Hi. My name is Siope and I'm the Director of Smarter Parenting. Today I
wanted to talk to you about helping children learn to control their emotions.
Largely using a very specific technique. Now, I was working with a family with an
11-year-old boy and he had a hard time controlling his temper. He was fairly
explosive. His parents would ask him to do something and he would react. He would
punch holes into walls. He would throw things, yell, run out of the house. And
after working with this family for a while, we focused a lot of attention
on the parents and how they can interact with their son in a more positive way.
But with the young man he also needed help and so I introduced this idea, this
concept to him to help him monitor his own responses. His own physiological
responses when things happen. Now it's a fairly simple technique and it's
something that anyone can do. I purchased something called a pulse oximeter. Now
you can buy one of these at your local drugstore for around twenty to thirty
dollars. You don't have to get something that's super expensive, but a pulse
oximeter is something that you would find at a hospital. So you stick it on
your finger and it will tell you what your heartbeat is and also oxygen levels.
And by doing this we were able to monitor how he was responding to
different stimuli within the home. So, initially in talking to the
boy we made it a game and I put it on him. And we tried to determine first off
his baseline. What is his resting heart rate. And we did this by having him sit
down in a calm state, putting it on his finger and we were able to watch the
number fluctuate, either one up or one down and he was able to get a baseline
so we took note of that. Then I gave him a challenge. To actually try and reduce
that number. So reduce his heart rate and offered suggestions on how to do that. So
he could start to deep breathe. You know take
deep breaths and calm down. Relax his muscles. And he was able to bring it down
actually five more points than where it was when he was resting and we logged
that down. Okay, and so we were able to recognize from there two points where
he's calm and he's able to deal with things. What we did then, after that, is I
met with the parents and with him, and he kept the pulse oximeter on him and as we
started to discuss some of the issues in the home. And what we were watching for
is to see if it started to elevate his heart rate. And as it started to escalate
while we started to talk about issues in the home, we took a break and had him
bring it back down. Now this is a powerful technique especially for
children because they're able to recognize they
have control. They have some element of control and they're able to work through
things. So while we were working through this whole process with his family it
was pretty-pretty powerful for them to see and to recognize that yeah, we don't
need to lay out our whole agenda to the child at this time. We can actually work
with him so we'll talk about difficult topic and then we'll evaluate how well
he's doing and then bring his heart rate back down. And then talk again about
difficult topic, see it elevate, and then bring it back down. And it's almost this
dance between the parent and the child and that's completely appropriate. Now
for parents who think that they just should be able to lay down the law and
the kids need to suck it up, you know that's a great thing if you don't want a
relationship with your child. But, if you want a relationship with your child that's
long-term. That's resilient. That will last for for a long time, You want to be
able to recognize that as your child grows you're going to negotiate that
relationship. It changes. It's not going to be, "I say," or "the highway." It's going to
be, "Okay, I'm in control while you're young. As you get a little bit older
you're gonna have a little more independence. I recognize that. I'm still
the parent. I'm gonna lay the rules. You need to abide by those within your
independence and then continue to grow." So with this child it's been interesting
to watch him over the progress because I worked with him when he was 11 years old
and at 15 he was still using this technique. Okay. We first implemented
this technique inside the home, just with the parents. And then we actually
implemented it over to the school. Where I met with the school. Talked with the
teacher and said he's going to be carrying a pulse oximeter. Which he
just wore it around his neck it was on a lanyard. And every hour in school he
would just check and he could do this on his own silently and he would write down
what the number was and that way we could monitor there as well and see
where he would escalate. He was able to monitor and bring down his heart rate
but he continued to use it largely because, for him, it was a good way for
him to feel like in control of what was happening around him. And also to
recognize what things were setting him off and making him anxious, or angry, or
upset. When once you're able to do that, and he's able to recognize he can bring
things to different level, that opens up the floodgates to a whole bunch of other
options that he can implement in order to control his temper and his reaction
to things. So it's super super important for parents to, you know, look for
techniques at work. This is one that I've used, actually often, with families to
help them with children, and it it's a game for some of these kids and for
families. One recommendation I do have though is that the parents also use a
pulse oximeter. They can do that too. So you can use it during a family meeting.
You can monitor where you become upset and then try and deescalate from there.
Everybody takes a timeout to kind of calm them down then you come back and
address the issues. Now pulse oximeter, of course you can buy one in your drugstore,
you can also download apps. They're available. They're not as effective. Also
if you wear a Fitbit, or if you wear an Apple watch, or any of those watches, also
do the same thing they measure your heart rate. You can use any of those.
However, I prefer to use one that is from the drugstore, you know around $20,
largely because I don't want to give a child
an expensive electronic thing. Because who knows when their explosive, who knows
what they'll do with it. So it's better to start off with something that you
know you can replace. It's a little bit easier to use. So those are, that's a suggestion
that you can use as a parent with your child to help your child who may be
having a problem de-escalating or learning to control their temper or
their anxiety.