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Stuart, D.
Davidson Institute for Talent Development
2009
This Tips for Parents article is from a seminar hosted by Dr. Dale Stuart to
help parents understand their gifted child’s intense and difficult feelings,
and offer guidance to help their children manage these difficult feelings.
The basic
approach to helping a child deal with difficult feelings is (a) to help them
build the capability to observe themselves while they're in the midst of
experiencing the feeling, (b) to help them form a story or narrative about
their experience of the feeling and the situation, and then (c) to help them
make conscious choices about their behavior and the ways they express their
feelings.
Validating the Child’s Feelings
The starting point is to validate a child's feelings—whatever they might
be—and acknowledge and accept that the feelings are there (you can accept the
feeling without having to accept the means of expression of the feeling). Use
words and language that are appropriate to your child's verbal and emotional
maturity. You need to communicate that the child's feelings are
understandable and natural, under the circumstances, and for the way that
your child sees the world.
In the
process of validating your child's feelings, you're also modeling the
position of being an observer. You want to simply be offering an empathic
narrative about what may be going on in the child's mind and the connection
between the trigger event, the interpretation or meaning it had for the
child, and the resulting feelings that arose in the child.
Dealing With Anger and Conflicts
Anger (a secondary emotion) can protect us from more vulnerable underlying
feelings of hurt, humiliation, self-defeat, pain and sadness (the primary
emotions). Anger is often a way of avoiding showing vulnerability when it
doesn't feel safe to reveal or express the softer emotions. This turning to
anger is therefore usually an automatic, unconscious process, but it can
become conscious, and we can take steps to avoid the escalation when two
people start butting heads with each other.
As the
parent in these interactions, you have the opportunity to model healthy ways
of dealing with frustration and anger in the ways that you, yourself, react
when these feelings come up for you. The goal is to model that your own and
your child's difficult feelings can be observed, can be tolerated without
"destroying" you or "driving you over the edge," and that
they can be managed in conscious, healthy ways. Here are some alternatives
that you can try, in order to avoid getting caught up in the power struggles,
debates, and escalating arguments that you may have with your child, and to
help your child learn to manage difficult feelings through your own modeling
of healthy ways to do so yourself:
Monitor
your own level of frustration or anger. Learn to recognize your own internal
signs for when you get close to "not being able to take it
anymore," or to "exploding.” It's ok to give yourself a time out,
and it's not a sign of defeat. In fact, it's modeling behavior that you want
your child to use. You can say something like "I'm getting close to the
point where I can't think clearly, so I'm going to take a few minutes to
clear my head and then we can talk about how we're going to handle
this." This has numerous benefits: a) you're modeling the self-observing/self-monitoring
that ultimately is essential for being able to manage difficult feelings, b)
you're modeling the ability to make the conscious and healthy choice to
disengage from a situation before things get out of control, and c) you're
showing respect for your child by demonstrating that you don't want to
continue to react in automatic ways that end up feeling hurtful to your
child, and that you may later regret.
Help your
child to understand the underlying feelings behind the anger, and address
those feelings instead of reacting to the anger. To pull this off, however,
you have to be managing and not reacting to your own frustration and anger.
You also have to avoid the urge to argue back and defend or justify your
position. The benefits are, a) you're modeling the ability to be in an
observer role for the child's experience and feelings, b) you're validating
the child's anger as a natural reaction to his perception of the situation,
and c) you're communicating, through your own calm manner, that the feeling
can be tolerated and "survived."
If your
child reverts to behavior that is destructive or unacceptable when she's
upset, then form a plan AHEAD OF TIME for how you're going to respond to it.
You want to establish clear rules for what is and is not acceptable behavior,
write them down, and post them for your child to see and remember. Then, you
want to formulate clear and precise consequences when the rules are broken,
write them down, and post them for your child to see and remember. The
critical elements in making a system like this work are clarity and
consistency.
Help Your Child Understand What
Triggers the Feelings
Part of helping a child understand his feelings is helping him recognize what
event triggered them, and helping him understand how he interpreted that
event in the way that led to him to feel the way he did. (Remember, events
themselves don't have meaning... it's our perception or interpretation of
them that creates the meaning that we react to.)
