by Carol Goode, Ph.D. – ICPA.org:
Ninety percent of a child’s success in life depends upon emotional responsiveness. Can a child respond to life without hesitance and fear? You have a wonderful opportunity to help your child develop and use strong inner resources.
When we hear a negative thought repeatedly, we start to believe it. It plays on and on in our heads. We give it the power to determine how we interact with the world. All of our thoughts and emotions, good and bad, become imprinted within us over the years. Like the grooves on an old record, the more we hear a negative thought, believe it, and let it run us, the more it becomes deeply imbedded within our consciousness.
The same is true with emotional reactions. We strengthen emotional patterns by repeating them and giving them more power over us. Our emotions become automatic and habitual. Like a repeating program, they run again and again, as long as we let them. The good news is, we can turn the reactions off and change those patterns any time we choose!
Teaching our children to access and use their inner resources defeats negative thinking and erases emotional patterning. Let’s teach them to become aware of their emotions, and to pull new ideas from inside. Here are some simple methods to show them how to achieve an inner focus so they think before they respond.
Take a Breather
We’ve all heard the phrase “take a breather,” meaning to relax and refocus. A few deep breaths relax the body, quiet the emotions and clear the mind.
“My daughter was having problems in school with a little girl who was picking on her,” says Dyan Stein, a transformational breath trainer from Durango, Colorado. “She would come home upset, day after day, until finally we breathed with the intention of sending the other little girl some love.”
“The breathing session helped my daughter shift the way she responded to the little girl, and she didn’t get upset anymore. Now they are the best of friends.”
Stein says that she regularly uses breathing to help her daughter shift her focus when she comes home from school. They spend time together in a positive and loving way, with no distractions. Teaching children appropriate breathing shows them how to safely integrate their feelings, increase skill levels and stay mentally focused on their schoolwork.
Discover the Point of View
To give a 9-year old asthma patient a participatory role in his healing, I asked him how he saw things in his world. He chose to draw his viewpoint. He took the crayons and newsprint and went to his corner with pillows. With great intensity, he grabbed the black and brown crayons, held both in his hands, and drew puffy looking clouds across the top of the page. Next he drew a stick figure in the bottom center page in a bright blue. Then he surrounded the little person in a yellow, egg-shaped circle. Finally, he added some tentacles of the brown-black clouds dripping over the figure’s head.
In less than five minutes, he popped up like a jack-in-the-box to explain his viewpoint of the asthma. He explained, “This stuff on top of the page hangs around me all the time. It’s like my mom, always watching over me. Sometimes it drips on me like this here [he points to the tentacles]. But I feel good [he indicates the bright, blue stick figure]. And I’ve got a lot of energy [he shows me the light around his stick figure] around me so that stuff doesn’t get me.”
Could we have said it so eloquently? The picture hangs in his bedroom to remind him that he has his health and energy. Mom still hovers, but he understands she does it with a caring intention. Even Mom has learned to respect his point of view.
When Words Don’t Come, Move
Twelve-year-old Alaina stormed into the house after several hours at the beach with her friends. Their ages ranged from 11 to 15. It wasn’t unusual for Alaina and her friends to hang out together in the small beach town on the coast of Maine. However, it was highly odd for Alaina to slam the door and sigh loudly in disgust. When I looked at her, I saw a red face ready to explode in anger. Her chesty, fast-paced breathing indicated anxiety.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. She couldn’t speak. She held her hands up as if to say, “Give me a few moments,” while she paced around the kitchen. Wanting to ease her pain, I blurted out, “Move. Just keep moving.”
What she showed me in the next few moments with her actions could never have been so beautifully demonstrated with words. At first she walked briskly in circles, alternating her hands between resting on her hips and throwing them up in the air with a disgusted look on her face.
Her facial expressions were marvelous. She walked up to me with hazy eyes and protruded lips and took a long, slow drag from an imaginary thing in her lips. She slurped the air in and held her breath while smiling dreamily. “You want one?” she gesticulated. Then she turned to answer herself with adamant hand waving in front of her face. “NO!” That was clear! So far I’d determined that the older kids were smoking marijuana and were offering it to her. She got angry and told them no. But the worst was yet to come for this 12-year-old.
She imitated beautifully the charades of being pushed around, laughed at and made to feel as though she were a very uncool kid. She ended the movement by flopping on the kitchen chair and crying. I didn’t say anything. I just put my arms around her and silently thanked her for being so “uncool.”
Follow the Inner Rhythm
Researchers continue to find that children are affected by music in unexpected ways. Preschoolers given piano and voice lessons, for example, were found in one study to improve dramatically in their ability to put together picture puzzles of animals.
When you coach your children, rely on your instincts and experiences in terms of what they need at a given time. Children need quiet music, just as adults do, when they need to relax, sleep or be mentally alert. But if a child needs energizing to engage in tasks or games, lively, upbeat music, such as syncopated Latin dances, will provide the necessary stimulation for movement.
You can coach your child through moments of intense feelings with some musical processes that will make you both feel better. Anger, for example, can be pounded out on a drum; sadness can sing on resonator bells. Talking after the musical expression is much easier and your child will be better able to think of solutions for his situations and answers to his problems.
When you see the warning signs of anger or sibling conflict stirring, reach for the drums! Hand one to your child, along with the drumstick or soft mallet designed for playing it, and pick one up for yourself. Ask your child to use the drum to tell you how she feels. As she strikes the drum, support her playing with a simple basic beat, like 1-2-3-4. Reflect her mood by singing, “You sound very angry. Is that true?” If you get an affirmative response, ask for more: “Let me hear on the drum just how angry you are.” Keep playing your beat as your child lets her emotions out. Depending on your child’s age, drumming, rather than words, may be all you hear for awhile.
You don’t have to do this exercise with a drum. Other musical instruments that are easy and fun to play and to express with include maracas, clavas, jingle bells, spoon bells, resonator bells, sticks, woodblocks, castanets, whistles, kazoos or small horns. If you play an instrument such as piano or guitar, you may want to accompany your child on it while she plays the drum, or you might play a recording that features accented rhythm. West African and Native American drumming tapes are ideally suited for this purpose and are widely available.
Encouraging your child to express with musical instruments teaches him an appropriate way to show intense feelings instead of repressing them. Children who grow up with the freedom to express in a creative and enjoyable way become emotionally balanced adults and willing listeners to others’ feelings.
Music, movement, drawing and breathing are all ways to help relieve your child’s stress by directing their focus inside. As you join in the activities as teacher and coach, you’ll find your own stress will ease, as well. Learning inner focus enables your child to have more productive relationships with their friends, family and life situations. Since a successful life is so dependent upon keeping our minds and emotions clear, developing these skills in our children will strengthen their foundation for life success. All we have to do is be aware, and care. This will lead us to the right action.