To make this article more meaningful, please read part one of this series, “Avoid making challenges worse for children.” In it, I share how adults typical react to the uncertainty of challenges. Noting the pattern I’ve named “The Four D’s,” you learned about the pitfalls of handling challenges in this manner. Now, let’s turn our gaze on what to do instead when challenges arise.
Teach me what to do instead during challenges
If protecting children from reality and rushing them to happy with The Four D’s is not the answer. Then what is?
Involve them.
Clearly, adults need to language the reality of uncertain or challenging times with careful consideration. Children’s underdeveloped brains cannot process all that is happening. They need adults to guide them through their experience in developmentally appropriate ways.
The human brain doesn’t develop until the early thirties according to current research. Which means they need, not want, your attuned engagement to help them navigate challenges.
Here’s how: the “Four A’s of Navigating Challenges”
1. Acknowledge the challenge. Acknowledge before offering a solution.
This is exceedingly difficult for most adults. Especially those who are “fixers.” They either deny there is a problem or skip over acknowledging the thoughts and feelings associated with the problem. They dive straight into a solution.
If adults rush to offer solutions, the child misses the chance to learn important skills. Those of problem solving, conflict resolution, and emotional literacy to start. We need to acknowledge “what is” for the child so we can help them learn how to move through it. Such an approach seems foreign to many adults.
Why pause to acknowledge the challenge when I have a fix/solution at the ready?
Because your job is to teach children how to handle these issues; not rely on adults to figure everything out. When adults collaborate with children experiencing challenges, children are positioned to develop the resilience to navigate life’s difficulties.
Perhaps ask yourself: how can I “fix” what I haven’t acknowledged in the first place? You might not have all the information relevant to an effective solution without first connecting to the child’s perspective.
Work smarter, not harder.
We are a meaning making species. You will not know how to navigate every challenge that arises. So be sure to involve children in finding the meaning with you. Transform crisis into opportunity by teaching children how to skillfully navigate through challenges instead of shielding them.
As you acknowledge, you engage the Attuning process
2. Attune to the child’s perspective. As part of acknowledging the challenge, ask for and attune to the child’s verbal and non-verbal expressions of concern. This includes children’s thoughts, feelings, images, physical sensations, and behaviors.
Here’s the key, though: you need to attune with openness and curiosity. Your intention is to gain knowledge to help the child, not to shame, blame, punish, judge, or “fix” the child. That is very hard for adults to do when the child’s behavior is challenging.
When attuning to the child’s perspective, adults tend to use that information gathered to dismantle the perspective shared. To challenge and change the child’s perspective. The concern with that? If you move too quickly, the child doesn’t feel seen, soothed, safe, or secure.
They can sense you are rushing to fix them. Not feel them.
If the child is giving you a hard time, they are having a hard time.
Maybe read that again to let it truly sink in. Because I hear adults all the time say, “That child is just trying to give me a hard time.”
Sadly, this mindset likely leads to signals of warning to the child. If you believe this, how might you behave? Likely, not well.
Based on those signals of warning, the child may appear to “double-down” on their behavior to try to be understood. Or, worse the behavior comes to an abrupt halt because they struggle to be perfect. For you. To make you happy.
In this way, the child sacrifices their authenticity to maintain their attachment to you i.e., to be who you need them to be/to make you happy.
Think about that for one moment. The child sacrifices their needs to make you happy. How does that sound to you? To me, as a therapist, it sounds like you are creating my next future client.
Much of my work with adults, especially women, center around this very issue. Adults unable to be their authentic selves because they are always trying to make others happy. To please and appease. To be helpful. Resulting in overwhelm, stress, and in many cases an anxiety disorder.
How attuning promotes connection amid challenges
In the example with the sippy cup above, the teacher might have attuned to the child by acknowledging the challenge. “Oh, Deon, you are having a problem with the sippy cups! Tell me what is happening for you, buddy.” Summarizing his perspective. “You love the blue sippy cup and we are out of them. Teacher Becca told you that you could have the blue one today and it isn’t here. Am I getting it?” Empathizing with his perspective. “You seem sad. I see your big tears and your body is slumped in the chair.” And then validating. “It’s hard not to get your favorite cup at lunch, huh?”
