You can space out, binge eat, drink, use drugs, or engage in other self-harming behaviors just to numb the pain. Or, you can express your feelings, accept them, validate them, and learn from them!
Dr. Robert Leahy, a psychologist who specializes in cognitive-behavioral therapy, wrote an article on this very topic that is extremely helpful in terms of learning how to regulate our emotions. Read on for some great wisdom in the area of emotions!
I confess, I found this at a great resource that I often refer back to in my research regarding ADD, ADHD, and kids. The title of this post is a great follow up to the most recent post. Keep reading here!
This blog post title definitely caught my eye!
I came across a wonderful article that speaks about the power of a parent to bless their child. I am re-posting this article from the Cultivate Greatness blog. The author of this article lived back in the era of the Great Depression; his words are timeless, and we, as parents, teachers, and counselors would do well to apply these principles as we raise our kids.
Here is Where It Starts:
Do you realize that your child’s success or failure depends on you? The schooling and the religious training your children receive will play an important part in their lives, of course, but the influence they will pick up from living close to you can be and should be one that puts them on the success beam. There are three important principles you can teach your children which will go a long way toward bringing them success and happiness throughout their lives. The first of these is Definiteness of Purpose. This habit should start when the child is very young so that it will become a fixed part of his character.
Not too long ago I was visiting friends whose little boy was playing with tinker toys. He was trying to build a helter-skelter design that soon crumbled to the floor. He began to cry when his understanding mother came to his rescue and asked him what he wanted to build.
“I dunno,” he sobbed, “just something that will stand up.”
“Before you start building,” his mother counseled, “you must know what you want, and you must have a plan to go by. Now, let’s see what you’d like to make.”
After the mother had mentioned several things that could be made from the tinker toys, the youngster decided upon a small house and set to work with great enthusiasm to build it.
“This will take more time and work,” cautioned the boy’s father. “but when you are finished it will stand up, and you will be very proud of what you have done.”
As I was getting ready to leave, the boy jubilantly grabbed me by the hand and asked me to come and look at his house “that wouldn’t fall down.”
“This is so much better than putting something together every which way,” he exclaimed triumphantly.
On my way out to my car, the boy’s father accompanied me. He was an executive in a large national chain store organization, who began as a stock clerk in one of the smaller stores, less than ten years previously. He advanced himself to a vice-presidency by following the habit of definiteness of purpose. “You understand now,” he exclaimed with pride, “why we are leaving no stone unturned in seeing that our boy grows up with a full appreciation of the value of knowing what he wants.”
All though your child’s “when I grow up” years of wanting to be a railroad engineer, a space cadet, or a movie star, inspire in him the faith that he can be a success in whatever he chooses, but tactfully influence him to make a definite decision to work toward some specific definite major purpose in life.
The second success principle you should teach your children is the Habit of Going the Extra Mile — the rendering of useful service beyond the scope of duty. This is a “must” habit without which no one has ever been known to rise to great heights of success in any undertaking. In addition to creating favorable opportunities financially for those who follow this principle, it adds great strength to character and gives on the ability to make friends easily.
Joe and Pete were next-door neighbor sons of unskilled laborers. Neither of their parents was well schooled, but Joe’s folks were wise enough to recognize the value of the habit of Going the Extra Mile, and they taught this to him from early childhood.
Pete’s parents, on the other hand, impressed on him the idea of taking everything he could get without lifting a finger, and he lost no time in making this idea his own.
While his son was growing up, Joe’s father was able to promote himself to a position as foreman, then department manager at his plant by following the habit of rendering more service and better service than he was actually paid for. He instilled this habit in his son.
Throughout grade school and high school Joe was a giving person — sharing generously his time in extra-curricular activities and his possessions. He was constantly going out of his way to make himself liked by both his teachers and his schoolmates. Moreover, his habit of thus Going the Extra Mile gave him great pleasure for he did it in a most pleasing mental attitude.
Meanwhile Pete did as little work as he possibly could to get by. Results, poor grades in school, difficulties with the teachers and his schoolmates, and no participation in athletics because, as he remarked, “There’s no pay in it.” Where did he learn this attitude? From his father who constantly griped about “slave drivers” down at the plant, in the school system, and about everywhere else.
