Empowering Your Child
This article was originally published as part of our monthly column, The Connected Parent on cleverparents.com
My son had two friends over one day, also boys. My daughter is two and a half years younger than they are. The boys played by themselves for a while, then my daughter came in and assumed that she could join them. They told her, in no uncertain terms, that she wasn’t allowed to be part of their game. She felt deeply hurt, and cried for a good long time. I dealt with the boys pretty well, I think, but I wonder what I can do to help my daughter stand up for herself in situations like this when I’m not there to help her cope.
Good question! Most of our children will, at some sad moment in their lives, be excluded by other children who have a game going that they don’t want to expand, or who are having such a hard day themselves that they are pulled to be mean to others. But there are positive things you can do to help build your child’s resilience in these situations.
If the feelings are immediate, Staylisten
The first and most important thing a parent can do is to go with the child’s instinct to cry, and cry hard, when her feelings are hurt. Crying, in the arms of someone who cares (and is not vibrating with upset), helps to actually relieve the feeling of hurt. Yes, it hurts while she cries, but crying keeps an emotional scar from forming. As she shows you how awful this was for her, her emotional mind has you there, so that you become part of the story. As you listen, and your child cries, her story goes from, “They wouldn’t let me play! They didn’t want me!” to “They wouldn’t let me play! They didn’t want me! And my Mom (or Dad) came and held me and I told her all about it. She held me and I felt terrible and after that, I wanted to go and ride my bike.”
It’s amazing how well crying, and being loved through it, heals the hurt. We call this kind of parental support “Staylistening,” because you stay, take in how hard it was for your child, and care about her, until she feels like it’s over and she can think of what she wants to do next. Sometimes, Staylistening heals the hurt in three minutes. If an interaction has hit your child’s biggest sore spot, it can take an hour, if you are willing. However long it takes, the transformation at the end, from a child who feels hurt to child who feels OK again, and very close to you, is very rewarding.
Staylistening helps a child in a deep way. It undoes not only the immediate sting of an interaction gone sour, but also takes care of bigger feelings of helplessness. When your child cries hard with you, and keeps going, it’s a wonderful sign. She trusts you. She can open her heart to you. And she may be instinctively healing from a backlog of feelings from other emotionally trying times. Sometimes a child will have frequent big cries about the same issue again and again. She is seizing every opportunity to cry hard about a feeling that frequently erodes her confidence. Each cry helps her make gains in that “emotional project” of regaining her sense of her own worth and goodness.
Play that builds your child’s confidence
Crying erases the sting of a hurtful interaction. And play with laughter helps a child’s resilience when others are harsh or intimidating. A good place to start is with Special Time, time that you spend playing what your child wants to play. Often, a child who has been stung will cast their parent, or a stuffed animal, in the less powerful role in play, in an attempt to play out the aggressor side. You then can playfully protest, playfully fight back, playfully show upset and indignation, modeling some silly, but instructive grit under fire. Here’s how it might go, as your child brings the subject up in Special Time:
“OK, I’m going to do my hula hoop, but you can’t have a turn!”
“What! I can’t have a turn??” (said in a high, playful voice)
“No, you have to sit there and watch!”
“Ohhhhh! I don’t want to sit here and watch!” (Again, high and pretend-upset tone, but with a big grin on your face. Openly enjoy this back-and-forth! You continue to play out the less powerful role for awhile, so your child can show you many variations of the harsh, mean role she’s been victimized by.)
“You have to. I say so!”
“Ohhh! This is hard! I want to hula hoop so badly!”
“Nope! You don’t get even one turn!”
“Not one turn? Not one?”
“No.” (Let the play go on like this for a few more minutes. Allow your child the chance to be the undisputed queen or king of the interaction, and keep protesting, so you can listen to all the variations of “mean child” that she’s been exposed to.)
Then, begin to comically figure out how to take action. You’re looking for laughter here, without dominating your child. In general, you’ll need to make physical contact, with a warm, generous, affectionate tone in order for laughter to break through. You’ll need to “protest,” but in a “Come here, I want you and I like you” fashion.
Here’s how this important part of play that elicits laughter—we call it Playlistening—goes as it helps a child build confidence:
“Oohhhh! I’m going to get a turn with that hula hoop somehow. What shall I do? Maybe if I gave her a little hug, she would let me have a turn. But I’m going to have to sneak up on her, I think!” Then, you pretend to sneak up, and you grab your child’s shoes or ankles first—you don’t want to be overbearing, but you do want to make some physical contact. Look for the laughter. If it comes before you make physical contact, then keep the play at that distance. If it comes only when you wrestle your child into a big bear hug, then big bear hugs are in order. When laughter breaks through, just do similar things again and again to keep it rolling.
It’s your job to lose in this game—you never really get your turn with the hula hoop. But you get to keep trying, and your child gets to keep laughing. Your child remains in the powerful position, but your forays in her direction that bring affection and physical touch will help model persistence in the face of rejection or other kinds of harshness.
Here’s how it can work:
Here’s an adolescent example of a similar kind of role-play, eliciting laughter and helping to fortify young people for their next challenging interaction.
My teenage daughter and son, my husband and I had spent a day with family friends, and there were some challenging moments for all. We had gone out to lunch together. Our daughter was saving her specially ordered French fries for the end of the meal. She had pushed her plate slightly forward as she finished her salad.
One family friend, a grown man she has known for years, reached across the table and started helping himself to her French fries! I saw the look on her face. I knew she wouldn’t say anything and that if I said something she would say it was fine and glare at me for ‘making a scene’. But I knew she was appalled and felt the only option was to let it happen.
The next night, we talked about it at the dinner table. I said I was sorry he was so unaware and then initiated some play. This is such a universal situation, when someone does something offensive, crosses a boundary, or is unaware of doing something you don’t like, and we think we can’t say anything. I realized it was a great opportunity to play with other options.
I started saying things, as though to the uncle or to everyone at the table. The things I said were way out there. This brought a lot of laughter from the kids. I think it was the initial shock of ’You can’t say that!’ Then everyone joined in with outlandish comments or actions. We howled with laughter. It was so much fun! Here are some of the interventions we played with.
Making big snorting sounds and pretending to bite the person’s hand.
“Oh, help yourself!” said with comic opera sarcasm.
Reaching over and grabbing things off of his plate.
Slowly moving the plate farther and farther away from him.
“Hey, get your own French fries!”
Squirting ketchup on his hand as he was taking French fries
“EXCUSE ME….whose French fries are these?”
Laughter relieved the sting of the event and opened the door to the possibility that perhaps something can be said next time something like this happens. The joking so clearly gave practice for standing up for oneself and feeling powerful in a challenging situation.
--a mother in California
