Raising Healthy Resilient Kids - Focus on the Family

Raising healthy, resilient kids takes time and sensitivity to their needs.  Sometimes, parents need help to be able to understand how to interact with them in a way that encourages resilience.  Take this scenario, for example. 

I heard the crying before I knocked on the exam room door. It was time to meet a new patient and his mother for a developmental evaluation. When I opened the door, I found the young boy lying by his mother's feet. He was crying hard, kicking his feet against the floor, moving his head back and forth. His mother spoke quickly, telling me how difficult her son was. She said how hard it was to please him, to get him to stop crying, to get him to eat. I tried to ask questions, but I had a difficult time trying to get a word in.

Therefore, I bent down next to the boy, and turned on my otoscope's light. He looked at the light and stopped crying. I turned the light off and on again and he reached out for it. I let him hold the light and showed him how to turn it on. He moved the button, saw the light, looked into my face and laughed. We played back and forth with the light for several minutes while his mother continued to tell her story.

I stopped to speak to the boy's mother about the light and his excited response. She glanced at him briefly, and then continued talking. Consequently, the boy looked up at his mother and suddenly threw his head backwards and fell back to the floor, crying again.

At this point, she looked at him and said to me, "See, I told you, he's impossible.

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