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Skill Sets
Insignificant for you is opposite for child
April 27, 2010 12:00 PM
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Dear Dr. Fournier: My child called from school for the first time frantic about a playground incident that he thought was killing him, yet when I arrived, it was a simple misunderstanding with the teacher about a kickball rule. How can I get my child to understand things like this are not a life and death issue? Martina M., Ocean Springs, MS |
Dear Martina: Is there a parent who doesn’t drop everything and run to school after receiving such a message? Most parents would do exactly what you did.
Your child had become upset when he felt a game was played unfairly. Upset about the teacher’s call, your son called out to his classmate, “You cheat!”
Other children in the class reported his unsportsmanlike conduct to the teacher, who without question gave him one check mark for poor behavior. But by allowing students to be the judge, the teacher unwittingly allowed these children to feel in control, and they took the punishment further.
Once out of the class, the empowered children continued to deride your son who was left defenseless.
The Assessment: When you arrived at school, you had to step back and question, “For this I left my office?” The entire incident seemed petty, but you said that this was the first time in six years of school that he had called with a voice of despair.
Naturally, you had many questions to consider: Why did such a small incident loom so large? How should I treat it? Was there something to be learned from the situation?
The answer came from your son’s original plea: “I’m humiliated!” The issue was not the incident itself, but the fact that the child felt humiliated.
Hurt is legitimate, no matter what others think about its cause. And hurt is not to be judged by its size, but by its very presence. It just hurts! When asked why he was humiliated, your son replied, “The teacher just punished me and didn’t even talk to me. Everyone tells children to say what they feel. I did it, and now everyone hates me!”
You and your son discussed this incident with the teacher, who explained to him the purpose of the process. But you want him to learn more than just how to cope with this one situation.
This child also needs personal strategies for coping with the hurt of peer humiliation rather than allowing it to accumulate from incident to incident, not knowing how to let go of the pain.
What To Do: As we listen to our children relate “stories” from school, we must remember that perception is reality. In other words, it does not really matter if our child’s side of the story is right; what matters is how our child perceives his role in that story.
For example, children are often wounded by name-calling. To adults, the answer seems simple: Don’t listen to the names. We tell children to “let them roll off your back.” But we must remember that the way the child perceives this name-calling is by feeling hurt and humiliated. That hurt is very real, and we should not minimize our child’s feelings by dismissing the event as petty and unimportant.
In our discussions, we need to help our children understand that all pain has a message. It is our choice to listen to the message or to disregard it and only hold on to the pain. To minimize the message, however, is to minimize the feeling.
Legitimize your child’s pain by recognizing that feelings are, in a way, our body’s barometer of how we cope with the challenges of life. As much as we want our children to have good feelings and to be happy, we must help our children recognize hurt feelings so they can take on life with strength rather than fear it to avoid pain.
Once you have shown acceptance of your child’s feelings, then try to help him separate and understand the message: What really happened here? In learning to cope with different situations, children need to understand that there may not be a “right” or “wrong” answer. Many people can view the same situation differently, and by legitimizing our child’s views we also help him expand his capacity to deal with disagreement.
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