Ask BBB

Ask BBB is a monthly column in which the renowned parenting expert Betsy Brown Braun answers your questions about raising children in the Palisades. Submit your questions to info@palipost.com with the subject line “Ask BBB.”

Q:My kid—who is turning 5—seems to get extremely frustrated when things don’t go the way he thinks they should, if that makes sense? Not so much the correct way, but how he thinks things should be. He loses it and can’t engage after this. Can you offer any advice to help him overcome and get through this?

Every parent who has ever had a 5-year-old knows what you mean! A child expressing his disappointment can be an obnoxious affair! Disappointment can result from so many things throughout the child’s day. Sometimes it is the culmination of other disappointments and frustration, otherwise known as the last straw. Sometimes is it a result of “lousy local conditions” when the child is tired, hungry or spent. And it is often when things don’t go the way he had expected, just as you described.

I have often explained to parents that there are three peaks every child must conquer in order to grow up and function in life. They are:

• Learning to tolerate frustration
• Learning to tolerate disappointment
• Learning to delay gratification (developing patience)

It is easy to see that there is overlap and that these three traits walk hand in hand. Scaling these peaks is a process that doesn’t happen all at once or quickly. It takes repeated experiences to cultivate these characteristics. Like any learning or acquisition of skill, they require much practice.

Now here is the hard part. Cultivating these traits, these kinds of tolerance, is as much on the parent as it is on the child. In order for children to learn to tolerate frustration, for example, they have to be frustrated. That means allowing your child to be unhappy. We all know how hard that can be! I mean, it can be downright painful, tearing at your heart strings. In order to learn to tolerate disappointment the child has to BE disappointed; he has to experience getting through that powerful feeling. That means being unhappy. Most children are certainly not stoic in their disappointment or frustration. They are going to try their darndest to get what they want, thereby alleviating their unhappiness. And that means bumping up against you. Your job is not to make that unhappiness go away. It is to help the child to get through the feeling and get to the other side.

I don’t know how you have been dealing with your child (a son?) so far, but now you know that it is not going to be easy for either of you. Here are some things to keep in mind:

It is almost never a good idea to acquiesce to an emotional outburst. He must learn that his explosive reaction will not work no matter what. And he must get no attention for it. If he is entirely out of control, that is a different story. But my best advice is to disengage until he settles a bit.

I remind you that once the child is flooded with his feelings of disappointment, you cannot talk to him. The time to deal with anything is when the child is not elevated. When he is emotional he cannot even hear you, as he is concentrating on getting his needs met.

Your “fix” begins with learning to anticipate what might or might not happen in any given number of situations in advance, honing his expectations. (As an example, saying, “I know you don’t like to lose the game, but you might not win this one. What will you do if you don’t win?”)

Children need to develop their emotional literacy. That means they need to recognize, access and name their feelings, big and small. Doing so builds their skills to use the words they know to describe their feelings rather than act out. They need to learn that all feelings are normal and that no one is expected to be happy all the time. We all experience a variety of feelings, and they ebb and flow. (“Sometimes you get really upset when you don’t win the game. I get it. And it is OK for you to tell me how really mad you are, using your words.”)

Your child needs to learn that sharing his feelings with someone else, “off loading,” helps to lighten his load. Getting those feelings out dilutes them, and someone else can share their weight. At the same time, he needs to step back and see that exploding gets him nowhere. Nothing changes. This observation, the “revisit,” happens a distance from the heat of the moment, when waters have calmed. He can actually reflect on what happened and what would work better. You can also point out to your child that he was so upset before, and now he is better. He got through it! He needs to see that he can survive.

We are trying to forestall his going to the dark side, giving him other ways to respond that his usual explosion.

Be sure not to “punish” or lecture him for exploding. When you do so he might be getting just the attention, negative though it is, that he is craving. And remember he doesn’t like behaving that way any more than you do. He can’t help it … yet.

And finally, when there is even the tiniest disappointment about which he doesn’t explode, praise your son. Catch your child doing what you want him to do. “You sure didn’t like it that we had chicken for dinner when you were expecting spaghetti, but you ate it! You must be so proud of yourself for not falling apart and having a big fuss.”

BBB is a child development and behavior specialist in Pacific Palisades. She can be reached through betsybrownbraun.com.