When your
child becomes frustrated or angry with something, wait until he's calmed down
just enough to be able to respond to you and talk to you. Then ask,
"what was happening BEFORE you got upset?" or, "what were you
doing BEFORE you got angry?" Help your child to identify what was going
on during those last few moments when he was feeling ok, and reiterate to
your child what he was doing during that time and how he was feeling. Then,
ask your child to play the tape in ultra slow motion, to describe what
happened next, in the split moment just before he noticed feeling
frustrated/angry/upset. Try to focus on the instant when he observed or
encountered something different. You might ask, "And then something
different happened—something changed just a bit. Can you tell me what it was
that changed? Can you describe what you saw or heard, or did that was
different, right in that moment before you reacted?"
Next, help
your child to examine what thoughts and reactions went through his mind, as
he was looking at/experiencing the new event. There will usually be internal
thoughts (self-talk) that give meaning to the event, and you want your child
to start becoming aware of these thoughts. Some children think of them as
voices inside their heads, telling them what to do, or more often, what they
SHOULD or MUST do or be, and also what SHOULDN'T be. These internal thoughts
are often what lead to the feelings.
Continue
with some gentle, empathic questioning about what this might mean to your
child, and how he ended up feeling, in that instant before it turned to
frustration or anger. You might say, "When you heard that voice in your
mind say 'I'm not going to get it right, I'll never solve it,' then what did
that mean to you? What does that say about you?" Typically, if you've
taken this slowly or gently enough (and that takes practice, so don't expect
miracles the first time!), your child will come back with something that
reveals a more vulnerable feeling. In this example, it might be, "It
means I'm not that smart after all. If I'm so smart, this should all come
easily [notice the 'should']. I'm really stupid after all." (This
example is not such a stretch... even PG children can wonder if they're as
smart as adults seem to think they are, and can feel tremendous self-doubt
about whether they'll continue to "live up" to this label.)
When your
child reveals self-doubt or feelings of injury or humiliation or rejection that
often underly the reactions of frustration and anger, DON'T rush in to
reassure him that "of course you're really smart," or "of
course I love you just as must as your little sister," or "of
course it was just an accident that you weren't invited." Here's where
you want to respond with complete validation and acceptance of your child's
experience, with things like, "Yeah, if it makes you feel stupid, of
course you would get frustrated. That's a horrible feeling, to doubt your own
abilities, or to wonder if I'm going to be disappointed in you." If you
do this repeatedly—helping your child to "freeze frame" the process
and become aware of the onset of the difficult feelings, your child will
start to respond with greater awareness to the events that trigger the
difficult feelings. With this greater awareness, your child will eventually
be able to make more appropriate choices for how to deal with the feelings
and will tolerate them more easily. Your child will also be more able to
tolerate the more vulnerable feelings underneath, and will therefore feel
less need to protect himself, or escape from the feelings through the acting
out of the frustration and anger. Even if your child doesn't arrive at any
earth-shattering insights about his internal thoughts and beliefs, simply
offering the opportunity to be curious and to explore them is laying the
groundwork for developing the self-observing capability that will help him
manage difficult feelings down the road.
“Stop, Think, Choose” Technique
You can also work with a more explicit behavioral process to help a child
step out of automatic reactions and unacceptable behavior. I like to use the
sequence, "Stop, Think, Choose" as the keywords for a child to use
to coach himself toward more conscious choices for behavior. The trick is to
develop the association of this sequence with the onset of the frustration or
anger. You would work with your child during calm times to offer acceptable
choices for ways to express the feelings (I know a lot of you have done this
already). Then, help the child to pick a trigger or identify a
"switch" that informs the child he's starting to reach his limits
of tolerance. This might involve having the child recognize that he's
clenching his fists or feeling tension in his body, being able to recognize
and articulate "I'm angry," or anything else that will help the
child catch himself in the process of becoming upset. At first, you will have
to help the child to catch himself, and you might do this with comments like,
"I can see that you're starting to get frustrated. Is this one of those
times when you could use your 'stop-think-choose' technique?" Presenting
it as a choice gives the child the opportunity to learn that he can exercise
control over his reactions and behavior. You may still need to coach your
child through the process of stopping, thinking, choosing before the child
can manage it himself.
