Don’t you sometimes wish you were a carefree child?

To just leave behind work, family, financial responsibilities, all the doom and gloom we hear in the news, and just be completely worry-free?

As it turns out though, childhood isn’t as worry-free as we’d like to think it is.

A study of 20,000 Australian children indicated that on average 1 in 5 children worried most or all of the time. The most worried about topics were future, family, and health. Other categories of worry included friends, body image, bullying, world problems, school and being different.

While these stats are sobering, here’s the part that really got to me – of those surveyed, 1 in 5 children said that they wouldn’t talk about it to anyone.

In the study mentioned above, developmental psychologist Dr. Richard O’Kearney says embarrassment and fear of what others would think about them keeps kids from reaching out for help. So, not only are kids experiencing stress, but they’re not reaching out for support.

As a Mental Skills Coach for the last decade, I’ve worked with youth athletes to help them become more mentally strong. I’ve helped kids learn to manage stress both sport-related and life-related — school concerns, social issues with friends, feeling pressure from parents on and off the field, and more.

Now that I have my own kids, I see even more how easy it is for them to experience stress.

While some stress is normal, our kids shouldn’t have to deal with these burdens without a support system (that’s us!). Additionally, they need to have their own arsenal of skills to help them better manage the stress they are experiencing when we’re not around or they are hesitant to bring the situation to our attention.

I want to share with you today some of the strategies that I teach. Please keep in mind that while the ideas below can bring stress relief to many, if you suspect your child has higher levels of anxiety than what seems normal, you may want to check in with your healthcare provider.

First Things First: Understand the Sources, Signs and Symptoms of Stress

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The other day, I was wondering what kind of life my son will have as he is growing up.

He is about to start kindergarten. I am filled with anxiety mixed with excitement. In part because I am acutely aware of the burst of emotions that he is in for as he starts this new journey.

I don’t remember much of my own early childhood and school-life. I was rather shy and timid at school and boisterous and headstrong at home. I also remember not being able to handle big emotions too well and not being good at conflict resolution.

Being the younger of two siblings, I got a lot of leeway and protection from my parents. Because they handled everything for me I never felt the need to work through my complicated emotions or work out issues cordially.

Looking back, I feel that even though that was convenient for me, it didn’t really give me the necessary tools to verbalize and understand my emotions too well.

As a parent of a three and a half year old, I am extremely conscious of this. Not only do I share my own feelings with him, I encourage him to talk about his feelings with me.

One day, as we were getting into the car after preschool my son, said, “Ma, I don’t want to go to school again.”

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Are your children equipped to manage and make decisions when you aren’t present?

When my son was 4 years old, we had a small fire in the kitchen, and I wondered the same thing.

I was at home with him of course, but when his dad was busy trying to put the fire out and I was anxiously attempting to remove my son from the house, my son froze and didn’t know what to do.

At first, he ran back to his room to turn the television off!

Then he just looked confused and scared when I asked him repeatedly to put his coat and shoes on and step outside.

When I finally got him outside and to safety, we put the fire out and I suddenly felt like a horrible parent. We never even practiced fire drills at home, I thought to myself. If we had, maybe he would’ve known not to run back into his room and turn things off; he would have just ran for the door, I chastised myself.

But I don’t think we’re very different from other parents. Like most parents I know, I spent most of my time helping my preschooler learn the alphabet and how to spell his name. On a good day when everything was fine, practicing fire drills at home doesn’t normally cross your mind.

Yet, teaching them some of these “other” things is important.

As parents, we won’t be by our child’s side 24/7 – so, it is is crucial that we teach them how to be street smart. It’s just as important to teach them how to behave and interact with the world around them as it is to teach them how to excel academically.

Why Making Kids Street Smart is a Smart Choice for Parents

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Kids are cute. But boy, can they press our buttons.

Aren’t you sometimes awed by how easily your little angels can push you to the edge?

I know I am!

51% of my time as a parent is filled with joy. The other 49% is spent managing my own internal turmoil from interacting with a growing, curious being learning her way to function in the world with nary a trace of concern for the havoc she wreaks in me.

So, it is with a smile on my face (and the mantra “this too shall pass” playing in a loop in my head) that I present to you this list of “behavioral issues” in children that have driven me mad as a mother and an ex-teacher… but I am learning to cope with, because of how instrumental they are in helping a child learn, grow and develop.

#1 Throwing Tantrums

“I want sweets now.”

I’m in the middle of cooking dinner. I’ve had a busy day. I’m tired. My spider senses are starting to tingle with the premonition that I’m going to be part of a train wreck. I muster up the last of my calm control and respond, “In this family, we only have sweets after dinner.”

The incessant demand for sweets soon turns to screaming that has me boiling like the soup I was brewing for the family.

Why do they behave like this?

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Let’s be honest: children sometimes suck at being patient.

I know mine do.

Unfortunately, their lack of patience and self-control can become contagious to us adults, too. I admit that I’m prone to snapping, “Just wait a minute!” when my kids are screaming because I take too long to cut their grapes.

And before I know it, it becomes this vicious cycle—my children’s impatience makes me impatient, which in turn makes them more impatient, until it spirals out of control.

I know I can’t indulge them when they whine instead of waiting quietly – like all parents, I do believe in teaching kids about self-control and delayed gratification.

But, the way I sometimes go about it isn’t quite right.

Instead of expecting 2- and 3-year-olds to magically acquire self-control skills overnight (that would be cool though, wouldn’t it?), I need to model and teach these skills to them.

Marshmallow Test: The Famous Study in Self-Control and Delayed Gratification

Psychologists have studied why some kids seem to excel at demonstrating self-control and delaying gratification, while others struggle for long time now. Have you heard of the famous “marshmallow test” conducted by Walter Mischel and a team of researchers at Stanford University in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s?

One by one, 4-year-old children were presented with a marshmallow and informed that they could either eat a marshmallow now, or wait 15 minutes and receive two marshmallows. Some children gobbled the marshmallow immediately, while others managed to wait the full 15 minutes and receive the reward of a second marshmallow.

[Note from Sumitha: Here is a video of the marshmallow test in action. It’s not from the original study, but captures the kids reactions sooooo well.]

The researchers continued to follow up with the children for the next several decades. They found that the 4-year-olds who had successfully waited for 15 minutes differed in significant ways from the children who couldn’t wait. Over the years, the children who had “passed” the marshmallow test developed the following characteristics:

• better emotional coping skills
• higher rates of educational attainment
• higher SAT scores
• lower BMI
• lower divorce rates
• lower rates of addiction

So, is the lesson that some people are born with better self-control, and that this trait determines their entire life trajectory?

Far from it.

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