Words of Power & Empathy: Part 1

I hosted a workshop last week at Live Free Chiropractic where we discussed three major battles we encounter with our children on a daily basis - morning/evening routine, sharing/sibling relations, and mealtime. The workshop’s major reoccurring themes were empowerment and empathy. 

Empowering our children requires parents to consciously find ways to give them a healthy level of control while still providing security through setting boundaries. Empathy calls for a thorough understanding and interpretation of our child’s development, temperament, and compassion for their struggles. Ultimately, this is what led to Play With Purpose’s inception - a calling to educate parents to empower their children.

If our goal throughout each day is to empower and empathize with our children, we need a strategy to communicate messages of love, self-worth, appreciation, and clear expectations. Children are wired to please their parents. They crave nothing less than our undivided attention and approval. However, both parties can become extremely frustrated when expectations are not met. We, as parents, become frustrated when we tire of nagging, and think our child is not fulfilling their capabilities. Children become frustrated when they sense our disappointment and don’t always know how to correct it. This can turn into a daily struggle - a daily battle. 

Here are three steps to empower and empathize with your child during daily learning opportunities before the escalade to the dreaded power struggles. 

1. Parental Education: Understand our children’s developmental stages.

2. Observe: Set developmentally appropriate expectations. 

3. Adapt: Clearly articulate expectations.

STEP 1: PARENTAL EDUCATION: UNDERSTAND CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES

In the beginning of every workshop I discuss my six favorite characteristics of children’s cognitive development. For the purpose of this blog entry, we will focus on three of the six characteristics. 

1. Young children are concrete thinkers.

2. Young children are egocentric.

3. Young children are rapidly gaining language skills.

As children gain verbal skills, their brains tend to focus on concrete objects first. For example, first words are typically nouns, such as, Dada, Mama, ball, wawa (water), a pet’s name, etc. Nouns are words that clearly link to a concrete object that can be seen, touched, heard, experienced in a very real and literal way. Their expressive language (spoken words) directly reflects the concepts they best understand. 

Children build much of their vocabulary through the process of “fast-mapping”, which refers to the rapid acquisition of words. Children can hear a word one time, link to their background knowledge, and then turn around and use it correctly in their speech. Receptively, children’s vocabulary exponentially grows far beyond what they are able to express. Children’s brains work in over-drive during their waking hours, which is why they can become over-tired, over-stimulated, and over-whelmed without much warning. 

Early childhood is a period of awe-inspiring growth and development. Despite their incredible ability to quickly assimilate new information, they tend to do so in a very egocentric fashion. Their egocentrism is not due to overt selfishness. Instead, it’s due to their limited experiences and inability to take another person’s perspective. Perspective-taking is a skill set they will develop over time, typically and noticeably around age eight or nine. 

With this very basic understanding of children’s language acquisition and ability to understand verbal communication, we can appreciate their need for concrete, literal, and concise language when we speak with them. 

STEP 2: OBSERVE: SET DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE EXPECTATIONS.

When we set realistic and achievable expectations, we save our children from the frustration of not being able to do what is asked of them, and we save ourselves from the frustration of messes, tantrums, and the perceived “lack of cooperation”. So often our children’s non-compliance is an inability to comply. 

For example, their motor skills are constantly gaining coordination and fluidity. This can effect their ability to “stop” when commanded, hold on to objects, walk safely, follow multi-step directions, and most hand-eye coordination tasks. So if they don’t physically respond to a request or command, it may not be outright defiance, it could simply be a lack of coordination or understanding.

Similar inabilities to comply due to developmental stages can be due to lack of understanding, lack of problem-solving ability, or lack of emotional control. 

One way we, as parents, can decrease frustration is to observe our children and search for their level of independent ability - what can they accomplish without any adult intervention? In order to observe truly independent skills, we must be willing to give our children opportunities to try new skills. Sometimes, I physically have to take a step back or silently count to ten before I jump-in to “help”. 

Next, recognize how much assistance they accept. Some children are more eager to accept help than others. When our children operate independently with the knowledge that we are there to help if needed, their confidence and self-esteem increase. We are subtly communicating: “You are capable. I believe in you. I will support you.”

Other developmental domains include: language, social-emotional, and cognitive. We’ve already discussed children’s language development and a part of their cognitive development that may effect how they understand and execute given directions. Social-emotional development is also a very important piece of the puzzle. Young children are emotional beings, meaning they primarily function in the “emotional” part of their brain.

If you have questions about what are specific developmentally appropriate expectations for your child, feel free to contact me. General developmental rules can be applied to a child’s chronological age to at least give us a “ball park” idea of where that child falls, but individual characteristics play an important role in understanding what skill sets are developmentally appropriate for your child.