Elizabeth Cole's Blog

An active child is a healthy child. This thought gives joy to the parents and gives the kid a scope to mischief. However, if child's behavior is often accompanied by inattentiveness, anxiety, and even rudeness in communication with the loved ones - it can be an Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

ADHD is a nervous system disorder that shows up in excessive activity, aggression, and attention deficit.

There can be many reasons for this to happen. The frontal lobes of our brain are responsible for the way we control and organize ourselves. In case of hyperactivity, the frontal lobes mature more slowly than in peers.

Manifestations of ADHD can be:

● Problems with concentration and attention when performing tasks;
● Rage attacks;
● Memory impairment;
● Difficulties with self-control, patience — the child often interrupts you, cannot wait for his turn in the game, etc.;
● Inability to complete the task;
● Restless movements of head, arms, and legs while sitting in class, for example;
● Anxiety.

You should not diagnose your child based on articles from the Internet. If your little one has any of the above symptoms, you should see your doctor for diagnosing.

If your child has been officially diagnosed with ADHD, I want to support you. Don't think it's your fault. Your task now is to accept the situation. I advise you to take ADHD as a feature rather than a problem. Each child needs an individual approach. And your kid needs it as well, regardless of diagnosis.

Often ADHD can disappear before the person gets to the conscious age (16-18 years old). However, this diagnosis can also stay with a person for the whole life, or appear in adolescence. In adulthood, it manifests itself somewhat differently: attention deficit prevails in contrast to childhood, when it is mostly hyperactivity.

In the following articles, I will give you some tips on how you can help your little one to adapt to his/her peculiarities.

I think we should talk about ADHD more to support other parents and their children. Kids with this diagnosis are mostly very creative and generate many bright ideas. Your task as parents is to support these ideas, find a safe way to express them, and love your children with all your heart.

With love,
Elizabeth Cole

Dear reader,

how often do you worry?

I believe that happiness and emotional balance of the parents are the key to a child's mental health. It is well known that emotions of the adults may directly affect kids’ feelings and behavior. That is why today I would like to talk about how you feel, not your children.

Being a parent is not always easy, fun, and bright. We obtain a huge responsibility with the birth of our little ones. Therefore, parenthood is often accompanied by worries and fears.

It's okay to feel worried. We love our children and want to protect them from any danger. However, excessive anxiety can lead to overcare. I advise you to stay rational in this matter.

Rumination.

Rumination is a process of continuous thinking that pulls one thought after another. The brain draws in our imagination some terrible situations and we cannot stop thinking about it. Psychologists claim that rumination may cause anxiety disorders and phobias. To prevent this you should learn to control your thoughts. If you notice that some particular thought drives you on — shake it off. It is important to consciously catch that idea and stop thinking about it. You can practice mindfulness, or just get switched to something: washing dishes, sports, or playing with children.

This is not a reality. It's just your imagination.

Remember that your thoughts exist inside your head only. We are all afraid of something. Does it mean it will necessarily happen if we think about it? Of course, not. Thought provides anxiety because we willingly pay attention to it. We believe that thoughts are material, but this is not true.
Have you noted that as soon as you focus on an actor, you immediately notice his interviews everywhere, his photos on billboards etc.? That is not some kind of supernatural or something, everything is much simpler than it may seem. This happens because our subconscious is looking for confirmation to our thoughts. Think positive and you will notice positive things around you more often.

Is the threat real?

Whenever you worry about your children (or anything else), ask yourself if the threat that bothers you is real.
Am I late? Is this meeting so important to me? Am I really in a bad relationship with my child, or are we both just tired and can't find common ground because of that? Do my kids have problems at school, or did they just fail to prepare their homework yesterday?

I want you to understand that anxiety is the desire to keep your whole life under control, while this is literally impossible. You just have to accept it as a fact. Children sometimes fall off bikes, get bad grades, cry and get upset. It does not make us bad parents, even though we make mistakes sometimes. We are not superheroes. However, we do our best.

With love,
Elizabeth Cole
Children's books author

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As the New Year begins, adults are setting goals for the following 12 months. The New Year motivates us, and inspires us to new achievements. Why don’t we help our children feel the same?

Motivation is what forces us to act in a certain way or to repeat certain patterns of behavior. Motivation can be external or internal.

While external motivation is mostly translated with material goods, the internal motivation is more about our inner desire to achieve goals.

A child who has internal motivation moves forward to success willingly, looking with pleasure and joy for the ways to achieve the goal. In contrast, external motivators make the child dependent. When there is no more reward, the kid stops behaving the right way.

How to keep your child motivated? You need to know him/her as a person: what he/she likes, what inspires him/her, what gives positive emotions, and on the contrary – what makes your child feel exhausted.