Acknowledging, summarizing, empathizing, and validating are four active listening skills to use when you want to attune.
Notice that the teacher is not dismissing, denying, distracting, or directing (offering a solution). Instead, they actively listen showing openness and curiosity about the child’s perspective. Attuning to the child in this way may help the child feel seen, soothed, safe, and secure. Can you see how?
There are many ways to attune, so don’t get stuck on this one example.
To attune, activate your curiosity about the child’s interior landscape. What is the CHILD thinking, feeling, sensing, perceiving, and believing in this moment? Not you. Them.
Your perspective matters, too, of course. But if you want to effectively navigate challenging behavior, you best become an expert on gathering the child’s perspective.
Expanding attunement
Attuning to the child may also include asking open-ended questions, “How are you feeling?” or “What are you thinking right now?” But young children might not have the intrapersonal attunement and/or the verbal acuity to describe their interior landscape….yet. They need you to teach them this skill.
To start, you may have to engage them through interpersonal attunement. Describing the child’s observed or inferred thoughts, beliefs, feelings, bodily sensations, verbal, and non-verbal behavior aloud. If you are wrong, the child can correct you i.e., “I am not frustrated, I am mad!”.
Don’t worry about not naming the thoughts or feelings correctly. When you attune, you send signals of welcome to the child. Your verbal and nonverbal behavior signifies your effort to see and soothe them, so they feel safe and secure. Not rushing to fix them. That’s more important than getting the exact verbiage correct.
In this way, an attuned approach to challenges helps the child “feel felt.” Acknowledging a challenge, offering an attuned response, supports the child’s need for safety, satisfaction, and connection. When you relate to the child’s perspective in this way, you help them regulate.
While you acknowledge and attune you move toward adopting
3. Adopt a regulatory stance. Acknowledging the challenge and attuning to the child’s perspective begins the process of co-regulation. The first two components of this framework work together to promote this third component.
The ability to adopt a stance of regulation: both self-regulation for the adult and co-regulation for the child.
Children need, not want, the adult brain to help them regulate.
Let’s explore how the teacher above adopted a co-regulation stance with Deon. By acknowledging his challenge of not getting the cup he wanted, and by attuning to his feelings and body sensations. Resonating with a child helps them to eventually return to balance. Why?
Because with attuning you meet them where they are at. Deon is having a strong emotional reaction to a situation that is important to him. Instead of trying to rush him out of it, you demonstrate his feelings matter.
You see him so he may begin to feel soothed, safe, and secure.
How adopting a co-regulatory stance helps children
Adults involve children in calming down instead of telling them to calm down by acknowledging, attuning, and adopting co-regulation strategies. In particular, active listening skills balance the child’s nervous system. When you summarize, empathize and validate the child’s perspective. And, you may offer physical comfort (a hug, gentle touch, facial expressions of concern, etc.) Using these active listening skills based on the child’s needs, not the adults.
Please note acknowledging and attuning does not mean you agree with the child’s perspective. It means you care about the child’s experience.
You want to be a signal of welcome not warning. We have learned the “old school” tactics used fear as a way to control. Giving your kid “the look,” or threatening them with “wait until your father comes home.” Let’s be more evolved than that. Instead of manipulating through threat and fear, let’s teach them what to do instead.
With this, you understand the child’s nervous system needs guidance to return to balance.
And if you strive to practice equity, inclusion, and social justice in your home or classroom? “The Four D’s” does not deliver any of those things. With “The Four A’s,” you involve children in telling the story of their experience from their point of view. This is the path to fully including all children.
Finally, we ask to involve the child in finding a solution
4. Ask for collaboration. After acknowledging, attuning, and adopting, you involve children by asking for their input. With this, the adult is showing interest in including children’s ideas for adjusting, coping, and even thriving. As such, the adult may be seen as a collaborator, support person, signal of welcome.
