Little Souls; High Spirits

                                       Little Souls; High Spirits 

            As parents we try to help our kids cope with life the best way possible. Sometimes we have laid back kids that seem to have even temperaments and go with the flow personalities. Sometimes we get the spirited child. The stubborn, independent minded little individual that can test our last thread of patience and manage to push every button imaginable. Whichever versions we get is the way it is meant to be. Still underneath either version is a small human being that is learning to cope with the world around them. What they see is what they learn. The characteristics of this spirited personality will amplify accordingly.

As they grow they start to form their own ideas and impressions of society. These ideas mostly piggyback off of what they have experienced up until that point. They project what they know. By elementary school is when you can really start to understand what kind of background a child has encountered. It is usually more evident in the spirited child. One with this kind of personality becomes hard to discipline without emotion due to their ability to magically push all the wrong buttons. 

Never in my life have I had to control my emotions more than I have had to with our youngest boy. There are still moments when I get upset and angry with him, but I try to work it out with him after taking a few moments to gather myself. One thing I learned with him was yelling and getting mad didn’t work from the beginning. He had colic the first nine months of his life. He was the only one of my four kids to have this horrible experience, and I mean horrible for all of us. He would cry for ten hours out of the day and when the colic started subsiding, it did so at a painstakingly slow pace. Even after it seemed to have gotten better he was still really sensitive and loud. He was loud when he was happy or mad. He would be the baby at the grocery store in the car seat playing happily but screaming out loud. It was a comical site when he was happy, and if we had to have the screams I much preferred the happy ones.

After the colic we were left with a very vocal, very sensitive, and very curious little guy. I still painfully remember the time he fell off his toddler scooter and needed stitches under his chin. He screamed the entire time. He was not in pain due the numbing medicine. It was simply because the young doctor, who our then three year old son kept calling ‘that boy’, was touching his face. Needless to say we had to hold him down so the doctor could do the stitching. He screamed the entire time and I was sure the entire emergency room heard him. It took every bit of anger management not to put my hand over his mouth until the doctor was finished. I noticed when we were leaving that the nurses were loving him though. They got the biggest kick out of him calling the doctor ‘that boy’. He was no longer crying and had been given a sucker but he kept talking about ‘that boy that stowed him up’. He wound up leaving the hospital peacefully with three suckers and two stickers. I couldn’t help but keep thinking that there had to be an easier way to deal with his high spirit. He could test every last bit of patience someone has but then turn around and charm you until your heart melts with forgiveness.

I started testing my observation more and more after the hospital. I had a really great pep talk to myself about how I wouldn’t get angry when he did and I wouldn’t yell or lose my cool in front of him. In the beginning I didn’t realize how hard this would be! Then I realized I needed to regroup and come up with a more organized strategy. If I responded to his anger with my own, it would only intensify his anger more. I realized I also needed to talk to him and to try and talk it out with him. So I developed a strategy. I would try to talk to him first, and if he was still wanting to be mad and scream and cry then he had to go to a quiet area of the house and do it there. He would be welcome to come talk to me when he was ready but he was not to leave his area until we talked. It gave him some time to cool down and get it out of his system and it gave me some time to think about the situation and plan a strategy to approach it. This was difficult at first since it was new. Introducing something new to a screaming child is not easy at all. Eventually after consistency it started getting easier and more routine.

After he had learned this was his new normal when he was having his moments I started slowly inserting other methods. One thing that has worked well in our house is choices. I’ve always been really big on talking it out and trying to find choices and options to help them feel like they have some form of control of a situation. Life is full of choices everywhere we turn. I always figured it would be better if they learned how to maneuver these choices when they are younger compared to when they are older and have way more added to their still forming minds. He would have the choice now. If he was mad and crying he could go to his area until he was able to stop. When he was better he could come and talk to me about the situation. His other option was to talk to me at that moment and then he wouldn’t need to go to the time out space. If he felt like he couldn’t pull himself together at that moment he could go and take a break until he could. I felt like it gave him a small enough piece of control over himself and that it would make him stop long enough to grab his mind's attention, even if very briefly at first. 

As with everything difficult it was slow progress at first. Over time I have watched it snowball into a life lesson. As with any spirited child there is a layer underneath that is so delicate and sensitive. They feel more deeply and everything affects them more profoundly. Empathy is so important to this layer. While setting this boundary with our son and giving him these choices, I also explained why I was doing it. I told him that I had trouble with my anger when he was getting angry and that it really bothered me when he would get so upset. I also told him that it hurt my head a lot when he screamed and I didn’t like it when my head hurt.

Guess what? He apologized! I’m not saying it never happened again, but he was a little more conscious of it as time went by. There have been times I lost my patience still but I have always gone back and apologized if I yelled at him. He even stopped one time and apologized, then he told me he would go to his spot so he didn’t hurt my head. Funny thing is when he went to his spot that time he didn’t even scream anymore.

Our son is now seven years old. He definitely still has his moments and his temper holds strong at times. However, his choices have expanded over the years as I'm always trying to come up with creative ways to give the kids choices. His personal spot goes unused most of the time. On rare occasions he still needs it, but it’s way more voluntary now. He does well in school and behaves himself. He is kind. He has encountered bullies and has had trouble with them. I look at those bullies and I see a high spirited little kid that has not really been given the opportunity to control the impulses and emotions that they do not understand. My little guy could have very easily become one of them. I had no idea what I was doing when I started out with him. He wasn’t like any of the other kids I had. I had to readjust many aspects of parenting styles for him. He taught me just as much about my patience and anger as I hope to teach him.

These high spirited kids are sent to us for a reason. They can be trying and difficult at

times yet are usually just highly sensitive and very intelligent. Their little minds tend to run through things faster than their big emotions can process them. It is so important to help them build a positive path that will help them better understand the world around them. While also building a sense of self awareness that will be carried with them throughout their lives.