I want to offer you some tips you can use with your kids, depending on their hobbies.

1. Set the goals for your child. They will become landmarks for your little one. Let the goals correspond with the age and desires of your kid. The goals can be as simple as studying a poem or getting up for kindergarten or school on time.

2. Plan. Divide the target into small regular steps. The poem can be learned one line per day. To wake up on time in the morning it is necessary to go to bed earlier. Help your child plan all these little details.

3. Appreciate, encourage and inspire. Encourage your child by talking about his achievements. Motivate your little one to try again if he/she has failed. This way the kid will understand that you believe in him/her, and it would be enough to make the kid seek success. Support your child, praise not only for achievements but for making effort and trying as well. Show by your own example how great it is to achieve your goal, explain how it helps you in life, what impressions you get due to your perseverance.

4. Give options and don't be intrusive. Remember that motivation should be enjoyable. Motivation will stop charging your kid for success if it becomes a routine, an uninteresting duty. Give the child a freedom of choice, let him/her do what brings him or her more pleasure. The more positive emotions we receive, the more energy we accumulate for the new achievements.

When encouraging a child, do not turn it into a bribery: as soon as the encouragement disappears, the desired behavior of the child will vanish as well. Material encouragement works in certain situations, but it will not help in creation of character and life values. Finding pleasure in the process of doing something can also be a good encouragement.

With love, Elizabeth Cole

Do you know why hiding emotions is not a great idea?

When children fail to cope with their emotions, it is parents’ responsibility to help them overcome the issue. They have to listen, explain what the feeling is and help the child express it. However, often adults allow their children to show only positive emotions. Today we will talk about the things parents sometimes paying insufficient attention to.

It is a proven fact that positive thinking helps cope with anxiety and stress better. Yet it may become a devastating if we try to suppress our true emotions in order to stay positive or force other people to do so.

When bad things happen to us, we cannot just turn off our emotions, as they are relevant reactions of our body. Emotions have not only a psychological component but also a physiological one. For instance, anger is one of those emotions that has a strong physiological component. If someone pushes us sharply or makes a loud sound, the body releases adrenaline, and that is what makes us feel anger. We cannot control the emergence of our emotions, but we have control over the form in which we express them.

Therefore, teaching children to stay positive despite everything and not feel any different emotions is like teaching them not to feel hungry: it is simply unrealistic.

We all deal with unpleasant situations in different ways, but it is important to know the full range of emotions that arise. Then, when we comprehend the problem, we can try to look at it from different angles. It is a kind of speaking and acting from experience. Although, this can only work in certain situations. If it does not work for your child and only causes more tension, you do not need to look for any positive aspects in the negative situation. Sadness, anger and other emotions that are called ‘negative’ ​​are actually quite positive, because they exist to help us go through different life situations.

Feeling joy, amazement, and comfort is wonderful. But what may happen if we forbid the child to feel and show disgust, anger, sadness, or fear?

At the very least, there is a risk of burying any children's emotions. Kids who are prohibited to grieve often grow up to be adults who cannot cry and cannot even rejoice.

Prohibition of negative emotions instills self-doubt. Whether you forbid your little ones to feel angry, they will feel it anyway. However, in this case the child will think that it is wrong and that his/her emotions have no weight and are not justified. Each time your child will doubt their decisions.

Emotions that are forbidden today will always find their way out tomorrow. Feelings do not disappear without a trace. They get hidden deep inside and for a very, very long time affect all the spheres of our lives. Suppressed feelings can manifest as psychosomatic illnesses, develop into emotional hypersensitivity, or cause depression.

Apart from that, this way you also hide your child's creative tendencies. Creativity can manifest only in an atmosphere of emotional freedom. Expressing yourself without fear of punishment or condemnation is the only way to be yourself.

Often ‘negative’ emotions get forbidden by those parents who consider them a manifestation of weakness. But you should remember that only strong people are free to talk about their fears and sorrows. I wish you all the freedom of feelings and freedom of their manifestation!

With love,
Elizabeth Cole

Emotional intelligence is an important component of our personality. As intelligence in general, EI needs to be developed.

I want to remind you that Emotional Intelligence is the ability to be aware of other people's feelings. It consists of five basic components:.

Self-Awareness: the ability to understand our own feelings and the outcomes of our particular emotional reactions.
Self-Regulation: the ability to manage our own emotions and tame impulsive reactions.
Motivation: the ability to act effectively and reach goals despite distracting feelings.
Empathy: the ability to understand other people's feelings.
Social Skills: the ability to manage relationships and predict the response to certain kinds of behavior.

