How am I supposed to know what is “normal” and when my child needs help?
The parents of a 11-year old boy realized that their son was having so much trouble with the other children at school. He was getting help from an itinerant teacher three times a week. She was making a big difference in his academic life, his grades were good and he was following what was going on in all of his classes. She tried to talk to him about the challenges he was facing with the social situations in 5th grade. But he was coming hone crying and angry a lot of the time because of arguments or misunderstandings with other kids.
The parents of a 14-year old girl were worried about their daughter’s erratic behavior. One day she was fine, but the next day she was angry and sullen. She would stomp around the house and then slam the door and close herself in her room for hours. Was this “normal teenage moodiness” or was there something serious troubling their child?
Parents of children with hearing loss often become real experts in hearing technology, surgical procedures, speech therapy – without any advance preparation! The birth of a child with hearing loss is all it takes to force them to learn everything about this complex and always-changing world. There is a point in many parents’ experience when they think “Ok, we figured this out, we are doing OK.” What a fantastic feeling! Parents – when you have this sense – celebrate a little! Do something for yourself! You truly deserve the sense of accomplishing a great thing!
And celebrate fast – because parenting is rarely done, checked off the list, so easily! When parents come to me asking if their child’s behaviors are normal or if their child needs help from a mental health professional (school counselor, psychologist, or social worker), this is what I advise them to consider:
1. When your child has a fever and a cough and some strange rash on his stomach – would you stay home and try to figure out what to do about it on your own? Probably not – you would likely call the pediatrician’s office and try to get the first appointment you can get! You would not expect yourself to be able to guess how to treat a physical-health problem alone. You would not imagine that you might be a bad parent if your child got sick. But parents can be unrealistic and terribly, unfairly hard on themselves when a child has an emotional-health problem. Suddenly, they imagine that they ought to know how to solve it without help and perhaps they are lousy parents to have a child with problems.
2. Your first task may be to quickly and completely change how you think about emotional-health problems. Your attitude will inevitably trickle down to your child. Kids understand even what we parents are trying not to say. If your child is suffering and having a hard time – it doesn’t help anything to pile on to that the feeling of fear or guilt that there must be something weird about me or wrong with me. Everyone goes through hard times, and some of those situations really require professional guidance to get though them successfully. Some kids can just suffer along alone but if they had the support and guidance of a professional, the experience would be a whole lot less painful. Kind of like getting some Novocain while having root canal, you could do the procedure without it, but why?
3. As a parent – it is not your job to make sure that your child never experiences problems. I have met quite a few parents who are convinced that their job is to ensure that their child faces no adversity. The hearing loss throws a great wrench into this illusion, since your child has a challenge that they will need to work to deal with throughout their life. IT IS YOUR JOB to teach your child how healthy people work to deal with their problems. Here is the thing – you need to help your child learn how to respond when there is a problem. The first thing you need to teach is that we are honest about having a problem. We aren’t embarrassed to admit that something is troubling us and we aren’t too shy to talk about what it is. The second thing that you need to teach is that we turn to others for help. You can explain what you do when something is troubling you. “When I am sad or angry, I always call Aunt Becca to talk about it” and “when I was in school, I talked to the school counselor all the time about all the mean girls in my class and my fights with my parents”
4. I really think that growing up is terribly hard and every child needs someone to talk to. And almost everyone needs someone who is not their parent or relative. If you can find the right person for your child to talk to about what is troubling them, you are really preparing them to address their problems in a healthy way for the rest of their lives. Now they have an adult they can trust who they can talk to about their problems, who can be objective, who is not a part of the family, and who can give your child a sense that there is someone who will listen and try to understand. Studies have shown time and again that having a trusting relationship with a non-related adult is a great protective factor in kids getting through their teenage years in good emotional health.
5. If you are not sure if your child has a problem that requires a professional’s attention- err on the side of caution. If you are not sure, go talk to a professional about it and see what he or she thinks. Also, often when you tell the whole story, you get more clarity about the situation. Find out if there is a school guidance counselor at your child’s school. When I was growing up, our school counselors gave amazing support to kids. If your child’s school does not have a counselor who works with kids directly, ask your pediatrician or speech therapist if they can recommend a psychologist or social worker. Make an appointment and just go talk about what is concerning you. I figure that there is not a lot to lose. If it becomes so clear that your child is so totally fine, that there is not a problem at all – then you have a resource to turn to in the future. As a parent, a resource to turn to in the future is a very valuable asset.
6. Suggest to your child that she/he go talk to this person. I have seen many cases where the simple fact that the parents noticed that the child was struggling and took some action about it, helped the child feel better. Remember, you are trying to teach your child how to cope with difficulties for life. The message that you are conveying now is that no one can handle everything alone, no one can, no one ought to. But there are people who can help us. If your child doesn’t want to go – discuss, cajole, convince – and professional counselors have experience working with children who are not so enthusiastic.
7. I really recommend going to find this resource before there is a serious problem and a child might be unwilling to cooperate. Back to our opening analogy: go before the rash has spread all over the body and the fever is 105! I have seen children work through very difficult times and serious issues with meetings twice a week with a child psychologist. Then the child only needed to go talk to their psychologist every three weeks or every month, just to stay in touch and continue the relationship. I think that having this resource can be ideal for a child with hearing loss. Not everything is going to necessarily be easy – but as parents we can try to make it as painless as possible.
Tags: children, coping with stress, deaf, emotional-health problems, hearing loss, listening to your child, outlook on life, parenting, psychologist, seeking help, social and emotional development, talking to your child
[...] How am I supposed to know what is “normal” and when my child needs help? and High Expectations and Realistic Situations: A New Motto are great reads. [...]