It is a common thing that your child get frustrated, but do you know what causes it to happen?
According to Jim Taylor, frustration arises when the path toward a goal is blocked. Most of the time, children tend to complete something perfectly, but there are obstacles that causes the work to be incomplete. Whenever children get frustrated, they tend to give up easily to continue achieving their goal.
Highlighted
Most people considered frustration as a bad emotion, however, it starts as a good emotion, as it can encourage us to work harder and put extra effort in order to achieve our goal. But it’s different for a child, as they could not deal with a problem like adults.
Parents have to deal with frustrated kid by using a productive way, or else the good emotion will turn into a harmful emotion- the harmful emotion may cause the child to behave in a negative way.
How Should Parents Manage Frustration in Child
There are lots of solutions to manage a frustrated child, here’re the three basic ways that parents can use as reference:
#1 Become Your Child Role Model
As an idiom goes by- “What children see, children do”. Parents can easily influence their child through their attitude and behaviour. Example like a dad who used to grumble all day long, the child will grow up to be a grumpy person.
Managing a frustrated child is important, where parents played an important role in it. How your child deal with frustration is influenced by how you react to it. If you react to frustration with anger, your child will learn to react to frustration with anger too. Also, parents must remember that the way you react to your child frustration will also affect on how they learn to deal with their frustration. Parents must be calm and patient whenever deal with child’s frustration, then your child will only stay calm and follow your guidance on searching for a solution to their frustration.
#2 Validating Your Child’s Feeling
Before questioning your child, validate your child’s feeling is important. Whatever circumstances that caused your child to be frustrated, acknowledge and accept that the feelings are there. Communicate with them and understand their problems, then only guide them on solving their problem.
Being an observer is important too. Some children tend to hide their feelings, hence parents should always observe whether their child behave oddly. Once observed that your child behaved oddly, parents have to find a right time and talk with your child and solve their problem with them.
#3 Learn New Things Through One Small Step At a Time
Learning is a “must” process that every child should go through, and same goes to adults. Learning a new thing might not be easy for every child, so parents have to help children to develop a strategy of taking one small step at a time in approaching new things. Parents can team up with your child when learning new thing, where you make mistake together and gain knowledge together. Besides, your child will not feel alone to deal with new thing.
Parents might be wondering that how can learn new things by taking one small step at a time, here’s one of the example- make sure your child learn new thing until your child fully understand it.
Last but not least, remember to give lots of encouragement although it’s a small task. Also compliment your child whenever he/she accomplished a new task- bring your child out for celebration, maybe?