Giving children opportunities to be powerful can help relieve their need to seek power in socially inappropriate ways. Here, I get help preparing lunch.

Last week, I wrote about ignoring children, and I was surprised at the overwhelming response!  There were such common themes in the comments, so I thought I’d respond in a new post so that anyone with similar ideas and reflections could join the conversation. 

On the spectrum from IGNORE to ENGAGE, there are many levels of response.  I do not typically recommend engaging, head-on, with a child who is choosing anti-social methods to try and meet a need.  The level of response that you choose depends on the child, the behavior, and the need.

My nerdy, math-loving self finds a beautiful inverse relationship between the intensity of a child and the response of the adult in any given situation.  As the child grows more and more intense, the adult grows more and more deliberate, calm, and grounded.  In this way, we help to balance the intensity.

I even illustrated what I mean with a fancy infographic.  (Oh, how I love a nice infographic!)

So when I say, don’t ignore, what I mean is: don’t pretend that your children aren’t in the same room as you.  Don’t talk over their whines and cries as if nothing is happening.  Don’t physically turn your body so your child can’t see your face.

Do use short sentences.  Do model instead of talking.  Do hold limits about behavior.  Do lower your body so you are on your child’s level.  Do start with infants!  Do verbally reflect what you see happening in the child.  Do wait so children have time to adapt their behavior.  Do align your expectations with what is reasonable for a young child. 

Children don’t understand a distinction between their behavior and their identity.  For children, when we ignore what they do, we send a message about what we value in them.  We communicate that they are worthy of our attention only when they behave according to a prescribed set of social rules.  Alfie Kohn opened my eyes to this way of understanding children in his excellent book, Unconditional Parenting. 

What about very intense children in full-tantrum, meltdown situations?  Many wrote to ask about very intense tantrums, trying to clarify exactly how I would manage a child who has completely melted-down.  (Kelly Bartlett of Parenting from Scratch offers a very helpful analogy in this article.)

In the midst of a fiery tantrum, I choose my words carefully, relying on variations of these strategies.

• Reflecting: Wow, are you mad! 
• Empathizing: You wish you could play longer.
• Holding a limit:  I can help when your voice and body are calm like mine.
• Modeling:  I am sitting with my hands on my knees.  Now I am ready to fix it.

After the intensity passes, I teach.  We write social stories, “Safe Ways to Be Angry” where children draw pictures and dictate ideas for safe expressions of anger, or “Emily’s Book of How to Get Help” with ideas on pro-social ways to get help when needed.  When children get stuck in a loop, I pull them aside early in the day to plan, proactively, what to do when the situation gets difficult.

When children stay in charge of their learning, they find less need to try and be “in-charge” in socially inappropriate ways.

This is what it looks like:

Iris, age 2, is bothered when her friends stand too close to her.  When Peter, 18 months, gets too close, she starts to scream and flail her arms.  I step in and remove Peter, but Iris continues to tantrum.  It is as if Peter has set her off, and she can’t reel in her strong outburst. 

Emily: “Wow. You are really mad.”
Iris: screams, lays on the floor and kicks
Emily: “When you are sitting like me, I can help.”  I sit on the floor nearby, my attention partially with Iris, but mostly with the other children in the program.  I keep my body close, my responses short and unruffled. 
Iris: tantrums for another 5 minutes.
Emily: During her periodic breaks, I secure eye contact and offer, “I want to help.  I can’t hear you when you lay on the floor.”
Iris: sits up, and grunts, angrily, “Help!”
Emily: “I see you want help.”

Janet Lansbury wrote a wonderful article about staying “unruffled” in the face of intensity, and I highly recommend it if you deal regularly with intense children.

If you are a parent of a child with special needs, working with any kind of doctor or therapist, and the thoughts I have to share conflict with what your doctors are telling you, you should consult with your primary care providers before changing your approach.  The style of caring I believe is best for children reaches children across the whole spectrum of human development, but without the full understanding of your context and your child, I can’t offer anecdotes or suggestions that will fit every scenario.

You have to trust someone.  Your philosophy of care will look different then mine, because your wisdom is drawn from the fabric of a different community and culture.  At the end of the day, find voices that resonate with who you are and what you believe about children, and hold on to those. Ignore the rest.

Thank you for journeying with me!

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I love to hear your thoughts.  I can’t always respond promptly to comments below, but I will get to them eventually!  I read every one, and am grateful for the time you take to share.