When I returned home, I sat down on the porch to try it out. As Gabe looked on with curiosity, I tried without success to blow up a balloon with the pump. So I stretched it a little, put the balloon to my lips and blew. It burst. The wanna-be popular parent in me wasn't deterred but the bang scared my son. So I did what many parents do and jollied him out of his fear. Here's a great little video that illustrates this well.
Like this baby, my son recuperated quickly and was eager for more as I started blowing up a second balloon. Gabe watched closely as I tried to twist it into shape and then, bang! Buyer beware of old balloon kits. The second balloon exploded too but this time, it burst close to my son's face.
Poor sweetie; Gabriel was scared. I comforted him and gave up personal aspirations of animal balloon greatness. In the coming weeks, he didn't want anything to do with balloons. Then without encouragement, Gabriel brought me a balloon. Initially it wasn't clear to me what he wanted as I couldn't imagine that the memory of the burst balloon had simply disappeared.
While watching my son closely, I started blowing up the balloon. As I did so, Gabriel became more agitated and when he gestured that I should stop, I did. Over the coming weeks, this activity was repeated four or five times and each time, Gabe allowed me to inflate the balloon a little more. One day, I inflated it fully and my son took the balloon and went off to play. I remember sitting there awestruck by a very young child, who even without many words, could teach me how to help him overcome his fear.
This memory came back as I listened to a recent presentation given by Dr. Stuart Shanker. In truth, it might have been helped along by some balloon swords and pirate hats worn by some, ahem, young people at a restaurant the night before. In his talk, Dr. Shanker spoke about how stress and anxiety deeply affect the majority of our children. Here are links to two excellent CBC Radio Ideas shows entitled Neuron Therapy where Dr. Shanker explains his ideas. The first show is from October 2009 and the second from June 2014.
To my mind, Stuart Shanker and his colleagues are coming to grips with some of the most important questions for children of our time. What is autism? Why are so many children suffering from anxiety or acting out? Why do many children have difficulties learning? Dr. Shanker's concepts are important for every parent to understand. Knowledge of self-regulation not only assists parents but it can help children become happier and more productive.
Stuart Shanker uses analogies of thermostats and car mechanics to explain his concepts. The hormones, adrenalin (epinephrine) and serotonin, act somewhat like the accelerator and brake pedals of a car. The former causes the flight-or-fight response while the latter brings the car back to a state of idling.
Forgive me but I am rather tired of mechanical analogies applied to biological systems. They can leave the female half of the population somewhat in the dark. Ditto the sports ones so let me try something different. The amount of stress a child can cope with is like the capacity of a rain barrel. Some rain barrels are smaller and hold less. Others are bigger or leakier and don't overflow easily. The difference in these rain barrels is what we call temperament and it seems to flow from differences in the genetics of the child or the in utero environment. Children of anxious mothers may become more anxious due to exposure to maternal adrenalin before birth. Or a child can be more susceptible to stress because of his body chemistry; how his genes are expressed. Or perhaps it may be caused by a combination of these factors.
The overflowing of the rain barrel is the tipping point when a child can no longer cope with stress. Sometimes the result is inwardly directed as anxiety while in other children, it's outwardly directed and the child misbehaves or is aggressive towards others. The point is that when this happens, your child is not directing his behaviour at you nor is your child bad. He simply can't cope with the situation.
Let's step back for a moment and examine the meaning of stress. As adults, we often associate stress with a bad situation -- an unpleasant boss or unpaid bills. But Stuart Shanker and other scientists use the term stress to mean far more. For a child, stress can be caused by that bully at school but it can also be caused by a lack of sleep, exercise or nutritious meals. Stress can be created by flashing lights or an especially noisy environment. Indeed diagnoses of stress-related diseases in children, such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), have increased exponentially in the last few years. While there may be some over-diagnosis going on, this increase is real and is likely linked in children to our increasingly noisy urban environment, greater television and video game stimulation, a general lack of sleep and exercise, and the intake of sugary junk food.
As productive adults, we cope by dealing with the source of stress or by reframing the problem. We feel lousy when we don't get a good night's sleep and try to get more rest the next night. If the boss bullies us, we tell ourselves she's a jerk and perhaps try to find another job. If the bills are piling up, we reduce our expenses. And if there is construction noise nearby, we may close the windows, turn on the stereo, or wear earplugs.
A child doesn't have these remedies at her disposal. Worry and fear can cause an ongoing production of adrenalin that shuts down the thinking and learning part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. Adrenalin can also stunt growth and make the child more susceptible to disease by shutting down the immune system. Adults need to intervene to end this adrenalin-production cycle but since each child is different, a parent or teacher has to try to figure out the source of the stress and then address it or reframe it for the child.
In our baby video, the mother's tone reframes the situation and tells the child she needn't fear the noisy nose blowing. The baby laughs and equilibrium is restored with the production of the hormone serotonin. A smart teacher in B.C. has helped her students deal with stress by giving them noise cancelling earphones to wear and the students' grades have improved. It is all about the adult's relationship with a child -- knowing the child well enough to know what is causing the stress and then taking the time to intervene. An appropriate intervention allows the child to return to a calmer state.
Very young children are incapable of dealing with stress and caring adults have to regulate the child's environment to ensure that stress is minimized. As parents, we should limit video game playing and ensure that children get enough sleep. As educators, we should minimize childhood stress by dealing with bullying and by teaching self-regulation to students. As citizens who care about society and the next generation, we should support student breakfast and exercise programs, and well-maintained schools and classrooms.
And the point of the balloon story? It's that children naturally prefer to be in an anxiety-free state. They want to learn and be happy. When children are young, it's up to us as responsible adults to minimize sources of childhood stress. Then we must help them learn how they can do this for themselves; teach them self-regulation. Dr. Stuart Shanker and his colleagues are onto something. The question is if we busy adults are going to take the time to listen and then act.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions only.