Today, I want to propose to you four fun ways to develop your children's emotional intelligence. For the games that I am going to offer, you should prepare paper cards. Depending on the age of your kids - these cards should show seven main emotions: anger, joy, sadness, fear, contempt, surprise, disgust for children from 3 to 6 years, and different shades of these emotions (for example, fear: anxiety, doubt, guilt, shame, humiliation) for children over 6 years. You can depict emotions on the cards simply by printing them from the Internet.

1. "Elias" about emotions. One player chooses a card with an emotion that will be drawn for other players who have to guess that emotion. You can show emotion with facial expressions, sounds, words, and show a fictional situation. You can use everything that your imagination invents, the main thing is not to name the emotion itself.

2. Association game. You choose the emotion, and the child should name the maximum number of words that evoke such a feeling. For example, you choose the emotion "joy", and the child names everything he/she likes - ice cream, ball games, dogs, a walk, a cartoon about cars, and so on. Over time, you change roles. Also, you can change the order of the plot of the game - the kid says the words, and you guess what emotion your little one feels about it.

3. Discovery of creative emotional potential. Each of the players chooses one emotion. Their task is to draw feelings on paper. Allow your children to express themselves - let them use pencils, markers, paints, they can glue and cut, draw with their fingers instead of brushes. It is important to give children the freedom to express their fantasies on paper - this is one of the forms of art therapy. As kids grow, their perception of the "appearance" of feelings (as on paper) will be transformed into a physical and psychological understanding.

4.Tales. The task of the game is to come up with fairy tales, the heroes of which will be emotions. It is important to describe the feeling in detail - their appearance, their behavior, preferences, and ways of expression. For little ones under 6, adults should come up with these tales (with the help of children, of course), older children can do it themselves.

Such exercises must be joyful and are designed to help kids better understand their and other people's emotions. It is so important that you also take an active part in these games! Show your kids that you are on the same level: you also have emotions, you imagine them in your own way, you are interested in getting to know each other's feelings.

I wish you great success in the world of emotional intelligence!

With love,
Elizabeth Cole
Children's books author

We all are different, but - there is always something that unites us. Today I want to discuss how we can explain this to our children and why it is important.

It is necessary to speak about diversity - as about something very important and valuable. People are different, with unique skin color, organization of the nervous system, with various capabilities.
Tolerance is harmony in diversity. By "tolerance" I mean not only the acceptance of people who are different from us, but also the understanding that everyone has the right to make mistakes, the right to think differently and actually to be different. Tolerance is simply allowing others to be the one who they really are.

Why is it important?

Bullying among children and adolescents is a big problem of our time. Children sometimes use to assert themselves at the expense of others. Often the victims of bullying are those who are different from the majority.
Society's imposed standards of how we should look, think and speak are the main reason for bullying. Teaching children tolerance is to expand the concept of normalcy. It is to show them how to accept people without anger and aggression, to ignore what they do not like, but what does not violate their boundaries. It will open up new opportunities for communication in the team and will very much broaden their horizons.

Here are some tips on how to teach children to accept diversity.

>We should start simply with the explanation that we all are unique. We should do it at an early age using simple sentences: someone likes ice cream, someone likes pizza, someone loves to play football, and someone else - to play the guitar. It is worth talking about these things especially when a child feels the need or asks you about someone’s differences. For example, a child sees that there are families with a father and a mother, and there are those that have only a mother or a mother and agrandmother. If a child asks, we tell him, "Families are different.’’ Do not forget to acquaint children with different cultures, religions, traditions.
>We should pay particular attention to self-acceptance. Only a person who fully respects his features, strengths, and weaknesses can accept the surrounding people. You need to show care, respect, and love to yourself - teach this your child.
>Try to provide your child with the experience of communicating with different groups of people. Travel, clubs, charity programs are always interesting and useful.
>Explain children we cannot tolerate the behavior of people who insult, disrespect, humiliate or beat someone. We can not allow disrespect for ourselves or support the humiliation of others.

Let’s always remember that only healthy society can grow up a worthy person. Our diversity is our strength, makes us special, incredible, exceptional and unique.

With love,
Elizabeth Cole

With the beginning of autumn, most of us start counting down the new working year. We return home from vacation, from rest — in a working rhythm. When going back to kindergartens and schools our children very often live this experience with us and face stress as well. I propose to make together a strategy to help our little ones on this path.

In raising my children, I singled out "two whales" of a stress-free return to a working regime - a daily routine and an emotional routine.

Daily routine

Child psychologists and doctors point out, and parents are convinced in practice, that kids feel better when they have daily routines — regular, constant, clear, and predictable. It's not just about getting on with your life, it's also about stabilizing your emotional health. The mode gives children a sense of comfort, confidence, and the ability to control what is happening around.

