Does it constantly feel like an uphill battle trying to balance the demands of your children? Keeping everyone satisfied whilst trying to hold a line on reasonable day to day expectations for your children? Do you find you’re constantly negotiating with your child to get them to complete a task or are “bribing” them to sit still or to finish homework? Do you feel like you are walking that fine line of placating your child in order to avoid meltdown or blow up? If you have answered yes to any of the above, then welcome to parenthood!
In a busy world it is convenient and easy for us as parents to throw a “solution” at our children when they are having a meltdown, or not coping or they are holding up the “flow” to our day. When our kids are melting down in a moment and we are trying to get the groceries done, the car washed and dinner on the table, it is easy to solve our children’s problems for them in order to placate the meltdown and ease the frustration that our children are experiencing.
Sometimes this is absolutely necessary! However, when possible it is worth using intentional strategies to help our children develop skills of how they can persevere in the face of challenge, change and frustration to support their learning and growth.
We want to teach our children to become intrinsically motivated to complete tasks and not be dependent on external rewards. We want our children to be self-motivated learners who are driven to complete novel and routine tasks despite how easy or difficult they are. And we want them to be able to do this without external motivators such as bribes or prizes in the form of more screen time, a toy from the shop or lollies.
The foundation to all learning (especially in the face of challenge or stress) for our children is building frustration tolerance. Before we can learn to play with friends, ride a bike, tie or shoe, complete a maths computation, or solve for x, we have to tolerate the feelings that come along with the challenge. If we can’t tolerate the feelings that come along with learning, then learning becomes very difficult. We need to teach our children to become motivated to persevere and continue their learning journey whilst dealing with the tough feelings and emotions that come along with this. This will help them become independent learners in the face of challenge while also limiting the need for external motivators as a necessity for success.
We need to meet our children at their developmental baseline to intentionally build their skill reserve for tolerating frustration and setback. And more importantly, to overcome such frustration and expand their learning through intrinsic based motivators rather than external rewards.
Based on your child’s developmental age there exist an array of strategies to best support learning frustration tolerance. Remember to use the strategies that equate to your child’s developmental age. For example, many school aged children may still be operating developmentally at the toddler stage and as such toddler strategies will be more effective as you continue to scaffold your child’s learning.
Toddlers
At the toddler age it is important to model a regulated response. When you pick up your child when he/she is crying or dial down your panic or frustration in your own body when your toddler is screaming over their unpeeled apple. It is also important to redirect and or distract your toddler at this stage. Removing them from a situation that is causing distress and taking them outside to look at the bugs on the ground or the airplane in the sky can help bring their nervous system back to baseline and help them figure out what soothes them naturally. Labelling and narrating is also helpful in providing a label for your child’s feelings. “I can see you are so frustrated, Mum is taking so long opening up this packet of cheerios! I get it, I am almost done, one more minute!”.
Early School Aged Kids
For early school aged kids it is important to start offering coping skill options like “taking a break” (while sitting with them) or “taking a breath” (modelling next to them). One of the best ways we can help teach frustration tolerance is to infuse our day with mini moments of manageable frustration (waiting for the cookies to cool on the rack before taking a bite, labelling the emotion as you see it arise). We want to make sure that it does not exceed full capacity or boil over into a full-blown meltdown (think 2 minutes tops), but some whining and shifting around in discomfort is the sweet spot. This practice of delayed gratification is a means for teaching frustration tolerance. Using play to model can be helpful when direct strategies are too much for our kids. When the “dump truck” is mad and he can take a deep breath or take a break, then the pressure is off our children, and we can make it fun.
Later School Aged Kids
For later school age kids we can preventively brainstorm solutions by having a casual conversation when everyone is in the “green” zone about how your child can problem solve challenges, let your child lead this conversation. These conversations help prepare our children before the meltdown (it is not helpful to have these conversations when the meltdown is happening). At this age we can also help our children name the frustration and support growth by explaining to your child that each feeling has a name, it is called frustration. This is a clue that our child is learning something new, and that we can only grow when they feel that feeling. At this time try to shift your child into a “curious creature” and ask if they can see the feeling above them in the cloud or riding by on a train, this is a feeling that is separate from us. Can we acknowledge the feeling, wave at it and employ the coping strategy of letting it go?
At this developmental stage it is also helpful to talk about our own frustration tolerance. We can do this aloud, within earshot to them, but not to them. A conversation with your partner, or a friend about how you handled a frustrating situation that day, how long it took to work through and how you used a skill to help you.
Teenagers
Frustration tolerance for teens looks a bit different compared to younger children. Open communication in a nonjudgmental space will increase the likelihood that your teen will come to you to problem solve. Letting your teen know that your door is always open and you are there to help them figure it out when they are ready. When your teen does come to you for support try to be intentional in creating a non-judgmental space. This will help ensure they come back again and again for support. It is also important to validate, but not solve. It is easy to try and problem solve for your teen. Rather, work on “reflecting back” what you hear without solving problems. After validating what you hear, you can then ask if your child would like advice. Respect their response to this question by not giving unsolicited advice. It is important to encourage healthy activities like organised sports, yoga, long walks, spending time with friends or going to a play/theatre as a means for appropriate activities for the physical sensations that accompany frustration. When possible, limit social media as an outlet for the feelings of frustration.
Here are some of the signs that your child could use some support in learning frustration tolerance. If your child has significant and frequent difficulties with impulsivity, is often demanding, needs immediate attention to needs, has a frequent burst of anger over waiting, has a loss of control when needing to wait or being told no, or often goes from 0-100 when limits are set on them. If your child experiences any of these signs in their daily life it may be helpful to implement some of the skills outlined above to help them learn frustration tolerance. Through this they will learn to persevere in the face of challenges or tough emotional states and this will help them become intrinsically motivated for personal achievement and success.
To meet with a professional psychologist or counsellor, call The Other Clinic at 8809 0659 or email us hello@theotherclinic.sg.
Resources:
Knaus, W.J. (2006). Frustration Tolerance Training for Children. In: Ellis, A., Bernard, M.E. (eds) Rational Emotive Behavioural Approaches to Childhood Disorders, Springer, Boston, MA. http://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-26375-6_4
Carlson, S., Shoda, Y., Ayduk, O., Aber, L., Schafer, C., Sethi, A., Wilson, N., Peake, P., Mischel, W. (2018). Cohort effects in children’s delay of gratification, Developmental Psychology. 54 (8): 1395-1407. doi 10.1037/dev0000533