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Transcript of Episode 1:

Understanding Behavior as Communication

[00:00:00] Kimberly Bell: Are you interested in knowing your young child in a whole new way? Understanding what’s really going on in their developing mind. Does your child say or do things that make you stop and wonder, where did that come from? Well, stick around because this podcast is designed for you. Hello friends and welcome listeners.

I’m Dr. Kimberly Bell, the clinical director of the Hanna Perkins Center for Child Development in Cleveland, Ohio. And this is the Hidden Language of Children, a podcast dedicated to the understanding of children we love and helping them grow. We created this podcast to help parents and caregivers understand the inner life of children.

That constant churning of feelings and emotions that goes on inside of us. This is the work Hanna Perkins has been doing with children and families since 1951. We help kids become the boss of themselves. We work with children who have everyday developmental struggles, like trouble listening to directions or making friends.

We also work with kids who are dealing with big stuff. Their parents are getting divorced, or [00:01:00] someone in the family has a serious illness and is in and out of the hospital. And we work with grown ups who have questions as a parent. and want to gain comfort and confidence in that role. And we want to share it with you, because our approach to understanding children reduces conflict and makes life better for everyone.

Today I’m welcoming child psychoanalyst Barbara Streeter, who has been a part of Hanna Perkins for longer than anyone else. Barbara has been an early childhood teacher, the director of our school, and now serves as a consulting therapist working with children, families, and teachers. Welcome, Barbara.

Thank you, Kim. How are you doing

[00:01:37] Barbara Streeter: today? I’m delighted to be here. I love to talk about kids. All

[00:01:42] Kimberly Bell: right. So today our topic is Behavior as communication. I think that’s the foundation of what this podcast is based on, and you’re the perfect person to talk to us about it. So, why don’t we start by talking about what is meant by behavior as communication.

[00:01:59] Barbara Streeter: Behavior [00:02:00] is a communication of feelings that need to be understood — in simple terms — and it’s very easy to understand when you think about a baby. A baby cries — you know it’s communicating that it needs something. And if you know the baby well, you know how to figure out what it needs. And a toddler hits and you know it’s communicating something.

It’s usually an angry feeling. And you say, “No hitting, say you’re mad,” or “Use your words.” And that’s where it all starts – is helping children identify what they are trying to communicate through their behaviors. Sounds simple… it’s much more complicated.

[00:02:46] Kimberly Bell: So, so it, it It isn’t just that when children start to be able to talk, we can kind of relax because they’re going to eventually figure out how to talk about their feelings.

This is something that we need to help them with.

[00:02:59] Barbara Streeter: That’s the [00:03:00] complicated part. When you hit the age of 3, and even with toddlers, These feelings are getting big and happening in all sorts of ways. The child is growing. The child is developing ideas inside their head about their experiences. The child is developing cognitive abilities, but doesn’t have the same cognitive abilities we have.

So for instance, uh, a young child doesn’t have a sense of time. So you say, I’m going away, I’ll be back shortly, or I’ll be back in an hour; that has no meaning for the child. You’re gone, and they get really upset. And so, what they’re trying to communicate when they’re crying and clinging to you is not just, I don’t want you to go, it’s I’m really scared that you’re going to be leaving and gone and not come back.

And [00:04:00] so, you don’t always know exactly what the child’s feeling and you have to work together with the child to understand it and then give the words for the feeling, and it takes practice for the child to recognize that when mommy says “for an hour” it means something like it won’t be forever.

[00:04:23] Kimberly Bell: Right, for a child who has no sense of time.

[00:04:26] Barbara Streeter: Right.

[00:04:29] Kimberly Bell: If a parent is interested in doing this, like why is it important for the child? Like what is it, being able to verbalize feelings, why is that important, what does that give the child?

[00:04:39] Barbara Streeter: Well, you have to imagine how it is for you with your big feelings. Suppose you’re starting a new job and you don’t know anybody, you’re not sure you’re going to perform well, you don’t know where to get the extra paper, you may not even be sure exactly where your office is going to be.

Um, and that [00:05:00] produces a lot of big feelings and you know, because you’re grown up and you’ve had a lot of experience, that there will be somebody who speaks your language and will help you figure it out and that nobody expects you to know everything from the start. A child doesn’t know any of these things when they start preschool.

And so they’re entering a world that produces a lot of anxiety and they have to handle this anxiety some way and it can come out in all sorts of ways. If they don’t know all the things I just described that you as an adult know, they have very few resources to manage this new place, and they don’t know what’s happening to them.

And that’s when you can get a child who runs through the room and grabs toys, or who climbs on [00:06:00] tables and you don’t know why he’s doing it. And it might be that he’s just driven by anxiety. He hasn’t learned yet all the many things he needs to learn to manage the situation. So you can help from the outside, but if the child knows ahead of time, I’m going to this place and I’m worried and I’m anxious and mommy can help me with my feelings, then the behavior calms down and the child can

take it a step at a time.

[00:06:36] Kimberly Bell: So just like us, if we’re having a feeling we haven’t quite figured out why, we’re running around just feeling some sort of anxiety or some sort of anger, it helps us to be able to put that into words and say, “Oh, that’s why I’m upset” and be able to talk to somebody about it. So that doesn’t come naturally; parents have to help children develop that.

