The Keys to Solving Child Problems

By Rick Hanson

Every child has problems, from learning to share his toys to pushing through senioritis on the way to college. Some of the common ones include separation anxiety, behavioral issues, social problems, worries or phobias, glum mood, struggles with school and homework, aggressiveness, inattention, sibling quarrels, lack of motivation, teenage nuttiness, drugs and alcohol, problems with eating, low self-esteem, etc.

Over the years, when faced with one issue or another, we’ve found ourselves making the same basic recommendations repeatedly to parents – and to each other!

Think of these recommendations as a kind of pre-flight checklist: you’re probably doing many if not all of them already, but it’s good to see them together, and to review them in your mind when you’re grappling with some difficulty with your son or daughter.

Love them dearly.

The foundation of good parenting is a sustained, responsive, loving nurturance. Some of the details include:

• Plenty of time with each child – There’s just no substitute for real time together, not driven by getting something done. You might ask yourself: how much time do I spend each day with each child that is mainly about enjoying each other’s company?
• Positive from the child’s point of view – Consider all the interactions you have with your child in a typical day, and then sort them into three “piles” as positive, negative, and neutral from your child’s perspective. Which ones are biggest? If the negative pile is taller than the positive one, that’s a problem.
• Play together – By playing, you increase the enjoyable time you spend together and the balance of positive experiences from the child’s point of view.
• Restrain your anger – Most of the mistakes we make in life come from being angry. How often have you made a significant mistake when you felt calm and happy
• Compassion – Usually, the person who pays the biggest price for a child problem is the child herself.
• Balance the negatives – When a child has difficulties, it’s common for him to get a lot of negative feedback from the world. Yes, every life has its hard parts and challenges are one of the sources of growth. That said, most of the moments of emotional pain a child has related to her challenges have no added value. They are just excess suffering, and your support and concern and love are the primary balm that soothes them.
• See the best in your child – For starters, every child is simply wonderful just being himself. Additionally, there are always some talents or qualities to recognize and nourish.

Take care of yourself and your relationship.

We’ve written at length about standard, comprehensive, sensible ways to take good care of individual parents and their relationship, and these are archived at http://www.wisebrain.org/articles.html. It’s just common sense. The crux, as usual, is doing it.

Learn about your child’s needs.

It’s amazing how often people work hard at getting good at things that don’t matter much, while putting minimal effort into what matters a lot. And it’s amazing how little it often takes, added up over a week or so, to transform a child, a life, or a marriage.

In the last several decades, there’s been an explosion of solid research about child development, and the practices that give you the best odds of success in resolving child problems. This information is available in hundreds of books and websites, at parent centers, and from parent guidance coaches and therapists. You can always find something that speaks to your mind and heart.

Communicate values.

As parents, we need to step in proactively in ways that were unnecessary a generation or two ago and take initiative to communicate the values we hope our children develop. There are lots of ways to do this, often explored in detail in the books on “character education,” and here’s our own summary:

• Be confident in your own values and your own moral authority.
• Be a model yourself.
• Bring in wholesome influences.
• Consider the values you want to nourish in your child.
• Address the child’s self-interest.
• Call out the innate goodness of your child.
• Talk values.

Arrange positive circumstances.

Adjusted for the age of your child, consider:

• Reducing stresses
• The impacts of other children
• The fit between the child’s temperament, learning style, health, etc., and her child care, school, sports program, etc.
• The physical environment of the child
• Adjunct services

Optimize the child’s health.

Past columns have reviewed good practices, and you can see them in our archives. Here’s a quick summary:

• Get medical advice for any suspected illnesses or other concerns.
• Make sleep a priority for a child.
• The child’s diet should consist of protein at every meal (especially breakfast), minimal processed sugars and carbohydrates, and lots of vegetables.
• Take high-quality multi-vitamin/multi-mineral supplements, plus purified fish oil in capsules.
• Assess for airborne allergens and food sensitivities.

Teach skills.

You can teach your children how to relax, build up more of a sense of confidence, pay better attention, step back when they’re about to really blow it, argue against thoughts that make them worry, or motivate themselves to keep working at things that are difficult.

For example, if a child is nervous at night, consider these skills:

• Relaxation – Practice exhaling fully (a good trick to prompt deep breaths), or relaxing the tongue and eyes, or imagining something peaceful like white fluffy clouds.
• Realistic thinking – Help the child come up with a list of reasons why she is safe at night, and a list of counters to the thoughts that make her scared.
• Positive emotion – Help the child think of memories or people or situations that make her feel happy and strong.

Have reasonable standards and consequences.

Aah, discipline. We finally got to it. It works a lot better when it rests on the foundation of what’s been discussed above.

• You are the boss in your home and you really do get to set, and enforce, the rules there. With your partner, clarify what those “house rules” are for bedtimes, how much TV, approach to homework, tone of voice, how sibs get treated, chores, etc. And establish the rewards and penalties linked to those standards.
• Find consequences that are potent: they need to be sweet enough that the child will care about attaining them, and unpleasant enough that the child will be motivated to avoid them. Like most professionals who work with children, we believe there is always a better way than corporal punishment.
• In most cases, the best consequences are rewards at risk: goodies you put on the table that the child can get through reasonable, age-appropriate behavior. Good goodies are (A) under your control and (B) not something you mind the child losing. Examples include stickers, money, TV or other screen time, and sweets. Poor goodies are things like play dates, story time, soccer games, favorite stuffed animals, etc.
• Consistency is really important.
• Stay the course.

© Rick Hanson, Ph.D., and Jan Hanson, L.Ac.