Teddy-Bear Parents Build Kids’ Optimism
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It’s Halloween week at preschool, and an energetic new teacher decides to surprise her class by dressing up in a giant teddy-bear costume.
To her great surprise and chagrin, three of her little charges burst out into tears at the sight of her. Quickly, she emerges from the fuzzy head of her costume and says gently, “Look! It’s just Miss Ellen!”
This is truly a lesson for small children. They need to see, experience and play with the concept that people continue to exist, unchanged, whether they leave the room, hide under the covers, or wear a mask. They need to learn that life-sized teddy bears are not real.
For kids who live with angry parents, this simple lesson of Halloween does not carry over into their own homes. How does a child make sense of a parent who is sometimes a teddy bear and sometimes a Frankenstein?
Children learn to trust that people can be counted on to respond to them in consistent ways through their interactions with their parents. When a parent is calm and patient in one moment, and angry and accusing like a Halloween monster in the next, it’s very frightening for children. They do not develop that crucial sense of optimism about the world that comes from gentle, predictable responses from the adults in their lives.
Kids blame themselves – “It must be something that I did that made Dad so mad” – and try to figure out how to prevent those harsh responses. They do not understand that the adult’s erratic behavior stems from his or her own inner climate, not from anything the child has done.
That’s why it’s so important for parents to learn to manage their own emotions. It’s easy to unintentionally unload onto your children your rage at the driver who cut you off, or your anger at the boss who belittled you at work today. When you feel impatient and angry at home, take a step back until those feelings subside.
No one manages this perfectly. But even when the day’s events have you pretty ruffled, kids need to be able to count on you to remain kind, unthreatening and in control of your emotions. In other words – be a teddy bear.
©2008 Beech Acres Parenting Center; www.beechacres.org
