GUIDELINES TO MAKE YOUR CHILD BECOME A HAPPIER CHILD
Before embarking on a program to address your child’s irritability, it is useful to think about when and where crying and irritability occur, and for how long, to determine the causes of the behavior.
In some cases, a crying infant or irritable child may be responding to tensions that you are feeling which may cause you to handle your child briskly or to snap at them when they ask for something.
All parents have bad days, but if this is a normal course of events for you, then what is irritability may occur whenever changes are introduced in the everyday routine or activity.
Once it is more apparent what might be underlying the child’s irritability, treatment ideas can be tried.
It is very hard to help intensely unregulated children to calm down.
Sometimes parents say that once the tantrum begins, it has to run its course and may take several hours before things get better.
An important aspect in helping your child is to develop a consistent plan in approaching different behaviors.
The key principle to keep in mind is that we need to teach your child to calm himself down, to become a better problem solver, and to tolerate distress when he can’t change a frustrating situation.
As parents we need to keep calm, understand our own limits, and make a plan that will work. At the same time, it is essential for you to understand your child’s distress and feelings while learning how to set limits and redirect your child to purposeful activity.
Below are listed a number of guidelines that can be used in helping your child become a happier child:
Rule Out Medical Problems
When an infant or child is inconsolable, it is important to determine if the child has any medical problem that may be the primary reason for the crying or chronic irritability.
Address Irritability-Generating Sensory Hypersensitivities
Inconsolability may be related to hypersensitivities that the child has to environmental stimulation. These hypersensitivities may include clothes that agitates the child, noises that overstimulate him, or too many activities in a room that create an overloading effect.
The child’s sensory hypersensitivities should be addressed whenever possible through play. If your child is hypersensitive to sounds, he should be encouraged to engage in activities that allow him to make sounds.
In addition, movement activities are very calming, particularly ones that provide linear movement like glider chairs and trampolines.
Avoid Overstimulating Your Child
A common problem confronting the parent who is trying to console a crying child is a tendency to become frantic when their efforts do not seem to work.
You may find yourself rocking your child in a forward and back motion for a few minutes, then swinging your child in the air when the crying resumes.
Or if your child is older, you may hand him a book to look at, music to listen to, or convince him to go outside for a change of scenery.
When each of your ideas fail to work, you find yourself scanning the list in your mind to offer something else that might work.
Whatever you do, it’s a good idea to step back and think how many things did you just do to help your child calm down? If you count more than three, and all in a short period of time, it probably is too many.
The important thing is to try one thing long enough to see if it works.
One trick is to watch to see if there are certain situations or demands that consistently overwhelm your child.
For example, some children are overwhelmed by noisy, crowded environments. In this case, the issue is more sensory based.
This kind of child needs to have smaller amounts of stimulation in his life.
In this regard, it is helpful to teach your child to find healthy escapes when he is overwhelmed.
Other children cannot stand to have limits place on them because of their inflexibility in tolerating change or their need to control what happens to them.
Once you figure out what might be contributing to the irritability, you might be able to help your child by prompting him when a limit is on the horizon.
An easy way to do this is to use a behavioral chart with clear pictures or symbols of upcoming events or tasks that need to be done.
It is very comforting for children to know what’s next on the agenda.
Help The Child Become More Self-Reliant
Many parents complain that their child is constantly whining and demanding their attention.
To help build the child’s capacity to organize himself and decrease reliance on the parent to entertain him, you should try playing with your child for about 10 to 15 minutes using the child’s favorite toys.
After the child is playing well, you should encourage him to keep playing while you do a small chore or activity in the same room.
Every few minutes, you should check in, reassure, and praise him.
Whenever you are in involved in a task such as cooking a meal, it is wise to offer your young child some pots and pans, plastic containers, and small objects to use in filling, dumping, stirring, etc. so that your child can play and imitate you while you cook. If your child complains, you should try to redirect him physically or verbally. Moreover, you should be clear to your child about when it is time that you will pick them up or help them and when it isn’t because you are busy.
As soon as you are finished with your chore, you should reward them for playing alone or waiting by sitting with them to read a story or playing with them briefly.
For young babies, they may be carried about in a sling while you do household chores so that he or she can see what you are doing.
With older children – preschoolers and school-aged children – it is helpful to teach your child to label his or her emotions and to read bodily signals so that he or she can implement calm-down strategies on their own.
Sometimes children respond to ideas like a traffic light or mood meter with red color denoting “time to put on the brakes” or mad or angry feelings and green or blue colors for feeling calm or focused.
Other children respond well to thinking about their engine is running.