Young children often are easily upset by minor circumstances. Perhaps they break a toy, store or can’t watch their favorite program, or have to leave the playground before they’re ready. These and other everyday situations can give rise to sadness, whining, and crying. Of course, some circumstances warrant an emotional response, for example, if another child takes their toy or a peer treats them unfairly or harshly. Children may react emotionally in many situations; what’s important is whether the intensity of the response is appropriate.
As overly sensitive children get older, parents often see more extreme, melodramatic outbursts that continue for an extended time. In school, such outbursts elicit negative attention and impede their ability to get along. Extreme reactions to relatively minor events often lead to interventions by parents and teachers. It may seem necessary to respond to these outbursts to help the child calm down. However, as the child gets older, the outbursts seem to increase rather than decrease, and parents spend more and more time trying to calm the child. This solution is actually the problem.
Sally is a divorced mom with a seven-year-old daughter, Kara. Sally sought counseling because her daughter is frequently upset when she comes home from school, full of complaints about her teacher and her peers. When she visits her father, she spends the first few hours after the visit crying and upset. Whenever Kara starts to talk about problems at school, or about her father, or the divorce, Sally hugs her and sits down for an extended conversation. They’ve been doing this for four years.
Kara is now “upset” in a rather extreme fashion 6 to 10 times a week, and the conversations have gotten longer and longer. Her complaints about her father have become so exaggerated that her mother is starting to discount them. When Sally talked to me about the situation, her eyes filled with tears. She expressed tremendous guilt over putting her daughter through a divorce and acknowledged her desire to relieve any distress Kara might feel about her life.
Unfortunately, Sally’s solution is actually the problem. She’s been overprotective and over-sensitized to her daughter’s distress. She’s reacted every single time, trying to soothe her daughter, so Kara has never had the opportunity to resolve her own emotional upsets. She’s never learned that she can be upset, tearful, or angry and that these feelings will pass without her mom’s intervention. Her inability to resolve her own difficulties leaves her emotionally disabled. Sally needs to let Kara learn this key skill.
A second factor is involved in this situation: Kara has learned that being sad and upset pulls adults into her life. She gets attention for being unhappy. If you’ve read the materials on this website, you know that whatever behavior consistently gets parents’ attention will grow. So now Kara lives in a world of hurt and negative emotions, because that’s how she’s learned to get love. As she gets older and her personality begins to solidify, this pattern of negative emotions will create major challenges in her life.
Dr Cale’s Special Report 3 Common Parenting Mistakes That Make Temper Tantrums Worse
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Three Simple Guidelines To A More Confident Child
If you follow the three simple guidelines below, you’ll be helping your children develop emotional strength and a sense of confidence in their ability to handle their own lives.
1. Have Faith In Your Children’s Ability To Handle Their Lives.
Whether children are in an intact or divorced family, are healthy or in some way handicapped or disabled, there’s no reason to teach them that their lives are in any way “less than” what they should be. If you label their lives as sad or unfortunate, they’ll believe you. If you feel this way, you may become overprotective. Kids who are overprotected lack the confidence to handle their own emotions or deal with difficult situations.If you don’t have faith in them, where will they get it? Do you think you can hide that from them? Once you realize that your lack of trust in their abilities is their biggest enemy, then you realize it’s essential that you find this faith…so you pass it on to them. How? You…
2. Explain To Your Children That They Can Handle Their Emotions.
When everyone is calm, talk to your children about the things that upset them. Offer some solutions and help solve the problems. After you have a couple of these conversations, tell them that you’ve given them the information they need to handle their own emotions. Explain that you’re not going to run to their rescue anymore or try to calm them when they’re upset. Tell them that the feelings they have may be painful, but they’ll go away. Let them know that you have confidence in their ability to cope.And most importantly, you decide to…
3. Never Rescue Your Children.
When your children become upset and it’s part of their pattern, allow them to whine, complain, cry, have a tantrum. Don’t get angry, upset, or tearful, and don’t get into a conversation about the upset. Just be patient and let them handle it. As soon as they show signs of calming down, engage them in normal conversation about other events or activities. Don’t talk about whatever it was that upset them. If they start to get upset again, disengage.
Remember: what you consistently give your attention to…it must grow.
If you consistently give your attention to patterns of whining, complaining, and “sensitivity”…you will find that you nurture a child who seems to choose these unhealthy patterns over and over.
Why? Because you…as the most important teacher…keep investing in those patterns.
Thus, to start nurturing confidence, you simply need to get out of the way, and allow your kids to realize that the world will not rescue them from their upsets… their whining… their crying… their meltdowns… their placing too much importance on the actions/words of others.
If you follow these simple guidelines, I’m confident that your children will respond within two to three weeks.. .maybe longer if you struggle in your own ability to disengage these “signals” of sensitivity.
Their behavior will change radically as they begin to develop a greater sense of confidence in themselves. Dependent, immature behavior will fall by the wayside if you give them permission to tap their own strength and abilities.
