11 Strategies that Really Work for Children
by John E. Swank, LPCC
Swank Counseling, Troy, Ohio

This article was the outline for a presentation to other professionals who worked with abused children and their families.  However it has many helpful points to most parents as well.

1. Externalize the problem. Help the child see the problem as temporary and from outside, rather than permanent and from within. For example say, "When sadness or anger comes to visit...and wants to stay too long, what do you do to ‘get it packing.’" Focus on solutions....competencies, wierdabilities. The child has learned to cope and manage, take advantage, but then help them expand on their thinking. (See David Epston, Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends)

2. Learned helplessness comes from both anger and abuse as well as overprotection and unconditional positive regard. It can happen from the child experiencing that bad events are uncontrollable as well as good events uncontrollable. Rather, focus on mastery and competence. Don’t overdue praise for small accomplishments, but rather let the positive comments be proportional to the accomplishments. (Martin E. P. Seligman, The Optimistic Child, p. 286ff). My experience is that a large part of the damage of divorce to children is that the children become objects of concern (the divorce hurt them), and the child is given to without regard to mastery or working for it, out of guilt of the parent. The child becomes helpless feeling that both good and bad things come without any control on their part.

3. Help the child deal with disappointments, not avoid disappointments.

4. Constantly teach the child to delay gratification. "Yes, but first do this." "When you calm down, we’ll talk about it." This is the model for cooperation, and the child realizing their place in the world. They have needs, but so do others. I consider the inability to delay gratification the "present epidemic."

5. Reduce anxiety by helping out-of-control children with clear limits and boundaries. Parents and children also need to experience and learn positives times together. The best material I know to help parents and children get back in control is Russell Barkley’s Defiant Children: A Clinician’s Manual for Parent Training along with Defiant Children: Parent-Teacher Assignments. Available from Guilford Press, 72 Spring Street, New York, New York 10012.

6. Help children not to "be their own grandparent." Children have trouble resisting the role of parenting their parent. Often times children have stepped into that role, and both parent and child need a way to graciously get out of it. I suggest having "retirement parties" for the child, in which appreciation is shown for the child for all they did during a difficult time in the life of the family, but now they can "retire" and be a kid again!

7. Teaching a child to be a tyrant is abusive, too. They feel worse, not better in the long run. Help parents (who have been abused)understant that a fussy, demanding, crying child who is throwing a temper tantrum is not being abused! Many fear that they are being abusive toward their own child if the child is crying. You will have a happier child in the long run if you do not meet their demands in such a fashion. Let them earn through cooperation, and let them discover limits to their world.

8. Teach the child to self-soothe. First, don’t interrupt the natural process of the child. Help parents not to feel so needed. If the child is hurt or afraid, help them to feel mastery over the situation, rather than need the parent to feel good. (Wait to allow the child to assess the situation, and focus on what need to do. ) Use phrases like, "that was scary, and at first you weren’t sure you could handle it, but then you got your confidence back."

9. Help the child to learn self-calming techniques other than chemicals...baths, walks, music, exercise, candles, relaxation. When the child feels out of control, help the child get back in control, not have the parent get out of control too. See Mary Sheedy Kurchinka’s Raising Your Spirited Child for ideas and suggestions to use when the child is "flooded with emotion."

10. Never letting your child be unhappy will make them very unhappy. They need to learn to manage disappointment and learn that life is not being 100% at their beck and call. Parents who shield their children from disappointment, grief, death and pain will have an extremely entitled or incompetent child. The goal of parenting is helping them become capable children, not protected children.

11. Telling your child that "there is nothing to fear" will make them more fearful. If your child expresses fear that you might die in a car accident, and you tell them there is nothing to worry about...they know you are lying. Any child who watches TV knows that the world is dangerous. (In fact, thanks to TV, we feel like crime is "worse than ever" even though violent crime is at a 25 year low.) If you want to be in a growth industry, specialize in childhood anxiety. See Rudolph Dreikur’s, Children the Challenge, for a great section on helping children learn to master fears.