Trauma and Resilience:
A Parenting Perspective
Kenneth Barish, Ph.D.
Thomas Cole: The Voyage of Life
“Joyousness and wonder are the characteristic
emotions of childhood”
“Duh?”
Emotions and Emotional
Development
Emotions are not just feelings.
Emotions are complex, multidimensional, biological
and psychological processes that rapidly
organize thought and action in the
service of goals or “concerns”
essential to our physical survival
and psychological well-being.
Emotions focus our attention, direct our thought
and imagination, evoke memories, and prepare
us for action.
Every emotion is evoked by a characteristic appraisal
(or appreciation) of events.
Interest, for example, is evoked by novelty.
Anger is evoked by feeling thwarted or injured.
Every emotion evokes a unique
subjective experience (our “feelings”), a
characteristic pattern of physiological
activity, and typical facial, postural, and
vocal expressions.
Every emotion is associated with a
characteristic action tendency.
Interest motivates exploration.
Anger motivates attack.
Fear motivates escape.
Shame motivates concealment.
Our experience of any emotion
includes an appraisal of our coping potential.
In normal development, children construct
increasingly complex emotional appraisals
and more flexible action tendencies.
Children develop emotion “scripts” and beliefs that
become the foundation of their personality and
character.
Positive emotions promote openness in
thought and behavior. Negative emotions
narrow thought and action.
Positive emotions support exploration,
creativity, and learning, and the building
of social relationships that become
resources in conditions of adversity.
Emotion is also our essential language in talking
with children.
Interest
SEEKING
(Panksepp)
“intense interest”
“engaged curiosity”
“eager anticipation”
“wanting”
“Interest is the only emotion that can sustain
long term constructive or creative endeavors.”
Sylvan Tomkins
As parents, our enthusiastic
responsiveness to our children’s
interests is the surest way to engage
them in some form of meaningful
dialogue or interaction, and a first
principle of strengthening family
relationships.
Pride and Shame
Children experience feelings of shame when they
suffer any social rejection; when they are unable
to learn; when they are defeated in competition;
when they are bullied, insulted, or taunted; and
when they seek acceptance and approval from
admired adults but are, instead, subjected to
criticism, scorn, neglect, or abuse.
When children tell us that they are anxious,
they are often anxious about the possibility of
feeling ashamed.
“He dissed me.”
“Shame is the pathogen that causes violence
just as specifically as the tubercle bacillus
causes tuberculosis, except that in the case
of violence, it is an emotion, not a microbe.”
James Gilligan
A child’s expectation of feeling proud or ashamed
decisively influences her choices - those situations
she actively seeks and those she avoids. Shame our emotional response to exclusion and failure lowers aspirations. Pride - our emotional response
to acceptance and success - raises aspirations.
The evolutionary psychologist Glenn Weisfeld
succinctly explains, “We anticipate pride and
shame at every turn and shape our behavior
accordingly.”
Especially, children want their parents to
share in their pride and to be proud of them.
Our children’s feeling - their inner certainty
- that we are proud of them is an essential
good feeling, an anchor that sustains them
in moments of discouragement, aloneness,
and defeat.
Positive Expectations
Psychological health, in childhood and
throughout life, depends on our ability to hold
onto positive emotions and, especially,
positive expectations.
Positive expectations keep kids on the right track.
Positive expectations for their futures help
children and adolescents work hard and make
good decisions in the present.
Children with positive expectations will also more
readily accept their parents’ discipline, because
they will understand the need for it.
A bad feeling that does not go away
Every child, no matter how angry and
discouraged, no matter how defiant, secretive, or
unmotivated she may seem to be, at the same time
wants her parents’ approval, wants to do well, and
wants to be accepted by her peers.
The solution to the emotional and behavior
problems of childhood begins with this fact.
Principles of Therapeutic
Intervention
“Positiveness”
Repair
Proactive Problem Solving
Positiveness
All parents delight in the emergence of their
young child’s developing skills.
In the daily life of many families,
positiveness has been eroded.
Sharing Positive Feelings
Toward the end of the first year of life, children
begin to look to others to share a positive feeling.
