Archive for the 'Emotions' Category

I am sure we all remember how it felt to have the boogeyman hiding under the bed, and to have that green tongued monster peek out at you from the dark cupboard.

We all remember the fear, the anxiety and the paralyzing dread, but we didn’t know at that time that this was very common, and that every other child suffered from night fears.

If your child suffers from such night fears, then here are some tips for you to help you deal with them:

• Encourage your child to talk about her fears; never laugh at her or ridicule her, or even disparage her. As far as she is concerned, her fears are very real, and she is actually afraid of these things in the dark of the night, and she lacks the capacity to judge that they are meaningless fears.  You could try saying things like, “I know you are afraid of the monster under your bed, but I know that it can’t hurt you. I am there for you…” Your child must know that you respect her thinking.

Up to one in 10 children fall into ongoing patterns of abuse and victimization by peers starting almost as soon as they are old enough to begin socializing with others, a new study suggests.

The report found that aggressive infants, and those from low-income families or exposed to harsh parenting styles, were more likely to be consistently victimized.

“The consequences associated with high and chronic victimization are manifold and include depression, loneliness, low self-esteem, physical health problems, social withdrawal, alcohol and/or drug use, school absence and avoidance, decrease in school performance, self-harm and suicidal ideation [thoughts and behaviors],” wrote the researchers, a team from the University of Alabama.

The abuse from school-age peers could be in the form of physical attacks, harsh words and social aggression, according to the report.

The researchers studied 1,970 children — about half boys — born in Montreal between October 1997 and July 1998.

The team followed them for more than seven years, receiving information from the children’s mothers about victimization, family adversity, parenting styles, physical aggression, hyperactivity, and internalizing symptoms.

During the final follow-up, at age 7, the children and their teachers reported on victimization by classmates.

Children who suffer from verbal abuse can know the pain of those words.

If you are stressed, you might be showing that irritation on your children, but remember that this makes your children lose the confidence on themselves.

They may even unable to recognize their own talents and unable to adapt the challenges of life.

Verbal abuse on children is yelling on them with demeaning language, such as “I am ashamed of you,” “Can’t you do anything properly,” and more.

It causes a psychological effect by continuous verbal harassment.

Effects of verbal abuse on children!

If you are abusive [Types of child abuse] to your child, it causes a negative self image. This is the most common cause of verbal abuse.

Your verbal abuse makes your children think like “No one likes me,” “I am fit for nothing,” “I am always wrong,” etc or it may make your children depressed and withdrawn.

If you have seen such signs in your children, then change your attitude towards your children and show them affection and love instead of abusing.

In some cases, the children show self-destructive behavior such as cutting skin with razors and other self-injurious acts, which may put your children in danger.

Emotion in life starts right from a very young age. All kids undergo emotions once in a while.

Moreover, kids are similar to the adults in feeling all types of emotions–happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and many other feelings.

However, children cannot always understand what is happening with them and may not know properly what to do when they feel a particular type of emotion.

As children cannot express their emotions clearly, parents often misread their emotions as sadness or anger [Controlling anger in children].

On the other hand, children occasionally feel emotions very strongly and fluctuate easily from one emotion to the other (happiness to misery) when they get frustrated.

Thus, identifying emotions in children is sometimes very difficult for parents.

Tips to help children manage their emotions

As a parent, help your child understand how to react to a particular emotion when it arises. Also, teach how to manage emotions.

Learning these skills can benefit your child in many ways: emotionally intelligent, able to control emotions effectively, make feel good about themselves, cope with others freely, understand other’s feelings easily, attain less impulsive behaviors, self-confident, focus on things with better attention, and academically very active.

Depression is a psychological disorder that affects the individual’s energy, mood, etc.

It was felt that children will not suffer from this condition, but researches recognized that they could also become depressed depending on the situations.

Parents must learn to identify the depression in child.

Depression in child is associated with situation such as learning problems at school, severe altercations with peers at school, inferiority complex, acting out in school, etc.

Parents should know their child’s behavior and symptoms of depression. If your child is sad, you should not think that he/she is in depressed state.

When the sadness persists or when the disruptive behavior interferes the normal social activities, then it indicates that your child is in depressive state.

You can recognize the depression in children with some signs and symptoms, which include irritability/anger, difficulty concentrating, feelings of guiltiness, sadness, worthlessness, and hopelessness, changes in appetite and sleep, increasingly sensitive to rejection, impaired thinking, crying or outbursts, physical complaints that are not responding to treatment, inability to function actively in daily activities, thoughts of death and suicide, etc.

