Parenting and Emotional Development

Take Home Points

  • Defining the Problem: Self-Esteem Movement 
    • This movement focuses on how children feel instead of focusing on what the child does and causes them to be more at risk for depression 
    • The focus on competition and rewarding hard work has been replaced with wanting to make sure everyone feels valued
  • Failure and Flow 
    • Flow it the feeling of being completely at home 
    • In order to achieve flow parents need to allow their children to fail so they can correct and persevere and learn to do well 
    • Success does not come without frustration and failure and then getting back up and continuing 
  • ABCDE Model 
    • A - Adversity 
    • B - Beliefs 
    • C - Consequences (feelings) 
    • D - Disputations (challenge the validity of your interpretations) 
    • E - Energization (subsequent emotional response) 
    • When children are faced with adversity or a stressful situation this model helps them confront what they are feelings and come up with alternative solutions or alternative explanations as to why they are feeling the way they are feeling
    • Help them look at the pie and see whats in their control and what isn't in their control 
    • Tools for Disputation 
      • Evidence gathering - what is the evidence for my belief? 
      • Generate alternatives - what are other ways of seeing the adversity? 
      • Decatastrophize - what is the most likely outcome? 
        • Not the WORST outcome, but the MOST LIKELY outcome? 
      • Plan of attack - develop a plan for the most likely outcome
  • Social Skills: Problem Solving 
    • Helping kids not act impulsively 
      • Hot thoughts - thoughts that come to the mind as soon as a problem happens and are often retaliatory 
      • Cold thoughts - help you figure out what happened and consider all available information 
    • Perspective taking 
    • Goal setting 
    • Choose a path 

Concerns

  1. Depression Epidemic
    • Characterized by low mood, listless behavior, physical problems, and catastrophic thinking 
    • In 2016 over 3 million teens had one major depressive episode
    • 1/3rd of teens struggle with depressive symptoms 
    • Things that put children at risk of depression 
      • Permanence - belief that the causes of what happened are permanent rather than temporary 
      • Pervasiveness - belief that a cause will affect many different aspects of life 
      • Personalization - self-blame 
    • Solutions: 
      • Help children do well with feeling good only being a by-product 
      • Focus on children's actions and not on the outcome in order to help them understand the differences between temporary characteristics and defining characteristics within themselves 
  2. Critical Feedback for Children 
    • Solution: 
      • The Right Way to Criticize 
        • Focus on things that are not part of the child's character, rather are temporary things they can work on 
        • "It's okay that you didn't do well in your game today, we will just need to work extra hard together to improve." 
        • Accuracy is critical - exaggerated blame produces shame, but no blame erodes responsibility and nullifies will to change 
  3. Raising Kids with Emotional Literacy 
    • Solution: 
      • Help kids gain emotional vocabulary by naming their emotions for them and talking through their emotions with them 
      • Do not dismiss a child's feelings 
      • Allow children to fail in order to allow them to know how to overcome their own difficulties

References: All research on this post came from in-class lectures from L. Walker and the book The Optimistic Child 
(L. Walker, Parenting and Emotional Development lecture, SFL 240, Fall 2019) 
(Seligman, M. E. P. (2018). Optimistic child. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.) 

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