Not just someone who will tell them how to fix the problem. Someone who denies their reality.
The teacher eventually noticed Deon’s nervous system seemed in balance (he seemed calm after she acknowledged, attuned, and adopted the co-regulation stance), so she might ask:
“What thoughts do you have on preventing this challenge in the future, Deon?”
“You know, sometimes we do run out of the blue cups. How might I help you if we run out again?”
This part of the framework might happen at another time away from the initial challenge. For instance, later in the day at outside play time. The teacher might be digging in the sand with Deon and loop back. “Hey, I was thinking back on the challenge you had with the sippy cup. Any ideas for how I might help you in the future if that happens again?” or “Deon, you have a big brain. Help me figure out how we might prevent that challenge again. Any ideas?”
Of course you may offer options: children need your guidance
Clearly, adults can add their ideas to the child’s. After all, we have had more experience with problem solving so our guidance is crucial. And your brain is likely fully developed. If you are in your twenties, it’s still more developed than the child’s brain for sure.
It’s important to note, however, that many adults believe they are guiding a child when they are actually governing them. Those are two different things.
When you dismiss, deny, distract or direct you are governing them, i.e., controlling them, not teaching them, rushing to resolution versus seeing the child. Consider the difference for yourself if you felt someone was trying to control/govern you versus support/guide you.
When you govern someone, you create signals of warning, not welcome.
Navigating the Uncertainty of Challenges with Children
My client was skeptical about this framework at first. It didn’t feel “natural.”
I validated her perspective and affirmed that it wasn’t meant to feel natural. Instead, it was meant to help adults teach and parent based on science, not habit.
I trust it will become natural over time, I told her.
After three weeks of trying out “The Four A’s” framework, she reported it seemed more effective than her former approach. Just staying positive, denying a problem and rushing to fix. She reported each component of the framework proved useful in her daily interactions with her child. Not just for discussing challenges. Specifically, the active listening skills involved in attuned engagement seemed to strengthen her connection to her child.
Indeed!
The 2-Minute Action Plan: getting started
Where do I start? Perhaps these prompts will help you :
- Start by noticing how often you dismiss, deny, distract or direct. With yourself, your friends, your family, your children when challenges arise. You want to have a baseline understanding of how you habitually react to challenges first.
- Ask yourself what am I afraid might happen if I acknowledge the challenge with my child? What do I envision happening if I don’t have answers to questions that arise? What feeling inside of me am I trying to avoid?
- Was I taught to identify, understand, express, and then manage my feelings? Or was I told to manage my feelings without guidance on how to skillfully do so? What strategies do I use for myself as an adult when I am feeling emotionally imbalanced? Are they healthy? Would I want my children to use these same coping strategies?
- What do I think children need when they are faced with challenges or uncertainty? How did this article change and/or strengthen my views? Am I open to updating any of my current beliefs?
- Imagine how conversations might differ if you use “The 4 A’s of Navigating Uncertainty” framework. You might consider what could be challenging about engaging this way. But make sure you also explore how it might be beneficial for you and your child as well.
The Ongoing Action Plan
Over the next week try this:
- Plan ahead: Write out the four steps of navigating uncertainty and take time to really understand each step. Imagine how you would carry out “The Four A’s” with your child. It is different for every person. Make it your own, while staying true to the guidelines. Consider creating a visual reminder of the framework for yourself to display somewhere as a reminder and reference.
- Reflect: What do I need to help me feel resourced enough to guide my child through “The Four A’s”? What are the things that help me feel confident and competent as a parent? Do those things and/or notice when you feel this way.
- Click on the links within the article above to help you begin using this approach with your child. See if you can find a trusted adult to reflect with. To help you plan how to roll this out with your child.
- Keep in Mind: The brain is a prediction machine. It tries to make sense of what is happening with as little information as possible. Comparing what “is” with what it already knows. When things in the world are not making sense for the child, you can provide the attunement. Alongside co-regulation and collaboration. All of which they need to feel a sense of safety and security amid the uncertainty.