Clinton – developing coping and competence

Those of us in the world of child development are trying to think of ways; for younger and younger, how to help kids cope and have the innate competencies or have the competencies built to be able to deal with challenge.  And we know – surprise – that the building blocks of being able to cope with challenge is having a predictable “other” there to help you get through the difficult time.   And the difficult time may be that Jamie over there took my blocks and I want them now.  How does a toddler learn how to go from, he took it now, whack! to “Jamie, I really wanted to play with that.  Can we take turns?”  How that building; and that’s coping, that’s coping – how that develops is through the modelling that happens with high quality childcare, that happens with high quality parenting where instead of saying “don’t be like that!” you say “oh, you’re really frustrated with that. We’re going to use your words”. Because when you use your words, this is what you say to the toddler, but we now know from the work of Adele Diamond that when you use your words, when you’re actually labelling your feelings, then you are making more connections to your thinking brain. 

So helping little ones cope is helping them use their language, labelling their feeling, giving them a language for it, acknowledging their feeling. So if we think of healthy mental development, we think of little ones learning how to experience, manage and express their emotions.  And how they do that is one;  being allowed to have them, two;  having a nurturing adult who set the limits but give them the words and the understanding this is tough and model what it is that would be helpful for them.  That’s how you develop competency in the social and emotional realm.