Behaviors Need Skill Instruction: Part Six The Top 10 Things I Wish I’d Known On My Child’s Mental Health Journey
From a mother who never imagined her once squirrely and sweet six-year-old would face such tribulations as an adolescent, I wish to share the lessons I’ve learned, the opportunities I wish had been presented to me, and the essential navigation tips that might not have prevented our situation but would have undoubtedly eased our journey.
If you suspect even a mild concern about your child’s mental health, please hold onto this list. You might not be ready to tackle it just yet, but if you’re reading this, it means you’re aware, and awareness is the first step. As a mother who was once not ready to face these realities, I implore you to save this list.
When it comes to my child’s behavioral issues, they typically stem from a desire to avoid something or an attempt to gain something, often due to a lack of necessary skills or unmet needs.
Reflecting on my journey, one of the most critical yet overlooked aspects I wish I had addressed earlier is the provision or creation of opportunities for developing social skills. Accessibility to such resources can vary significantly depending on your location, but thankfully, technology is increasingly bridging these gaps.
There have been instances where my child resisted challenging situations, like group work at school. As a well-intentioned parent, I might contact the school to express my concerns and request a different group for my child. However, what I might not realize is that my child’s struggle with the group project could stem from underdeveloped social and emotional skills.
They might be overly dominant or excessively timid in conversations, avoid social interactions, lack problem-solving abilities, have poor communication skills, low stress tolerance, or an absence of effective stress management techniques.
While requesting a group change might provide immediate relief, it inadvertently deprives my child of valuable opportunities to develop essential social skills.
It’s akin to my experience of returning to the gym after a long break and feeling discomfort. Choosing to stop going would only hinder my progress, just as denying our children the chance to learn and practice social skills does them a disservice.
It’s important to differentiate this from situations where my child faces physical aggression or threats from others. In such cases, intervention is necessary to ensure their safety and well-being. But in the broader context, fostering an environment where they can regularly engage in and learn from social interactions is crucial for their development.
Parents and teachers can feel intimidated by explicitly teaching these social skills to our children because most of us never were taught them either. I have to remind myself when I’m training large groups of adults that they also require some explicit instruction on optimizing collaboration, effective communication, and problem solving.
It’s a misnomer to assume that adults are any better than children in their own emotional intelligence, but it is even more reason for all of us to spend more time with social emotional teaching and learning.
To teach your child a social emotional skill, decide on one specific target behavior you want to see improvement, because it is unrealistic to try to conquer multiple at the same time. After you identify your target behavior, decide what you want to see your child do instead of the undesired behavior. For instance, if your child is impulsive and can overreact in situations, just telling them to behave is way too abstract and does not give them the roadmap of what you want them to do.
Remember we need to be very explicit and concrete. For a child that is impulsive and overreacts an appropriate replacement behavior may be to teach them to take a break when they feel their body getting overwhelmed, anxious or angry. Another replacement behavior could be to teach them mindfulness techniques to get a calm body.
When teaching social and emotional skills, explain what the appropriate behavior looks like, then physically model and act out what it looks like, then ask them to practice over and over again. Each time they do it in practice, I want you to make a big deal about how well they are doing it. That praise is called reinforcement. If we want to see a change we HAVE to use high levels of reinforcement.
For those right now, saying “I don’t think I should have to reinforce my kid for doing what they should have been doing in the first place,” two thoughts. First, you could yell at me until you were blue in the face but if you didn’t teach me the Quadratic Formula I wasn’t going to learn it. Social and emotional skills that need to be taught as much as math, science, writing or reading.
Second thought… would you go to work every day if you didn’t get a paycheck? Reinforcement means we have motivation to do well. Your child wants to please you and needs to feel more success than not to see a change.
Fortunately, there are also a ton of social emotional games, activities, and tech apps available online and in stores to use.
Over the next few weeks join me in this series where I share each of the things I wish I would have known to hopefully help someone else along their journey.
