they say to their friend? Help them identify what would feel better - a hug? Help with seeking out the support of other friends? Support with seeing a bigger picture? 

Teach coping skills. Equip your child with strategies to manage their emotions and navigate social situations. You could even team your child to practice deep breathing exercises or other relaxation techniques. Another helpful technique is to create a "coping kit" with cards suggesting helpful actions or thoughts. If your child enjoys writing or art, you can encourage them to journal, draw, or paint as an emotional outlet. 

Broaden social circles. Of course, this can be easier said than done, especially considering that challenges with social circles are what caused the problem in the first place! Nevertheless, it may help to encourage your child’s participation in clubs, sports, or other activities. If your child is young, you can set up playdates with children from different social circles. If your child is older, you can encourage getting involved in new activities or even taking on community volunteer roles. 

Seek professional help. Sometimes, challenges with friends originate in part from a child’s own social skills. If you feel that your child’s social skills are underdeveloped, please reach out to our practice. We can help your child cope with challenges emotionally, as well as offer strategies such as role playing and learning active listening skills. 

On your mark, get set, go: Youth-appropriate goal-setting strategies

As adults, we often greet the new year with big plans for achieving goals and resolutions. And, even if we are not ultimately successful in achieving these goals, the goal-setting process itself can be beneficial to help us prioritize time and resources. But what level of goal-setting is appropriate for kids, especially in an era of increasing academic and athletic competition with peers? This is a question that many of our clients ask not only when January rolls around, but also throughout the year. 

Setting goals can be beneficial for children, but the approach should be age-appropriate and tailored to each child’s developmental stage. While there's no definitive age that's "too young" to introduce goal-setting concepts, experts generally agree that children can start engaging in simple goal-setting activities around age five or six. 

The benefits to children of goal-setting will not surprise you because they are quite similar to the benefits experienced by adults: increased motivation, a sense of purpose, sharpening responsibility and time management skills, building self-confidence, and improving problem-solving and organizational skills.

Before you jump into goal-setting with your child, take a moment to review a few tips for creating goals for kids depending on their ages.

Preschoolers

Around age four or five, children begin to understand basic cause-and-effect relationships. Goal setting should be simple and short-term, focused on immediate achievements, and guided by parents or caregivers. When you think of setting goals at this stage, think about things like a child learning to tie shoes or button up a coat.  

Elementary school 

Children between the ages of six and 11 can start setting more complex goals, and they’ll be able to understand the concepts of goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (“SMART” goals). For example, a child can set a goal to make the bed every day before leaving for school.

Adolescents and teens

By the age of 12, children can learn to set longer-term goals, such as improving their grade in a class, making the basketball team, or reading three books in a month. The key during this phase is to encourage more independence in goal selection with each advancing year, along with increasing the child’s own planning for action steps and identifying milestones.

If you’ve decided that helping your child set goals would be beneficial to the child’s growth, keep a few pointers in mind:

–Involve your child in the process of setting the goals and keeping the reason for the goal top of mind.

–Create goals that are specific and measurable, not vague; clarity is critical.

–Celebrate progress and achievements, no matter how small.

–Reinforce practice as a way to make progress, but not perfection

–When setbacks occur, as they surely will, help your child learn, and consider adjusting the goal if the original target proves unrealistic.

–Model your own goal-setting behavior, including dealing with successes and setbacks.

Remember, a little goal setting goes a long way! Focus on personal growth, learning, and building confidence rather than achieving rigid objectives. As children develop, their goal-setting skills can become more complex and self-directed, preparing them for future success.

Planting the Seeds of Generosity

Over the years, you’ve probably taught your children lessons along the lines of “share and share alike” and “better to give than to receive.” But how do you transition these lessons into more concrete instruction about charitable giving, without risking the youngest members of your family becoming overwhelmed, bored, or even discouraged that they may have to give their meaningful belongings away? And how can you make those lessons effective as children grow older?

Here are a few tips to consider as the season of giving gets into full swing:

–For children of any age, as with any successful learning experience, positive reinforcement is a must in teaching the values of charitable giving. So when your school-age children are raising money for a charity through a school fundraiser, throwing coins into a fountain to support a local children’s hospital, or donating gently-used toys and clothing, make sure you let the child know that these gifts really do make a difference. Walk them through where the money goes, what the organization may spend it on, all the way to how the recipient will likely feel upon receiving. 

