Sample Strategies
 
 
 
Many children seem extreme, odd, troubling, or immature at some point in their development.  That doesn’t mean they have a psychological disorder!  The tendency nowadays is to pathologize children - to view every difference or difficulty as a symptom rather than a trait, and to attach a label to every child who’s “outside the box” or hard to raise.  
 
A more useful approach is to look at a child’s unique combination of assets and difficulties.   Each trait is a specific feature of the child’s temperament or essential nature, such as emotional intensity, tempo, a need for novelty, movement, or control.  For a child to mature and become integrated, nurturing his assets is at least as important as addressing his weaknesses.  In fact, a youngster’s difficulties or quirks may turn out to be his most important strengths and the seed   of his individuality and fulfillment.
 
Instead of asking what a child has, we need to understand who he or she is!
 
When the Labels Don’t Fit shows how to help your child by setting aside the labels and zooming in to the level of specificity that sheds light on the source of his behavior.  
 
Example:  Handling those crushing disappointments ...
 
Does your child become inconsolable when things don’t work out the way he or she expected?  Does your child melt down and refuse to accept any alternative?
 
This reaction usually comes from a combination of three factors:
 
  1. •   Mental rigidity:  when there are a limited number of items in a mental category.                
     For example, “going to the park” has to include certain activities; none can be  
     added and none can be omitted, or the event is ruined.
 
  1. •    Now-or-Never concept of time: if it’s not happening right now, then it doesn’t          
      or can’t or won’t ever exist.  It’s not the same as being “impatient” - it’s an inability    
      to feel time in anything but the most concrete way.
 
  1. •     Intense emotional attachment to these traits. The emotional attachment to these  
       mental habits is what gives them their power.
 
 
Your child’s distress at being disappointed isn’t about being spoiled. Simply trying to stop a tantrum - by logic, force, cajoling, soothing, or just ignoring it - doesn’t address the cause of the tantrum.  You address the cause by being pro-active.
 
A strategy:  Help your child stretch the picture.  You can do this with index cards or in a conversation.  Take an idea like “going out for pizza.”  Where could we get it? What toppings could we have? What size could the pieces be?  Who are some of the people we could eat with? When could we eat pizza?  How could we eat it?  (You can be silly - with chopsticks, in the bathtub, on top of spaghetti).  All these variations are still called “eating pizza”.  Practice stretching your child’s mental pictures until that becomes part of your child’s repertoire. Then at the moment the disappointment takes place, you can remind your child of a familiar game: “Let’s stretch the picture.”
 
The more the number of acceptable alternatives, the less chance of a crushing disappointment.
The more concrete and familiar the idea, the easier it will be for your child to access and accept.