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Helping children cope with pressure

Last Updated 20 February 2013, 14:38 IST

Do you or your child go through the exam pangs?  These 3-pills-a-day-keep-the-doctor-away:

* Visual Pill: Some of us visualize all kinds of scary stuff, things going wrong. Conversely, most of us get benefited when we imagine ourselves succeeding. Help the child build a success movie and then play it again and again in the mind. Remember the script should be child’s, you only help the child visualize it and remind him or her to run though the same three times once a day.

* Talk Pill: When your child pukes, you don’t start collecting it or analysing it or feeding your child more food. Some children do a lot of self talk, not all are very appetising. These children just need to talk, to express, to puke it out. Unfortunately some of us start giving our gyan or advice or solution or views. See if you would like to offer the sweet pill of listening - as many times of the day as they want to. Just listening pill, no speaking one hour before and two hours after the pill.

*  Feelings Pill: Any kind of pressure, expectations, ambition, brings with it a lot of feelings. Worse than the ordeal itself is to have one’s feelings denied. Aren’t all feelings okay? Aren’t all feelings useful? Try not to change the symptoms, but help the child to work through them. Help them become aware of their feelings and use any of the following exercises which complement the other two pills - expressing feelings via drawing, play, acting, role play, clay modelling, and the likes.

And just in case you don’t feel like doing all of above – do what my parents did – they gave me the most beautiful gift in my childhood – no expectations. So I had no tension, no stress, and no pressure to perform. They let me blossom.

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(Published 20 February 2013, 14:38 IST)

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