I advise you to rely on the basis — sleep, food, air.
To set up a sleep routine after vacation, begin returning your kid to the schedule few days before the start of the school year. Establish a clear time frame for the night (and, if necessary, day) sleep. At the same time, create conditions in which the process of falling asleep will be accompanied by appropriate rituals - not only brushing teeth and showering, but also some interesting activities for children, such as reading books, listening to audio tales, falling asleep of toys. Thus, preparing for sleep will be more of a game for the child than a duty.

It is also important to set aside time for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It is better if it is at the same time every day. I do not recommend watching cartoons during meals. It is distracting and harmful. It will be better if the whole family discusses plans and expectations for a day when having breakfast, for example. In addition, this way, the child adjusts to his/her active day.

Do not forget about regular walks in the fresh air. Try to set aside at least an hour each day for outdoor activities. I advise you to propose something new to your little ones more often: cycling, playing Frisbee, drawing with chalk, playing with other kids on the playground.

Emotional routine

We know very well that emotions are our signals and landmarks, and mental health is just as important as physical health.
Today, our task is to avoid excessive stress, so the first rule is to be attentive to your children. It is important for us to ask them as often as possible about how they are feeling, how their day went, what comforted them, and what upset them.

As we schedule our day, I advise you to form daily emotional habits according to this schedule.
Focus on small victories, express readiness to help in moments of defeat. First days after returning from vacations have to be filled with as much joy as possible. Be sure to come up with a farewell ritual - hugs, escorting to the door, waving your hand — it gives the child a positive feeling of starting the day.

I hope my tips will be useful for you. I wish you to stay calm and enjoy the new working year! Take care of yourself and your children, provide yourself and them with regular rest to regain strength and achieve your goals with pleasure!

With love,
Elizabeth Cole

Each of us has a small monster under the bed - Anxiety. Today, we will help your children make friends with him.

Children are more likely to face fears and anxieties than adults. Kids experience many situations for the first time and they are not yet familiar with the world with its causal patterns.

In addition, children cannot find an adequate way to deal with such an emotion as anxiety. Where an adult finds a rational explanation - a child invents a terrible "fairy tale". Because their rational thinking is still not yet fully developed, and "magical" - it is flourishing in full force.

Anxiety is a normal emotion. However, if you do not cope with it, it will start to grow. This leads to such consequences as:

• impaired attention;

• impaired memory;

• decreased ability to adapt to new life circumstances;

• aggressive behavior;

• sleeping disorders;

• physical consequences - headache, nausea, weakness.

So let's help your children become friends with their monster under the bed - Anxiety.

• First, tell your children that anxiety is normal. Everyone feels it, and so do you. Tell your child stories about what you have ever felt anxious about: a school concert, a first vocal lesson or a darkness. Anxiety is useful and important for our lives. It protects us, warns us, reminds us of something.

• To overcome anxiety, you need to know the reason for it. Ask your child what frightens him or her and why he or she is worried. Try to refute the alarming situation - explain to your kid what is happening, show a lot of options for solving problems and conflicts. Try to overcome this fear together gradually. For example, if your child is afraid of thunder in the middle of a downpour, explain to your little one how it occurs and how safe it is. Tell it in a playful way, according to the age of the kid. Or if, for example, a child is afraid of dogs - first look at the pictures of dogs in books together, then more often pay attention to them on the street, then encourage the child to stroke a furry friend, supporting your kid.

• Create a safe world for your child. Your kid should know that nothing is threatening him next to you, that he is always protected. His day should be filled with movements, games, joy, laughter, new, but not excessive impressions. In this case, the child will have less reason to worry.

• Turn an anxious situation into a funny game. Together with a child you can invent a story, main characters of which will be the child himself and images of his fears. This story must have a good ending in which bad heroes remain defeated. To visualize the events of the fairy tale, you can use soft toys, dolls, cars etc.

Remember that anxiety is a normal reaction of the brain to stress. And you should not run away from it. It is necessary to learn to cope with it, to help a child to adapt and to learn to feel comfortable with this uncomfortable emotion.

As a mother of two, I know that the most important thing in dealing with kids’ anxiety is to stay calm and rational. In raising children parents should remember that first of all it is very important to work on themselves, their own emotions and feelings. I believe that you will be able to cope with children's anxiety. And I hope that my article, as well as the book "I am stronger than anxiety" will help you in this.

With love,
Elizabeth Cole

Kindness in our lives is like a rainbow after rain. It inspires us with hope for the best, gives a good mood and adds colorful emotions. Parents need to help their children learn to paint their lives and the lives of those around them.