You can nurture inner strength and personal confidence by the way you respond to their behavior and emotions. If you are committed to nurturing a confident child, you may want to consider The Confident Child program available on CD, or by downloading the audio file. You can get access to this information RIGHT NOW by – Clicking Here.
The Confident Child: Nurturing Healthy Self-Esteem
As always, I encourage you to research your options carefully. Then, when you decide what’s right for you and your family, put it to the test. The only way to test, however, is when you have a VERY CLEAR PLAN, and IT’S A REALISTIC PLAN.
With each of the Terrific Parenting Solutions, you will be guided through a plan that YOU CAN TRUST. These carefully developed programs take advantage of hundreds of hours of clinical research, followed by years of application and testing by real life families.
I hope you take advantage of this remarkable information, as these simple ideas can FREE YOUR CHILDREN of years of needless anxiety, discomfort and sadness. While not a substitute for counseling or therapy (most kids don’t need that!), kids need to learn how to use their good brain to get through the difficult stuff quickly, and then to find ways to expand and deepen their positive and healthy experiences.
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Dr Cale’s Special Report
Disrespect & Anger: What’s Wrong & What You Do About It!
Some of the most peaceful, loving well-intentioned parents end up with children who appear to be extremely angry. Some of these children become violent, uncontrollable, and cannot be maintained in the home during their teenage years.
There are a variety of reasons that could cause such an escalation in anger. The purpose of this article is to dispel a critical myth, and to make certain that parents become aware of the patterns of their own behavior, which can increase and escalate anger.
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Dr Cale’s Special Report
3 Common Mistakes That Will Make Child Whining Worse
If your family is a reasonably happy family with lots of opportunities to grow, loving members, and a good purchasing power, then there should not be much to complain for your child. Your child’s room is brimming with toys, you have enrolled your child in a good school, and you are ready to give your support to your child, yet he or she complains. What is the problem? The problem is that your kid has a distortion of reality. They are focused on just a small part of their experience in life. This focus on the small part where they don’t get what they want is really a toxic poison…
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Dr Cale’s Special Report
3 Parenting Mistakes That Make Picky Eating Disastrous & Impossible To Correct
Picky eating can become a serious clinical issue, and represents a threat to your child’s future. ..if unhealthy habits continue.
Getting a handle on the core parenting tactics that turn the picky eater into a healthy eater is priority one.
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Dr Cale’s Special Report
Why Siblings Fight, Battle & Argue… Despite Your Best Efforts!
When children are bickering, picking on each other, fighting, and arguing, parents often lose it. Research reveals that most parents think they should intervene in their children’s conflicts and arguments.
They think they should be intervening earlier to resolve issues for their children. But most parents don’t intervene until the conflict escalates, then they yell and threaten.
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Dr Cale’s Special Report
3 Toxic Mistakes That Will Threaten Your Children’s Future
Under very difficult circumstances, there are times when the other parent will not communicate with you. Under these circumstances, learn all that you can about co-parenting. Take all the steps that you possibly can to protect your children and implement these consistently and regularly. In other words, do everything that you can to effectively parent with that part of your children’s lives that you do have control over. Make certain that everything that you do in your home and in the kids’ lives is healthy and beneficial for your children. Again, educate yourself.
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Dr Cale’s Special Report
3 Common Parenting Mistakes That Make Temper Tantrums Worse
Temper tantrums can range from the mild tantrum, where your child is stomping her feet and giving ugly looks … to the more moderate forms of outbursts where she flop’s on the floor, yells or whines loudly, and perhaps sits down in protest and throws a few toys.
And then there are the ballistic, severe out-of-control tantrums! Such extreme tantrums evolve for various reasons. Frequently, I see these extreme tantrums with certain strong-willed or more oppositional children.
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Dr Cale’s Special Report
3 Common Parenting Mistakes That Make Toddler Tantrums Worse
We often think of temper tantrums as synonymous with toddlers, yet this is certainly not the case. While most toddles are prone to an occasional tantrum, it’s the toddler who tantrums three…four… even five times a day that starts to drive us crazy. Yet, most of the parents who come to me for help are dealing with something even more challenging. The out-of-control, scream at the top of your lungs, stomp your feet, fall on the floor and throw your toys as hard as you can tantrum. The REAL melt-down tantrum…pull out your hair because you just can’t take another second of screaming.
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Dr Cale’s Special Report
7 Mistakes You Can’t Afford To Make… If Your Child Is Overweight!
You want your child to be healthy, to be happy, and you want your child to fit in…
But you just aren’t sure how you can help your child lose the unwanted weight and feel good about themselves. You just aren’t sure how you can encourage them to get healthy and develop good eating habits.
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Dr Cale’s Special Report
The Self-Esteem Book: 12 Secrets To Building Emotionally Strong & Resilient Children
If you’d like to avoid the common mistakes that harm your kids, learn powerful character building secrets and experience the joy of seeing your child thrive, then this might be the most important letter you’ll ever read.
Here’s why: Most parenting advice fails to touch the surface of what really works. My newsletters are chock full of practical, proven guidance that everyone can put to use! It’s real… and it works!
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