Minutes from our February 1, 2012 meeting
by Mary Cabral, Secretary

Special Guest
• Parenting the Stormy Child: How to calm the Waters and Teach/Improve Control - Thank you Dr. Laurence Hirshberg for being our special guest. (Children’s Neurodevelopment Center )

Stormy child- is defined as a child who has tantrums or intense meltdowns that are caused by triggers. This type of situation is not gender specific for children and a “storm” can erupt for some children anytime anywhere, whereas, some children only exhibit this behavior at home. Brain research shows that the right frontal lobe in the brain of a stormy child is more active. The front of the brain, which is the thinking part, has fewer connections to the emotional part of the brain.

The “stormy” brain activity can be reduced or changed as a child grows. Children do learn to calm themselves when parents recognize triggers and help to sooth the child while teaching the child skills to sooth or calm themselves. Children increase their capacity to calm themselves through experiences where they learn to sooth themselves.

It is important to understand that the stormy child cannot control the emotional outburst. Parents who reprimand the child while they are having a tantrum just complicate the situation. Rather, parents must calmly find ways to accept the child’s differences in brain activity and sooth the child. After repeated storms that are soothed, children actually learn how to sooth themselves. Steps to follow: accept the stormy tantrum; maintain a calm temperament, sooth the child with words or actions if that strategy helps your child, or let the storm pass and then when the child is ready talk calmly about what brought the storm on. Meditation, exercise and breathing techniques can be helpful for both the parents and the children in this situation.

Children can learn to self-monitor for their triggers. Teach them to come to you before they get to the point of the storm. Practice with a spouse in front of the child. Use a scale from one to ten and ask, “How bothered are you on a scale from 1 to 10.” The child will learn that we can all communicate our rise in frustration. Make this expression of “how bothered you are” part of your routine. After practice, children will learn to self-monitor their frustration level. They will learn to express their rise in emotion and then they will learn to calm themselves before the storm erupts. Strategies that reduce frustration can be different for different children. Children may need to move away from stimuli, take a walk, play with Legos, or write about bad feelings. Eventually, children will learn to avoid the storm. There are tools that can be used at home. MyCalmBeat is a computerized tool to help you reduce your stress level through breathing patterns (cost $80).

Dr. Hishberg’s presentation is available as a PDF file on the PTO website. (lhirshbery@neurodevelopmentcenter.com)


Principal's Report (Mrs. Leddy)