Why be kind?

The basis of kindness is empathy. This is our innate ability to empathize with others, to feel their emotions as our own. But empathy is a feeling and kindness is a continuation of it, our words and actions. Being kind is important. In this way, we help people, enrich ourselves with positive energy, and add harmony to the world. Kindness is a gift everyone can afford to give.

4 Ways to teach your kids to show kindness

1. Educate yourself first. Then the child.
Children are more likely to copy the behavior of adults than to listen to their verbal advice. Therefore, first, it is important that we - adults - independently set an example for our child to be kind. Don't forget to be grateful to your children for their help, talk to them when they’re sad or hurt, care about them and others, help your relatives and strangers, use polite words like "please" and "sorry" etc.

2. Be kind to yourself.
To be kind to the world, it is important to be kind to yourself. You need to fill yourself with resources to be able to share them later. Tell the children about self-love - to support themselves as a close friend, not to criticize, respect, appreciate.

3. Explain that kindness is not easy.
It is often difficult to be kind. It can be challenging for children to share their favorite toy or give up a favorite cookie and treat a friend instead. Our task as adults is to say that kindness is really an effort. However, it makes us stronger.

4. Do kindness together.
It will be easier for your kid to learn to show kindness if you do it together. Choose simple ways that will make an exciting game for the child. I offer you several practical options:

Write a postcard to relatives.
No reason, no occasion, but just to show your love and make a normal day a holiday for someone. Creative classes develop our imagination, help to express our emotions and feelings. Drawing a postcard could be an interesting and entertaining activity for children.

Make a bird feeder.
It is important to show the child our unity with nature. We need to tell that we can do good deeds and help not only people. We can give nuts to squirrels in the park, plant a tree, or remove garbage from the roadside.

Show compassion.
Supporting our neighbor in a difficult moment is what makes us Human. Together with kids, you can donate unnecessary clothes to the orphanage, feed the homeless, give water to street cats and dogs on a hot summer day.

Let your teaching of kindness to your little-ones be a joy to them. Teach that kindness is good not only for others, but also for those who do it. Good-hearted people feel deeper gratitude, smile more often, and feel vivid emotions. And let your life be full of rainbows.

With love, Elizabeth

Hello, everybody!

I’m sure there isn’t a single person who doesn’t get angry from time to time.
In fact, anger is a normal and healthy emotion when expressed appropriately.
Experiencing different emotions = living and being real.

I'd like to share with you my new article about children's emotions. Today I want to bring up the topic of children's anger and provide some useful tips on how to manage it.

Our children are more alive than ourselves emotionally. They experience emotion very strongly. Therefore, our task is to teach them to recognize their emotions, express them correctly and be able to manage them.

It’s normal to feel angry sometimes. But what matters is how our children handle this powerful emotion.
As a mother of two emotional children, I know firsthand about childhood anger. Hence, I can say that I already have my own small collection of tools and tips to teach children how to manage their anger in safe and healthy ways that I’m happy to share with you.

Teach your child to spot the signs of anger.
First of all, you need to help your child develop emotional intelligence.
Sometimes, kids don’t know they are angry until after the explosion has happened. Talk about what your child feels when they start to get angry. For example, they may notice that:
- their heart beats faster
- their muscles tense
- they clench their teeth
- they make a fist
- their stomach churns
Over time, they will start to recognize that feeling and ideally use a coping skill before things get too overwhelming.

Use quick tricks to help kids express their anger.
Work together to try to find out what triggers the anger. Talk about helpful strategies for managing anger. You could encourage your child to:
- count to calm down
- breathe slowly and deeply
- take a break and go to a private place to calm down
- create own calm-down kit
- rip paper / write down what’s bothering you and rip it up
- squeeze a stress ball
- do some exercises (push-ups, jumping jacks, stretches)

Tackle anger together.
Team up with your child to help them deal with their anger. This way, you let your child know that anger is the problem, not them. With younger children, this can be fun and creative. Give anger a name and try drawing it.

Be positive and keep yourself calm.
Don’t forget that children are our reflection.
As a mother, I know that’s tough, especially when your child is having a difficult time, but it’s important to learn to do it. This will build your child's confidence in their ability to manage their anger and help them feel that you are both learning together. One of the best ways to help your child is to make sure you stay calm yourself.

Remember that part of a parent’s job is to help children regulate their anger, by allowing it. While it may take some time to teach your child to respond appropriately to this strong emotion, don’t give up in the process. Your child needs you at this moment more than ever, and you will see the light at the end of the tunnel.

With love,
Elizabeth Cole