One of the mantras that has most influenced me in working with kids is this:
Hot Topic: Shame vs Guilt
First Friday QandA: “Using Your Words” vs “Fighting with Words”
Positive Guidance Tools of the Trade – Validate and Reflect Feelings
Have you ever frustrated or angry? I mean really frustrated or angry? Almost beyond words? Doesn’t that just add to the aforementioned frustration? Well, imagine being a child. (It shouldn’t be too hard, I’m pretty sure you were one once.) Young children are bombarded with emotions just as intense as our own – if not more so as they are not tempered with the same reason and justification we can sometimes muster. These little ones feel just as frustrated and angry as we ever could, but have even less of an ability to verbalize it. Too often, that results in some other manifestation or communication of the emotion. This is when we usually see the tantrums, the biting, the hitting, the kicking, etc., etc., etc. How do we as adults usually respond? We swoop in, console the victim and cite the offender, lecturing them about that behavior. We see it as a failure to behave properly, when often, it is a failure to communicate properly.