A toddler will smile, for example, while he is
exploring a room, and he looks toward his parent.
Parents then instinctively respond to their child’s
smile with smiles of their own.
Robert Emde, who first studied these interactions,
refers to this behavior as “positive affect
sharing.”
Van Gogh: First Steps
Teenage mothers rarely respond in this
way with their children.
Positive affect sharing is deeply rewarding to both
children and parents. But it is not a “reward” in
the narrow sense of the word. When we return a
child’s first smiles or reach out our arms to catch
her as she takes her first steps, we are not
attempting to shape or reinforce our child’s
behavior. We have, however, strengthened
something more important. We have strengthened
her inner expectation of a joyful and encouraging
response to her own instinctive expressions of
enjoyment and pride.
Moments of mutual joy and delight
between parents and infants may directly
promote brain development in infancy.
Express enthusiastic interest in your child’s
interests, even if these are not the interests
you would choose.
If we look hard enough,
we will find, in every child, some interest
and a desire to do well.
When parents respond with animated, enthusiastic
interest in their child’s interests, most children
soon begin to show more enthusiasm and
emotional aliveness - and, often, less
stubbornness.
These positive interactions seem to operate as a
protective factor in children’s emotional lives, to
confer some degree of immunity against the
effects of emotional distress.
What if he’s only interested in watching television
and playing video games?
Answer:
Watch and play with him
Then, find the source of his discouragement and
frustration.
Children are not “lazy.”
Interactive play is to children’s social
development what talking with children is
to their vocabulary development and what
exercise is to their physical development.
Be generous with your praise
Generous praise does not create “praise
junkies.”
Psychological Nutrition
More Ways to Be Positive
Focus on their Strengths
A Growth Mindset (Carol Dweck)
A Language of Becoming (Ellen Wachtel)
Encouragement
(Listen for the “great sound” or the
creative idea)
More Ways to Be Positive
Acknowledge Increments of Progress
(Alan Kazdin)
Share Personal Stories
(Marshall Duke)
Positive Coaching
(Jim Thompson)
Repair
The lives of children, of course, are not all about
positive emotions.
In the daily life of every child, there will be
moments of frustration and worry – moments
of failure, of exclusion, of ridicule and
humiliation. Many of these experiences
(especially when kids are bullied or have
difficulty learning to read) evoke in children a
profound feeling of shame.
In every family, there will be moments of anger
and misunderstanding.
We now know that the repair of these moments
is essential to children’s emotional health.
Repair is essential to all of our relationships - our
relationship with our children and the health of
our marriages.
As parents, we are, unwittingly, too critical
of our children.
Persistent criticism breeds resentment and
defiance, is destructive of a child’s initiative
and self-confidence, and undermines her
motivation and sense of purpose.
We need to prevent the buildup of these
damaging attitudes in the minds of our
children.
When children respond poorly to criticism,
with defensiveness or withdrawal, parents
often say, “He is too sensitive.”
Perhaps.
But we are all sensitive to criticism. And he
may not be overly sensitive; rather, we may
have been too critical and not sensitive
enough.
Why are parents so often critical of their
children?
For every criticism, there is an equal and
opposite defiant reaction.
When a critical family atmosphere persists,
all therapeutic efforts are likely to fail.
Alternatives and Antidotes
The antidotes to criticism - simple in theory, but
at times difficult in practice - are patient
listening, recognition and praise for a child’s
efforts, and a proactive approach to resolving
recurrent problematic situations.
Tell him what is right about what he is
saying or doing before you tell him
what is wrong.
Ten Minutes at Bedtime
Often, when parents put aside time to listen and
talk with their children, they report immediate
improvement in their child’s mood and behavior.
Proactive Problem Solving
Step 1: Take a Step Back
Don’t React
Step 2: Place the Problem Before Your Child
Step 3: Enlist Your Child’s Ideas
Step 4: Develop a Plan
Step 5: Express Appreciation and Praise
Kennneth Barish, Ph.D.
Contact:
280 North Central Ave.
Hartsdale, NY 10530
914-949-0339
kbarish280@aol.com
www.kennethbarish.com