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How to help the child to live at his own pace?
Make way for good resolutions for the start of the school year. And if this year, it was the parents who respected the rhythm of their child and not the other way around.
Louise is a very restless child. His parents cannot explain this behavior and, like many, seek advice from a specialist. Girls like Louise, Geneviève Djénati, psychologist specializing in the family, come across more and more in her office. Restless, depressed or on the contrary inhibited children who all have one thing in common: they don’t live at their own pace. In an ideal world, the child would follow the rhythm of the adult and perceive everything in real time. No need to repeat ten times to him to get out of his bath, to call him to the table for 15 minutes or to fight at bedtime … Yes in a fantasy mode, because reality is very different.
Parents’ time is not children’s time
The child needs time to hear and understand. When we give him information or ask him to do something, it usually takes him three times as long as an adult to integrate the message and therefore act accordingly. During the waiting times, essential to his development, the child will be able to dream, imagine what will happen. The pace of adults, their current lifestyle dominated by urgency and immediacy, cannot be applied to the little ones without some adjustments. ” The child is asked for a very short reaction time, as if he had to know before having learned, regrets the psychologist. It is very disturbing for him to live according to a rhythm which is not his. He may experience a feeling of insecurity which weakens him in the long term. In some extreme cases, temporality disturbances can lead to hyperactivity. “The child is constantly gesticulating, going from one game to another and is unable to carry out an action from start to finish, specifies Geneviève Djénati. The weather calms the anguish so he gets agitated to flee this situation. ”
Respect the rhythm of your child, it can be learned
We respect the baby’s rhythm well by feeding him on demand during his first few months of life, so why not take into account that of the child. Difficult to overcome the constraints of everyday life but forgetting from time to time the race against the clock to give time, of his time, is positive for the whole family. As Geneviève Djénati underlines: “ parents have to manage a lot of things, but a child cannot be managed. You have to put the affect, the emotion back into relationships. »A child needs the time to listen to him and question him. This is the best way to avoid tensions and arguments and ultimately save time in the long run. When the time of parents and children is combined, “a third phase is inserted in their life, that of play, of common creation” where everyone emancipates themselves harmoniously.
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The morning before school leaves
Parents tend to wake their child up at the last minute to get more sleep. Suddenly, everything is linked, the breakfast is swallowed quickly (when there is still one), we dress the child to go faster and to have time to prepare himself. Result: we save time at the moment but we lose the quality of time. Because the emergency exhausts the parents, creates tension within the family. “Sometimes we end up with 9-year-old children who cannot dress themselves,” says Geneviève Djénati. They just weren’t given the time to learn. To improve the situation, at least in the morning, you can start by moving your alarm clock forward by 15 minutes.
The passage to the table
Eating with toddlers can sometimes turn into a nightmare. It’s not easy to take into account everyone’s pace. “Always keep in mind that what seems slow to the parent is a normal rhythm of the child,” insists the psychologist. First of all, you start by sitting next to your children when they are at the table. If one of them is dragging, we can see why he is eating slowly. And then we try to reorganize the dinner accordingly.
At bedtime
Classic scenario, the child is reluctant to fall asleep. No sooner had he gone to bed than he returned to the living room. Obviously he is not sleepy and this despairs the parents who have had an exhausting day, and want only one thing: to be quiet. Why does the child resist? This may be the only way for him to let go of too much pressure due to the sense of urgency that reigns in the house. This rhythm he suffered gives him anguish, he is afraid of separating from his parents. Instead of insisting that he get to bed, it is better to delay bedtime slightly. The child may have lost some sleep, but at least he will fall asleep in good conditions. At bedtime, it’s important to tell her “see you tomorrow” or, for example, “when you wake up tomorrow morning, we’ll tell each other our dreams”. The child lives in the present but needs to know that there will be an after to feel confident.
Read also: Your child refuses to go to bed