–How do you know what charitable causes might inspire your children in your life? Ask! You’re likely to hear things like animals, moms, friends, family, trees, school, reading and writing, having a home, finding missing people, helping to rescue victims of natural disasters, and having clean air and water. Any one of these elements gives you a fantastic opening for the conversation.

–Try casting a wide net around the definition of what it means to be “charitable,” going beyond monetary donations to organizations. Share with your children that actions such as adopting an older dog who needs a home, turning off lights to help the environment, cooking dinner for neighbors in need, helping to pay a family member’s medical bills, and recycling aluminum cans can all make a big difference.

–To inspire teenagers, you might consider tapping into an increasingly popular topic among younger generations, which is the notion of “purpose.” “Finding one’s purpose,” in the context of both personal lives and careers, is also a concept that can unite generations within a single family. The overarching purpose of giving can be framed as making the world a better place or strengthening the community. This translates nicely for youths who are seemingly always asking, ”Why?”

Whatever approach you take, remember that your enthusiasm during the conversation will be contagious as you talk about opportunities to make a difference in the lives of others. Reach out to me to learn more about how gratitude plays a key role in raising happy, well-adjusted children. 

“Boo!”: What to do about your child’s fear of masks

Whether it’s Halloween, playing dress up, or just goofing around, at some point most young children put on a mask. Most kids see masks on others, too, including being around people in costumes, healthcare providers, or even catching glimpses of the “bad guys” on crime shows. Children even see masks on mascots at sporting events!

It’s not uncommon for kids to develop a fear of people wearing masks. Imagine how it must feel at a very young age to see a life-sized cartoon character coming toward you! It’s jarring even for many adults.

Masks are confusing for children because children don’t have context or connection to the “real” person behind the mask. Consider how masks are interpreted by children of different ages:

–Infants struggle when they see someone wearing a mask because they truly believe the person behind the mask disappears for good when the mask covers the face. This is because object permanence occurs during cognitive development between six and nine months. 

–Toddlers and preschoolers may be afraid of people in masks because they have a hard time distinguishing between reality and fantasy. They truly believe a monster is right there; they don’t understand that it is just Dad wearing a scary-looking mask. 

–School-age children, and even children who are younger, are generally more afraid of faces that look very different from theirs, even if it is a family friend. Especially if the child has not yet met the person or had a chance to get comfortable around them, the person is still a “stranger” in their eyes even with parental validation that the person is a “friend.”

So what can you do? Here are some hints for reducing your child’s distress around masks:

–Relax around your child’s fear; when they see that you are relaxed, it signals that they can relax, too.

–Ask your masked visitor to take the mask off and on repeatedly to show your child who is behind the mask–a friendly neighbor or relative (or even a friendly parent if it’s you wearing the mask)!

–When you know that you’ll be in a “mask heavy” situation–leading up to Halloween, planning to attend a costume party, or heading to the hospital–consider practicing wearing a mask in front of your child in advance of the event so your child gets more familiar with masks without the fear.

–Overall, try to make wearing masks fun and comfortable rather than scary and stressful. If masks are simply too much, ease into acclimation by starting with face paint, a hat, or a funny wig. 

If your child’s fear of masks still seems more heightened than what you’d expect given their age and stage of development, and you’d like to further explore what might be behind the fear and what you can do about it, please reach out! My practice helps many parents and families work through issues related to a child’s development of facial recognition and interpreting facial expressions. I’d love to help you on this part of the journey of parenting!

Balance is a verb, not a destination

In the world of adult self-improvement, a lot is written about balance. There is the most common type of “how to achieve a work/life balance.” Also popular, especially in the world of parenting are, “how to balance your own needs vs. the needs of others” and “don’t sacrifice your own care in order to care for others.” The oxygen mask analogy - that of put your own oxygen mask on before your child’s - is a good example of the latter. It is easy for us to intellectually place our professional responsibilities and personal responsibilities and desires on two ends of a spectrum and throughout our days (and throughout our lives) inspecting the scale to see which side is weighing heavier. However, constantly inspecting each side of the scale inevitably creates, or at the very least, increases stress. It implies that there is a goal to balance - a state of being in which both needs are equally met at exactly the same time and that such a state of being can last (and should last) forever. You may find yourself equally balanced a few times here and there but if that is always the goal, you will miss out on being present at work, or with friends, or with your children, believing that you should be balancing out the other side of the scale. This is a perpetual and elusive quest.

