Challenging Children have wounded hearts, deeply wounded during the first three years of life.
They suffer from tremendous loss, grief, anger, fear.
Those feelings, depending on how much they have healed, run their lives much of the time, and often lead to acting out.
It is essential for the healing of Challenging Children to learn to recognize and process their feelings.
Therapy plays a big role in helping them with the healing process.
Aside from the time in therapy, they are at home and in activities outside home.
This is when parents or other caretakers have the opportunity to help Challenging Children to recognize and process their feelings and further their healing.
The five question method described in this article has been used with tremendous success to help Challenging Children learn to deal with their feelings before acting out.
Learn it and use it.
In the end the children will thank you for it.
Five Questions After Child Acts Out When your Challenging Child has acted out feelings in an outburst, it is important to take time together to process the feelings and reconnect.
To do that, sit together with the child on a sofa or big enough easy chair to be close.
It is ideal to bring your child onto your lap.
No matter how old the child is! Your child should place one arm around your waist, with the hand flat on your back and the other hand flat on your waist.
Your hands should be flat on your child's back.
Make loving eye contact with your child with your faces six to eight inches apart.
This is a very nurturing position and wonderful for bonding.
As you engage in the process which follows, your eyes MUST be filled with love.
If you cannot maintain love in your eyes, stop.
This is a time for connecting and bonding, not venting of anger.
To process what happened during the outburst, ask the five following questions which follow.
Give your child time to think and accept responsibility for whatever happened.
1.
What happened? 2.
What were you feeling before you did that? 3.
How did you handle that feeling? 4.
How did that work out for you? 5.
How do you think you might handle it better the next time? DO NOT ask why.
There is no acceptable answer to that question.
Be empathetic and validating.
This is your opportunity to encourage your child to do handle their struggles with their feelings better the next time.
A sample conversation might look like this (thank you Nancy Thomas for the scenario): PARENT: What happened? CHILD: (Response must start with "I was...
" and always use complete sentences) I was vacuuming and I banged the table with the vacuum cleaner.
PARENT: Yes you did.
Good job of accepting responsibility.
Give me five! What were you feeling when you did that? CHILD: I was feeling mad because I had to vacuum instead of playing baseball.
PARENT: I bet that did make you feel mad! Baseball is a lot more fun than vacuuming! How did you handle that mad feeling? (You have validated the feeling and helped the child connect their action with the feeling.
) CHILD: I was feeling mad so I took it out on the table by hitting it with the vacuum.
PARENT: How did that work out for you? CHILD: Not very good! Now I have to fix the scrape on the table leg and I'm missing even more baseball because I got mad and blew it! PARENT: How do you think you might handle it better next time? CHILD: Next time I'll tell you how mad am or jump on the minitramp to cool down.
PARENT: That sounds like a good plan.
I'll be proud of you when you get strong enough to talk out your feelings instead of acting them out! Of course, it is not always as easy as that.
This, though, is the goal.
First, and extremely important, your child will know that your love is still there no matter what mistake he made.
The second purpose is to help your child make progress on handling feelings.
This is a long process, so every opportunity that presents itself is precious.
Five Essential Tips for Processing Feelings 1.
When processing feelings, never lecture.
If you lecture, you raise the risk that in the future your child will not share feelings with you.
Put yourself in your child's shoes.
Imagine that you are talking about difficult feelings with your parent.
Would you appreciate being lectured about your feelings? What might you do the next time big feelings came up? 2.
Your child must know that you can be trusted and that she can come to you and tell you anything and everything.
Your child must feel that you will guide him through the processing of feelings and that you will love her no matter what she did, said or felt.
Remember that all feelings are okay.
The issue is what we do with those feelings, which might not be okay.
3.
When processing feelings with your child, allow free expression of all feelings.
Allow tears to flow like a river.
Allow laughter to ricochet off the walls.
Allow the mad to come out.
4.
Always congratulate your child for verbalizing the angry feelings rather than acting them out.
It certainly is better that sweetums tell you, "I want to kill the puppy," than it is to actually attempt to kill it.
Always reward the expression of feelings with smiles and pizzazz.
Allowing the expression of feelings freely and without judgment will encourage your child to express his feelings the next time.
And the time after that.
5.
Hold your child through the fear, the tears, the rage, and the joy.
(Yes, some children will resist being held.
) Your child will always remember that you did and how that helped her handle her feelings.
Some children who have healed have said that being held while expressing big feelings were the best moments of their youth.
Handling feelings can be difficult for the emotionally healthiest of us.
For Challenging Children it can be next to impossible without strong compassionate help.
The method described here is the best shot at success for Challenging Children.
For additional tips on helping Challenging Children to handle feelings, go to my blog and look at the posting entitled "3 More Important Ways for Challenging Children to Process Feelings.
Please, also send me any tips or ideas that you might have.