It is not necessary that all depressed children will have the same signs and symptoms. The symptoms will vary depending on time and situation.

Child abuse is doing something or failing to do something that result in harm or injury to a child.

An abuser is who fails to nurture the child, physically injures the child, or relates sexually to the child.

There are different types of child abuse. Among which the four major types are:

• Emotional abuse
• Physical abuse
• Neglect
• Sexual abuse

Emotional child abuse:

Emotional child abuse is one of the most common and harmful forms of child abuse. Emotional abuse is any act or behavior or failure to act that disturbs your child’s mental health or social development.

This act can range from a simple verbal insult to an extreme form of punishment. Emotional abuse is always found along with some other form of abuse.

Emotional abuse exists for longer periods and has negative psychiatric effects than either physical or sexual abuse. Hence emotional abuse can also be called as mental abuse, psychological abuse or verbal abuse.

Some of examples of emotional child abuse are: always finding fault, humiliating the child, name calling, and showing no respect can damage a child’s self-esteem.

When someone dies, it will be difficult to help your child cope with the loss.

Helping child when someone dies be it a close friend, family member or relative is important.

Learn the things in helping child to deal with loss.

How much a child can understand about death depends on his age, personality and experiences.

In helping child, your child can come out of the first experience with death without too much inner damage.

Here are some tips to help your child at those tough times.

Tips in helping child to cope with loss:

• For younger child! When your child is six years or younger, he cannot look at the world from a philosophical angle. He takes things as they come and take them quite literally. If your child is having doubts about death of people, you should tell him that people who die are people whose bodies are broken and doctors are not able to fix.
• People who die are people whose bodies stop working and it is normal and natural part of life. You should not say that the person is sleeping. It will cause only confusion in your child’s mind. Even they become hurt.

Anxiety in child is perfectly normal. Children become clingy as a side effect of separation anxiety.

Do not worry as it is an important part of development process.

For you, a clingy child can be emotionally challenging as well as physically tiring.

If your child is clingy for an extended period of time, child have problem to be separated from you.

There are techniques to reduce anxiety in child and nurturing independence. Paying close attention when the child is not being clingy is important.

Do the following things to reduce anxiety in child in your daily activities. The things should help to gain confidence (Tips for developing Child Self Confidence)  in child.

Techniques to be followed to reduce anxiety in child:

• Encourage your child to do activities independently.
• Whenever you leave the child, say good bye in a proper way. Many parents never follow this and leave abruptly thinking that saying good bye will make their child cry. You should say good bye and tell your child when you will be coming back. You can tell that I will come at the end of a favorite television show. This helps to reduce anxiety in child and wait that you will come back when you say you are.

Are you surprised with your toddler tantrum? This is an event that will happen to every parent.

You will be shocked when you face screaming, foot stomping and rolling on the floor.

It does not mean that you have done wrong. It is not even temper. It is the temporary loss of emotional control by your toddler.

Your response to this loss of control depends on the relationship you have with your child.

Learn to identify the things that brought on the toddler tantrum.

If you can identify the triggers of the toddler tantrum, you can recognize warning signs and even stop toddler tantrum before it starts.

Tips To Handle your toddler’s tantrum:

There are common reasons of toddler tantrum

• One reason for toddler tantrum is over tiredness. If you see your toddler is tired, put him to sleep (Tips for getting a toddler to sleep) or provide with a quiet activity to help him to take rest. Make it a habit to have nap or rest so your toddler will not get over tired.

Toddler learns about object permeance in their development.

As your toddler learns that things continue to exist even when he can’t see them, he will feel better about letting your out of sight.

To reduce toddler separation anxiety, play games like hide and seek or peek-a-boo to help him understand this phenomenon.

Throughout the day, create situations of brief separation. Practice with quick and safe separations.

When you play hide and seek, reduce toddler separation anxiety by whistling, singing or talking so that your toddler thinks that you are present but he can’r see you.

Don’t sneak away! Don’t move quietly when you have to leave your toddler. It seems eaiser than dealing with tearful goodbye but it causes toddler separation anxiety because you have disappeared without warning. The result will be clinginess and diminished trust in your relationship.

Expalin your toddler! Tell your toddler what to expect. If you are going out for shopping and leaving your toddler at caretaker, explain where you are going and when you will come back.

Slowly your toddler will understand your explanation. Explaining your toddler reduces toddler separation anxiety. Don’t go for prolonged time.