What I believe we are looking for is a desire to feel present, whole and connected to the activity in which we are engaged. The moment we start to feel discomfort, unease, doubt (basically any “bad” feeling) while we are doing activity A, we suspect that going in direction Z (the opposite side of the scale) is the remedy, or perhaps even the cure. Thus, perpetually the grass is greener on the other side. In parenting, it may be that we are playing a game with our kids and we get bored (it does happen) and soon we are thinking that going back to work full time may be the answer after all. Or, while we are sitting at work (it might be upstairs or downstairs in the current COVID-19 times) we see a family walk by - young child on mom’s shoulders, grinning from ear-to-ear - and we instantly regret the decision we made 6 months ago to return to work. Our minds may then go down a path of exploring other options - maybe I just need to find a part-time job or, maybe I need to take a day off with my kids. That’s it! I just need to improve my work/life balance! While these options may be worthwhile to consider and explore, we skip important steps in between. What if when we get bored with our kids playing a game, we acknowledge to ourselves that we feel boredom. Hello, boredom. Then we just sit with feeling bored (and maybe move your pawn 5 spaces). We may even reassure ourselves that in all likelihood, the feeling of being bored won’t last forever and no one has actually ever died of boredom. And continue to note thoughts about fixing the situation as they arise (yes, this is mindfulness) by perhaps just saying, “noted” to yourself. And maybe offering a “thank you” to the thought as it comes but not needing to buy it - kind of like a door-to-door salesperson. This is the act of balancing. 

When we view balance as a verb, we begin to recognize that there are times when work, and work alone, takes precedence. The fear that presents itself is that if we prioritize work, then we are undervaluing family. What if that were not true? What if we allowed ourselves to see the idea of balancing more broadly as a continuous flow of giving and taking according to the needs of the moment? After all, the joy of riding a seesaw is going up and down, up and down. Certainly, it requires us to pay more attention our own internal needs, the needs of the moment and the needs of others around us arriving at a decision based in the present moment. But in the long run, it leaves us feeling less exhausted from the striving toward the goal of balance and living the balancing. 

Related resources:

Article by John Thiel about an interview with Ellen Langer talking about work/life integration.

Coping with Grief

Grief comes in many forms. We often think grieving - a response to loss that may involve cognitive, emotional, physical, behavioral, spiritual and relational aspects - as limited to an experience when a loved one dies. However, we may grieve any loss including residential losses (a move), job losses or transitions or friendship losses or changes. Coping with grief comes in adaptive and maladaptive forms and ranges from “easy” to “hard.” Learning coping resources allows us to gradually adjust to life that has suddenly become significantly different than before.

Maladaptive forms of coping are those that feel may good in the moment but later cause more pain and move us “backward” in the grieving process. Such forms may increase stress and anxiety or depression over time. These may be behaviors such as overuse or abuse of substances, gambling, self-harm, overeating, avoiding emotions or even denying them. Adaptive forms may feel less good in the moment but serve to alleviate pain over time. Adaptive coping is key in adapting to the loss we have experienced. There is a level of acceptance of the loss in adaptive coping. The sooner we accept a loss - not necessarily liking it or agreeing with it - the sooner we can adapt to a new way of living. This eventually becomes our “normal” (but even our “normal” changes in every moment).

“Easy” forms are like watching TV, going on the internet, scrolling through media - social and news - eating junk food - easy forms of entertainment that distract but also numb. Sometimes these are very necessary in order to not have the pain of grief completely take over. Don’t judge yourself for using these strategies, just be aware of their purpose - they are temporary. Easy forms of coping can get us through extremely painful moments that we simply cannot face otherwise. It is OK to use these forms of coping on a limited basis but it will not lead to adaptation and acceptance to only rely on these forms.

“Hard” forms may be activities like going for a walk, napping (essentially restoring energy but not sleeping so long that you are “numbing” the pain), calling friends or supportive family members and asking for help or just to chat, writing poetry, journaling, creating art or music. These are forms that help EXPRESS the emotion rather than ignoring it or covering it up. These are harder because it can get us closer to what we are feeling - sadness, anger, fear - emotions that generally speaking are not ones we seek out. But! This is where the healing really happens. So, in the midst of choosing easy or hard, it can be helpful to remember that with each “hard” coping strategy, we ultimately will get closer to integrating the loss in our lives. It does not mean we won’t ever feel sad again, it is just that we can incorporate being sad about this loss as a part of our lives.

As we integrate the loss in our lives, accepting that our loved one or our previously loved aspect of our lives is no longer present in the way we are accustomed to, we grow from the loss. The pain that can feel unbearable at times, subsides and we can welcome in more and more joy and happiness.