Joe got a scholarship which paid his way through a fine college because of the excellent record he made in high school, and he went on to win high honors in college by continuing to follow the habit of Going the Extra Mile. He never asked, “What do I get out of this?” but, “What can I contribute to help someone out?”
Pete scornfully referred to Joe as “that eager beaver who tries to kill himself doing something for somebody.” But the “eager beaver” did all right for himself. As the result of his college record, he wound up with the offer of a job with a wonderful company right after graduation. He still has the habit of Going the Extra Mile. It has brought him two promotions with increased pay over a number of other young men who began work with the same company when he started. The other young men had as much education was Joe, and they had as much intelligence.
What about Pete? He got a menial job right after he left high school. He moans constantly about Joe’s getting all the breaks. To this day he doesn’t see that Joe promoted himself into the better things of life by GIVING before trying to GET and thereby starting the great law of increasing returns to move in his favor. And Pete’s parents haven’t the slightest ideas that they failed in preparing him for success in life.
The third success principle you should teach your child is the habit of a positive mental attitude. The habit of thinking in terms of things he can do and not in terms of things he cannot do. Henry Ford once said that what he needed most in his business organization were more men who didn’t know anything about the words “it cannot be done.”
Two teen-age girl friends decided to try out for the freshman class play together.
When Nancy told her parents about it, they were very enthusiastic and encouraged her to go right ahead with it.
However, when Joanne told her folks, all she got was negative comments – “Why do you want to waste your time with that? Besides, your voice is too squeaky. And you’ll spend too much time and catch cold in that chilly auditorium. You’ll never learn all those lines, they you’ll make a mistake and be embarrassed forever.”
The poor girl had failed even before she started. Failed because her own parents had sold her a negative “no-can-do” mental attitude.
Nancy tried out for the play. She didn’t get a part, but her positive-minded parents immediately helped her find the seed of an equivalent benefit in her temporary defeat. “Why, this will allow you to spend more time on your sewing for your 4H contest,” soothed her mother. Nancy went on to win second place in the 4H contest, and she grew up to be a poised, serene wife and mother who now has two beautiful children of her own to whom she is teaching the habit of a positive mental attitude.
Joanne didn’t get a part in the play either – but she didn’t even try. Once she did take courage enough to overcome her parents’ wails of doom and try out for the swimming team. When she didn’t make the team all she got from her parents was “I told you so.” Joanne today is a self-centered, withdrawn woman who spends her time and money trying all sorts of medicines to relieve her “aches and pains.” Her negative mental attitude has made of her a confirmed hypochondriac.
If parents think and talk in terms of sickness and poverty and failure, they will pass these states of mind on to their children who, in turn will use them as stumbling blocks to failure throughout life. Think, act and speak in terms of health, affluence, achievement — and give your children steppingstones to success.
Source: Success Unlimited. November 1956, Vol. III, No. XI. Pgs. 36-40.
Recently, I was reading a blog post in Psychology Today from the author of a great site I happened across recently. The author's name is Izzy Kalman, a veteran school psychologist and psychotherapist.
You can read his full post here. The gist of the article was that many people criticize him as being too critical about many approaches schools take toward bullying behavior.
Here is a comment he got from a reader recently:
“I was astonished to see the story about the boy labeled a "bully," for it added to my worries about my own son's problems at school with being bullied. What if, to top it all off, he finally loses his temper and starts pushing back and he's the one tagged a bully? Good lord.
“My son is in middle school and was bullied--teased, isolated, made the subject of rumors, mocked openly in class--for the entire first semester of this year. I had no idea until he finally announced to me that he couldn't go to school any more. He couldn't take it. I took him to a therapist who wanted to do an intervention session at the school but my son wanted nothing more to do with it, for he had been bullied some the year before, and the teachers had intervened, and done a terrible job: so bad, in fact, that it immensely escalated the problems and it made him afraid to tell me that they had escalated, for that would have set off another dreaded intervention.
“I began doing massive amounts of research on bullying, and came to the same conclusion, independently, that [Mr.] Kalman long before me had: any form of school intervention backfires badly. And I had real life experience to add to the research. (I do believe that a whole-school, philosophical, Quaker approach works pretty well, but it doesn't prepare you for the rest of the world, or at least it didn't prepare my son for it when he moved to this very good public middle school.)
