fandomsandfeminism:

fandomsandfeminism:

I really think hospitals and doctors that work with pregnancy and pediatricians need to make more literature available for how to, ya know, work with kids?  Because the more conversations we have about spanking (and how it’s ineffective and harmful and does more bad than good), the more I realize that a lot of people don’t know the alternatives. Or like, anything about child development or where misbehavior stems from. 

So, as someone who went through childhood development classes in college, works with kids for a living, and knows multiple people who specialized in childhood education, here are some pointers when you are working with kids:

1. Model emotional response for kids. Children are learning how to recognize and respond to their own emotions. All the way up through high school, children’s brains are still developing, and the emotions they are learning to process become more complex. So with really young kids, the easiest way to help them with this is to model emotional self awareness and self care. 

• “Oh wow, mommy is feeling angry because the cat made a mess. I’m going to clean this mess and then go sit in my room in the quiet for a short break so I feel better.”
  
• “You know, I am feeling very sad about not going to the park because it is raining. I bet some hot chocolate and a book would make me feel better.”
  
• ”Huh, I’m feeling kind of cranky and hungry, but daddy won’t be home for dinner for another hour. I bet I’ll feel better if I eat a little piece apple while we wait.” 
  

2. Understand what causes child frustration and work to preempt it. 

• -Transitions (from one activity to another, getting in the car, etc) can be stressful, especially if the activity or location they are leaving is fun. Give kids a warning when this is going to happen. With young kids, give them about 5-15 minutes of warning (”10 minutes until we are going to leave the park and go home. Do your last thing.”), with older kids, just give them a time frame. (We are can play at McDonalds for 30 minutes, but then we have to go grocery shopping, ok?) 
  

• Not being able to communicate what they want to is frustrating. Babies can learn simplified baby sign language months before they are verbal. Kids may not know the words for what they are trying to say. Be patient and help them find the right words. On a similar note, don’t ignore kids. If you really can’t respond to their question right away because of something else, at least tell the “Yes, I heard your question. I’ll answer you as soon as I’m done talking on the phone.”
  

• Not being able to make choices or having too much choice can be overwhelming. Give kids a limited, reasonable selection of choices. “Do you want apple slices or juicy pears on the side for lunch?” is much better than “What do you want with your sandwich?” or just giving them apple slices. “Do you want to give grandpa a hug or a high five?” is better than demanding they hug grandpa right away. 
  

3. Understand that kids are people to. They will get hungry, tired, an annoyed just like adults do. Sometimes you have to be flexible and give them time to self care. Talk to them, explain things to them, let them be people and not just dolls.  “Because I said so” is really unhelpful for a growing kid. “We can’t buy Fruit Loops today because we are already getting Frosted Flakes. We only need one cereal at a time.” is going to do you a lot more favors. “Don’t pick up the glass snow globe. It belongs to grandma and can break easy. She would be sad if we broke it on accident.” is better than “don’t touch that.” 

And look, no parent is perfect. No baby sitter, no teacher, no care taker is going to be awesome all the time. And no kid is going to be perfect. They will cry and have tantrums, and not be able to tell you what they need, and be stubborn sometimes. Sometimes they need space, or quiet time. Sometimes they need attention and validation. 

But kids learn from every interaction they have, so adults need to make the effort to show all the love, and patience, and empathy, and thoughtfulness we want them to learn. 

gotalittlesoul

okay this is great advice but adults aren’t hitting their kids to try and teach them to do a positive thing, they’re doing it to punish them for having failed to do a positive thing. you’ve given great examples for how to teach the positive behaviour, but not for what to do when your kid is being an awful monster and smashing things. what’s the advice for how to punish your kids in a way that teaches them but doesn’t hurt them?

I mean, I think part of that s a LOT of adults NEVER teach their kids good/healthy behavior. They ONLY punish bad behavior, which is, like, obviously unhealthy and unproductive. 

But I think, as I’ve said before, that the entire notion of “punishment” fails us sometimes. The goal is to raise happy, healthy kids who grow into happy, well adjusted adults, and so our actions should be aimed that attaining that goal. 

So when bad behavior happens, I think we need to 1) Identify what caused the behavior, 2) Take action to make the bad behavior stop, 3) Take action to prevent the bad behavior from happening again.  And that isn’t always going to look like “punishment” the way we traditionally think of it. 

So a kid is “being an awful monster and smashing things.” Why? Are they in a store, throwing cereal boxes on the floor and crying because they want fruity pebbles/they’ve been in the store for an hour/don’t know how to deal with disappointment in a healthy way? Hitting the kid, or taking away all their TV for a week, or putting back the poptarts you grabbed because they ‘don’t deserve it’ doesn’t really address the cause, stop the behavior, or prevent the behavior from happening again. 

Instead we would want to remove them from that stressful situation (and yeah, that might mean that you dont get to finish shopping. Kids are rough like that.) When they’ve calmed down, you can talk to them about how they were feeling and why their behavior was a problem. Talk about and put in place systems to help the behavior not happen again. Maybe Kiddo just can’t do 1 hour in the store in one go yet. Maybe they need more adult interaction during shopping. Maybe they need clearer expectations next time about what foods you are buying/not buying and how long it will take. Maybe THEY need a shopping list and maybe they get to hold it and check off stuff when you put it in the basket. 

If you need to have a “punishment” (which I tend to think of more for older kids who have broken clearly established rules), the consequence should be logical, reasonable, and when possible, REVERSIBLE. The kid should be able to lessen the punishment by taking ACTION. Jr gets no phone for a week because he totally trashed the kitchen with his friends and was rude when you asked him to help clean it up and refused to help? Maybe he can get his phone back after only 3 days if he does extra chores around the house. 

zanabism:

you know when like…no one really knows you because you work really hard to keep components of yourself (some might say even all of yourself) completely hidden from people and so even people closest to you that’ve “known” you for years probably don’t actually know you as much as they think they do? and then you feel like a sense of disconnection, like that realization that no one really knows you–not your friends, family, boyfriend, girlfriend etc–and you’re kind of completely alone and you’re unsettled by it…but not enough to actually let people get to know you, because having people not know you at all is a big part of your identity now and it’s impossible to give that up? 

(Source: zanabism)