9 Techniques To Teach Children To Deal With Frustration
All of us, at some point in our lives, have felt frustrated that things didn’t go our way. This also happens to children. But unlike adults, they have difficulty controlling the reaction that is triggered when something doesn’t go the way they want. However, there are techniques to teach children how to deal with frustration.
We must distinguish frustration intolerance from a normal response for a child who has lost a game or whose parents didn’t buy what he wanted, etc. If she just expresses discomfort, if her reaction is not disproportionate, and if she gets discouraged, that’s normal. What is not normal are tantrums, screams, insults, extreme irritation, in short, aggressive responses.
The fact that children have a low tolerance for frustration can be due to several causes: low self-esteem, not knowing how to accept failures, being excessively pampered and overprotected, etc.
Furthermore, overprotection is one of the main causes of a child’s low tolerance for frustration.
It’s important that they understand from an early age that you don’t always get what you want and that you don’t win everything every time. This will help them to face adverse situations in the future, because not everything will be synonymous with success, there will also be failures.
We adults are able to control our reaction, but this is harder for children. So our job as parents is to teach them how to do that.
Next, we’ll look at a number of techniques for teaching children how to deal with frustration.
Techniques to help children deal with frustration
Avoid overprotection and excessive permissiveness
Overprotection prevents children from facing failure. We prevent this from happening by giving them everything ready, helping them to do everything, avoiding problems, etc. Permissiveness makes children unable to deal with problems because they always get what they want.
lead by example
The positive attitude with which parents face a failure or difficult situation will serve as an example for children to learn to solve their own problems.
Let the frustration run its course
When your child gets angry, screams, or kicks, don’t immediately respond by satisfying their demands. In this way, he will learn to accept that he is not always right and will have to find a suitable solution for difficult situations.
Avoid seeing failures as something negative
Explain that in life there will be moments of success and others of failure. Failures are learning, that is, they help us to improve and give us the possibility to grow as people as well. The important thing is to see where we went wrong and how we can fix our mistake to prevent it from happening again.
Educate based on effort
Children should be taught the importance of exerting themselves in everything they do. Everything is achieved based on effort. And it will be this thought that will help them in many moments to deal with their failures.
set reasonable goals
It is necessary to set realistic goals, appropriate to the child’s age and maturity. That way, she will have more tolerance for frustration. If the goals are not appropriate for her age, she will fail to meet them and will fail, increasing her personal discomfort.
teach to be persistent
It is essential to overcome difficult situations. If a child learns to be consistent in everything he does, he will be able to resolve many of the problems that come his way and will be able to deal with frustration.
Reinforce when the reaction is adequate in a difficult situation
In a complicated situation, if the child is slow to react with his usual aggressive reaction, we should always praise him.
Promote independence
Doing this from the moment the child is no longer a baby (2, 3, 4 years) helps to acquire a certain degree of autonomy. In other words, it is the children themselves who want to do things, eat, dress, etc. Encourage this autonomy by letting them do the tasks themselves, so they’ll gain the tools to tolerate frustration.
Frustration is a characteristic trait of human beings. If we parents insist on avoiding it, we will be condemning our children to unhappiness. Tolerating frustration implies being able to deal with the problems we encounter throughout life. If at all times we try to please our children to prevent them from getting frustrated, the only thing we will be doing is preventing their development as a person.
Always remember that a happy person is not one who never makes mistakes or who has everything he wants. A happy person is one who faces his mistakes and learns from them.
