How to use ‘the power of distraction’ effectively with your kids

Distraction is not always a bad thing especially if you harness it’s power to channelize your kid’s energy or diffuse tensions.

As parents of toddlers or pre-schoolers you will agree that we witness meltdowns, tantrums or display of anger, more often than not. Very often we deal head on with the root cause of the issue, try to reason out, acknowledge our child’s feelings and discipline our child if required. But there are times when your child isn’t harming himself or others with his behaviour and you are not robbing him away from ‘moments of learning’ by distracting him. That’s when distraction can work wonders to diffuse the tension in the air.

A distraction is any activity that takes your child’s mind off what is he currently thinking or feeling into something different where he can channelize his energy and feel positive or even excited. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t, therefore it’s good to have a whole set of activities outlined. Based on your child’s interest areas you would also have to customize these distractions, as no one size fits all.

Here are a few scenarios I have identified as potential meltdown situations or situations where tantrums could erupt. These are based on my observations with kids all around me, over the years and could apply to many toddlers, pre-schoolers and older children as well.

1. Wake up time: Sometimes getting your child out of bed in the morning can take up a lot of your time and energy and there is a high possibility of flying tempers or meltdowns.
2. Food time: Serving food that your child isn’t particularly fond of (could be vegetables, fruits or any specific food your child does not enjoy) can also sometimes become a battle of wits.
3. End of screen time : Switching off the TV or taking away the tab could easily turn into a temper tantrum.
4. End of playtime : Asking your child to return home after playing with friends / their favourite relatives could easily lead to a tantrum or argument.
5. Start of study time: Sometimes children resist getting into ‘study mode’ and make up excuses.
6. Sleep time: Sometimes kids just don’t want to acknowledge that they are tired. They want to keep playing and asking them to go to bed could lead to a lot of friction.

Now not all of these trigger meltdowns all the time. But some of these could, some of the times. And it’s better to be equipped with a list of distraction activities that would help you diffuse the tension.

Here are a few I use with my daughter, depending on the situation at hand. Your list could look very different based on your assessment of your child and his likes or dislikes.

• Offer to spin some lyrics with your child and create a song together.
• Ask your child to draw or colour their favourite character using your colour pencils. (I’ve got the Faber Castell ones and my daughter really loves those)
• Ask your child to go play with her friends
• Ask your child to take her dolls for a bath /dress them up / blow bubbles. This list is endless depending what your child likes to play with or gets excited about.
• Offer to read stories to your child from her books
• Offer to do a puppet show with your child
• Offer to play chess, or puzzles or jenga together ( this could be any game or activity you know your child likes)
• Offer to take your child for a ‘fun bath’ ( a concept created by me to make bath an exciting activity for my kid. Obviously this can only be used in some situations.)
• Offer to play some songs and dance with your child to her favourite numbers
• Offer to watch your child’s favourite movie with her
• Last and the one you should perhaps encourage the least is allow your child to watch some of her favourite shows for a specified amount of time. Even though this would be the easiest technique to use, use this sparingly and with extreme caution. Children learn really quick and could begin throwing tantrums only to manipulate their way into watching their favourite shows.

Why distraction should not be confused as a technique to discipline

There are situations when using distraction would be possible perhaps but not recommended. These are situations where children engage in behaviour that could harm themselves or others or where there could be ‘moments of learning’ for the child. Here it would be better to calm the child down and deal with the behaviour directly.

For i.e if your child is engaged in a fight with another kid and your child starts throwing a tantrum or kicking the other kid or pulling her own hair, you could take your kid away and distract her. But that would take away an important ‘moment of learning’. In this situation your child needs to learn that hurting someone else or herself is wrong. And distracting her from this situation wouldn’t help her learn this important lesson.

Another example would be if your child refuses to share his toys with other kids who have come over to play and is almost bringing down the house. Here you could distract your child away as well but it is important for your child to learn that we should share our toys with our friends just as our friends share their toys with us. It would be more important here to calm the child, address the issue directly and find ways to help facilitate the sharing rather than just distracting your child.

Still confused about when it would be ok to use distraction?

Well here’s a really simple formula I use.

Ask yourself…..

Is your child’s behaviour causing anyone harm including herself?

or

Is it an opportunity to teach her the right thing to do?

If the answer to any of this is ‘Yes’, then don’t distract your child and confront the issue head on.

However if the answer to both of those are ‘No’, then you can distract her to channelize her energies' elsewhere. Would love to know what techniques you use as parents and how successful or unsuccessful they have been?

#expatmom # expatmomindubai #thepowerofdistraction #expatparenting #parenting #parentsalwayslearning #samiarastories

The original article first appeared on Medium https://medium.com/@blossommenezes/how-to-use-the-power-of-distraction-effectively-with-your-kids-35b0ccc0af52