It happens every day. Sometimes during her typing practice, sometimes when we’re learning a new math skill, sometimes if the words begin jumping around on the page of her reading book – LuLu gets frustrated. What happens next? Well that depends so much on what LuLu does next.
“You can do it, you can do it,” she sometimes chants to herself.
“Don’t make me eat Styrofoam!” she sometimes whines loudly. (I have no explanation for why she says this, but she does, often.)
Sometimes her verbalizations sound like the battling self-talk that is obviously going on inside her head:
“I’m stupid.”
“I can do it!”
Lots of whiningadvertisement“Keep trying LuLu.”
“THIS IS TOO HARD!”
Usually I interject something here to try to redirect all this negativity. My comment is either met with cusswords and escalation or
“I want to keep trying…I can do it.”
I use a variety of tools to try to de-escalate the situation. Depending on what is going on internally with her, each one of these sometimes works…sometimes doesn’t. It’s a huge guessing game.
1. encouragement, praise. This one rarely works because, let’s be honest, she doesn’t believe it. You’re smart and you’re doing a good job is not something she truly believes about herself. Much like Faith describes on the Hoping to Adopt blog, she doesn’t really trust my praise because it doesn’t match her own view of self.
2. offer to take a break. OCD prevents this from working, usually. Someone escalating NEEDS to take a break, recoup, use her calming tools. For LuLu this incredibly difficult, because there is an obsessive part of her brain that just doesn’t want to let go. It drives her desire to be perfect and fuels her frustration and ultimately her rage. It’s a banner day, in my opinion, when she does take a break and come back later. Usually then she’s able to focus and accomplish the task easily.
3. paradoxical comments. This one still works more often than not. This is a tool I learned from attachment therapists, especially useful for dealing with kids who are very defiant (the ODD types). When faced with negativity, I often agree with LuLu. “You’re right, you probably can’t do it.” While for some kids that would further negatively impact their self-esteem, for my little one (because she’s programmed not to trust praise), it causes her to defend herself. “I can TOO do it!” she’ll reply. And it helps her get the determination to try again. This is a tricky technique. One that when it works, it works well. But you have to be careful not to overdo it and end up criticizing the child or fueling more negative battles.
4. ignoring the escalation. This truly does work with very healthy kids…you know, like when you left your tantrumming toddler in the aisle of the grocery store and went around the corner, only for him to stop tantrumming and join you? Alas, I wished it worked for emotionally challenged children as well. If I ignore, occasionally she calms down, but more often the frustration fuels a bigger explosion until it’s no longer safe to ignore.
5. cuddling or physical contact. This tool often works well, too. LuLu, because of years of strong attachment parenting and her continued need for reassurance, does calm if given the chance to sit on my lap or hug me. But the frustrating thing for me is that at age 10 it’s time for her to rely more on her own internal self-regulation rather than on Mommy’s. Or at least that’s the goal. And let’s face it, sometimes it’s hard to feel like hugging someone who just seconds before tried to throw something at you, or slapped you with a string of obscenities.