“Anyway, in my research I happened upon the bullies2buddies site and read it with interest. I asked my son to read it and we agreed that he would try it for a few weeks while we figured out what to do. Here's the breathtaking thing: after what was really 1.5 years of bullying, it stopped in one week. In fact, it stopped the first day my son tried the technique. Two kids started making fun of his chapped lips, blocking my son from getting to his locker. My son just looked at them casually and said, "yeah, my lips get chapped this time of year; I hate it." They said nothing more and let him pass. It has now been four weeks without any bullying. He said he has been teased a few times, but no more than any of the other kids.
“The therapist has recommended that I keep a close eye on the situation, that my son may not be telling the truth out of fear that we will intervene. I don't have the sense that this is the case, but I will definitely keep you posted.”
Thanks again, Parent of Bullied Child, for presenting us with your experience. I look forward to hearing from you again.
So, reader, please don’t think I only spend my time criticizing. And please use my website to save other kids from bullying, too.
If you are further interested in resources for combating bullying, see the link at the right side of the page: Help Your Child Learn to Defeat Bullying!
 I was very fortunate, in some of my recent internet research, to come across a website for Michelle Garcia Winner, one of the pioneers in cutting edge solutions for helping those on the spectrum better communicate within an NT context.
This post will summarize some of the foundational concepts behind her social thinking approach.
1. Most neurotypical children are 'hard wired' since birth to engage in social thinking, much like walking.
2. Early on, neurotypical children engage in 'joint attention.' This means that they intuitively look at the other person's eyes to figure out what they are thinking, and to know how to respond. With this skill, they are able to cooperate, share their imaginations with others, and work in groups.
3. Children engage in play with their peers in preschool. Play gives kids the skill base to sit and learn in a classroom.
4. Kids on the spectrum who have average language skills do not intuitively learn social information or social thinking in the same way that neurotypical children do. However, they can be they can be cognitively taught how to think socially and understand the use of related social skills.
These children can learn a frame of reference for social decoding and learning, much in the way you and I would need to learn a language if we travelled to a foreign country to live for a long period of time.
I happened to meet, via some networking, a professional colleague whose philosophy of mental health and human growth really synced with what I think. This gentleman's name is Tom Wooton. He founded a company called Bipolar Advantage. I won't go into detail about his company. But I would recommend that you watch his video, in which he talks candidly about his own struggle with Bipolar Disorder.
However, listen to the philosophy he has about "mental health conditions:"
"Our Mission is to help people with mental conditions shift their thinking and behavior so that they can lead extraordinary lives. We are dedicated to the concept that recovery does not have to be limited to 90% of full function; true recovery means doing the hard work that brings you to 150%! We strongly believe that we can turn our 'condition' into one that becomes an advantage instead of an 'illness' or a 'disorder.'"
One of things I was most struck by as I watched his own personal testimonial about dealing with bipolar disorder was the balance between giving into the 'delusion' that you are unable to function because of your condition, versus being aware of the realistic limitations, but also striving to take responsibility for who you are in full. You are not your diagnosis! You are an incredible human being with so much potential. Rise up, and take responsibility. This means admitting that you may have a condition, that you may have limitations, but it also means looking at your strengths, acknowledging those, and using your gifts and talents.
I have spent a lot of time working with 'Aspies' (a term commonly used for by persons who have been gifted with Asperger's and Autism in referring to themselves). I have spent a lot of time with their parents, spouses, children as well. One of the most common misconceptions that "NT's" (those of us who are 'neurotypical') have is that Autism or Aspergers is a disability. One of the most common disappointments, or complaints, Aspies have is that NT's are trying to make them change who they are, as if they were somehow deficient. Unfortunately, that is a very dehumanizing view of people. Rather, any of us, whether we be NT's, or a person struggling with a different type of life problem (and who of us does not, this writer included!), need to understand that every person is an amazing creation, with limitless abilities, possibilities, talents, and gifts.
I choose to see and appreciate those gifts, nurture them, and bring them forth in each client. And I am blessed to learn from every person who I enter into a collaborative working relationship with.
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