Frustration Over Not Being In Control
One of the most common sources of frustration for a gifted child, in my
experience, has to do with their perception that others' rules don't make
sense, aren't logical, and things that others say or do aren't rational (and
therefore need not be obeyed). The belief that the world should operate
according to THEIR rules (which they believe are totally logical), and they
feel outraged when the world doesn't oblige. Their natural (and usually
healthy) drive for self-determination and efforts to feel in control of, and
to exert control over, their world bring them into frequent conflict with the
"real" rules. This can create a deep sense of despair and fear that
they can never be in control of their world. Some children may even feel
individually punished for not being allowed to be in control, and will fight
to protect their self-esteem and efforts at self-efficacy. This can explain
why sometimes the smallest incident that seems unjust to them can trigger
such intense distress. They're reacting to the feeling that the entire world
appears irrational, uncontrollable and unpredictable to them. Think about how
scary that would be!
One
possible way to address this is to find some activity or environment where
the child truly can set the rules and she can feel in control. This requires
some creative thinking by you, the parent, to construct or find such an
environment. In my experience, when the child can find one place where she
feels that things "make sense," and feels in control, then much of
the distress over not being in control in other places subsides.
Fear of Being a Failure
Another common source of distress for a gifted child is one I alluded to
earlier... the fear she may have that she really isn't as smart as others say
she is, and she's going to fall from gifted grace if anyone ever found out.
She therefore feels very protective of her self-image as someone who is
"smart," but feels fragile since she doesn't believe it's something
she has any control over. For those of you familiar with Carol Dweck's
research on mind-sets, you'll recognize this as the fixed mind-set. The child
will internally have tremendous self-doubt, will be terrified of challenges
and will be reluctant to face anything where she isn't assured of success.
She may also believe you expect only perfection from her (children can
interpret our reactions and encouragement for their successes in the most
distorted, extreme ways, sometimes... to the point of believing we expect
only continued high achievement from them). So she may be petrified about the
possibility of disappointing you and losing your precious love. Then, when
she faces a slightly difficult problem, all this fear and self-doubt may be
triggered, and it comes out as a fit of rage or frustration.
Teach Your Child to Imagine Others’
Perspectives
Here's another way you can help your child when he explodes over perceived
injustices or doesn't like following rules set by others. The idea is to help
your child recognize that other people have different perspectives about
things, and that their reasons for doing something may be completely
consistent with their own perspectives, even if they're different from his
own.
Younger
children, especially, have a difficult time recognizing that other
perspectives can exist in other people's minds. In fact, being able to
conceive of a different belief being held in another person's mind is a
learned process, often called Theory of Mind, and usually doesn't even start
to develop until around age three or four. It can take several more years for
the capacity to develop to the point where a child can actually understand
another's behavior and reactions in terms of completely different perceptions
existing in another's mind. (Some adults don't even get to this point!)
Since this
is a learned skill, it's something you can assist your child to develop. One
way to do this is by engaging him in games or exercises where you ask him to
imagine what's taking place in the other person's mind, when he has been in a
conflict with someone else, or has refused to do something he's been asked to
do. You can ask him to tell the story first from his own point of view, then ask
him to pretend that he's the other person, and tell the story again from the
other's point of view. Encourage him to explain, in as much detail as
possible, what he imagines the other person's motives were, or what the other
person must have been thinking or feeling that made her act the way she did.
If he was in an argument with another person, then ask him to replay the
argument, but to argue it from the other person's perspective.
You can
encourage your child to try to imagine as many different motives as possible,
that the other person might have had for doing what she did. Approach this as
a brainstorming exercise and challenge your child to be creative, no matter
how outlandish his responses might be. You can help by throwing in some ideas
of your own and even making a game out of it where you take turns guessing at
the motives and intentions of the other person.
Basically,
any type of exercise that helps a child to be curious about the perceptions
and intentions of others, and helps him to become accepting of different
perceptions, will benefit him in numerous ways. For example, if he felt hurt
by something someone did, instead of assuming that the other person must have
had the deliberate intention of hurting him, he might be able to see that the
other person was trying to concentrate on a task, and was annoyed at being
interrupted. This could help him take things less personally in the long run.
This
article is provided as a service of the Davidson Institute for Talent
Development, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted
young people 18 and under. To learn more about the Davidson Institute’s
programs, please visitwww.DavidsonGifted.org.
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