[00:06:55] Barbara Streeter: You said that very well.

[00:06:57] Kimberly Bell: All right. Great. So as a parent or a teacher, cause I [00:07:00] heard you mentioned school, we know these things don’t happen just at school or just at home with kids. How do you think about approaching a child, um, so that they can understand their behavior means more than, than what it might seem?

[00:07:16] Barbara Streeter: There’s so many ways you have to read the cues from the child as to what the child might be experiencing. But the first thing is, when you say, don’t do that, whatever they might be doing, or you need to sit down, you ARE helping the child know something, but you’re not helping the child feel less anxious.

So the first thing that is helpful to say is “This school is safe. We will keep you safe.” And if you know, if mommy’s there: “Mommy has decided this is a safe school. [00:08:00] And then can I show you where your cubby is,” or something that helps orient the child, but that recognizes – lets the child know – that you recognize that they don’t feel safe and that they want somebody to help them out.

[00:08:18] Kimberly Bell: So if your child is acting up and you say, I need you to stop that, but you don’t really uncover what’s underneath it, then you might get some other kind of behavior.

So is, is there a different thing to say other than stop it?

[00:08:35] Barbara Streeter: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Suppose you have a child, um, who’s sitting at the table with you and some guests at dinnertime, and all of a sudden the child crawls up on the top of the table, and you’re embarrassed, and you don’t know why your child’s doing it and you say you need to get down.

Well, that’s an OK thing [00:09:00] to say, but it doesn’t help understand why the child was doing that. And that means it’s feeling to the child like a command as opposed to something that helps them. And if you noticed that just at the time this child stood on the table, the baby brother woke up And all the people at the table were focusing on this little darling baby that maybe the child got up on the table because he or she felt left out, not noticed, not good enough.

And you could say, “You know, we, we’re noticing you too, but I think you can get noticed by asking to your, for your turn to talk, you don’t need to clean up on, climb up on the table.” And in so doing, you’re [00:10:00] empathizing with the child and you’re putting their feelings into words. You want to get noticed.

You’ve noticed your little brother, and eventually it can be, are you feeling jealous again? Or are you feeling left out again? Or something to that effect. Now, play it out over time, and you can find out from your child why it’s so hard to wait for his turn to get noticed. And it might be that those jealous feelings are impacted by inside ideas the child has, meaning a child’s constantly thinking, constantly trying to figure out how to get control over his world.

And, yeah, you want to stop me?

[00:10:54] Kimberly Bell: You because that leads me right into, I think, our next question. Because I know here at Hanna Perkins, we talk a lot [00:11:00] about the inner life of children, that we focus on the inner life of children. And I think you’re starting to talk about exactly what that is. So, so explain that a little bit more.

What exactly are we talking about when we say the inner life of children?

[00:11:12] Barbara Streeter: When you talk about “behaviors are communications of feelings that need to be understood” it’s very easy to think of what I described before. He’s mad, he’s sad, we can label it, he can say it. And the fact is that internally, the child isn’t just mad, isn’t just sad.

They’ve got ideas attached to why there’s a mad or what will happen if they have the mad and what will, you know, and then they’ve got, I mean, an example is if I say I’m mad at mommy, will she get mad back at me? Will she, you know, will I be hurting her feelings? [00:12:00] So they’ve got both those ideas, but also they’ve got ideas like, why, why did she go have a baby?

Was there something wrong with me that she didn’t like? And the reason they get these ideas is because they don’t want to be helpless, a passive person who has to just accept what happens in the world. They don’t like it, so they want to figure out how to change it. And it’s better to think, “I can change it,” than it’s just what’s always going to be.

So they think, well, what, what did I do that made her want another child? Was there something wrong with me? Can I change that? And so all this is going on in their heads. And so

when it gets talked about and mother can say, “That’s not true at all. I love you just as much. And [00:13:00] I wanted another child.” Some mothers have said, I wanted another child because I loved you so much. I wanted two, two children. And this can really help the child with his self identity and his self esteem, you know, I think there’s lots of us growing up who have grown up thinking mother always liked the others better, or I just was never as good as my siblings – because it never got discussed and never got understood.

understood. And so that’s one reason why it’s so important to be aware of the inner life, and one reason why it’s so complicated to help children sort out their feelings.

[00:13:46] Kimberly Bell: Well, and I imagine it helps the self esteem of the parent who is seeing this complex little creature that they’re helping to put out into the world and being so confused or feeling like you can’t quite get a handle [00:14:00] on why your kids are behaving the way they’re behaving, there must be a sense of satisfaction and power and empowerment in under being able to find a way in to understand what your toddler is trying to communicate, what your, you know, preschoolers trying to communicate, what your teenager is trying to communicate, right?

This goes through the developmental spectrum.

[00:14:22] Barbara Streeter: Absolutely.

[00:14:24] Kimberly Bell: So, Barbara, can you give us another example of how we might work with this inner life of a child?

[00:14:30] Barbara Streeter: Well, this example is even more complicated in that um, it illustrates how sometimes children have experiences early in their life and the grown-ups don’t notice what their experience was.

And it comes out later in behaviors that are disconnected from the early experience. And we, um, at Hanna Perkins have seen [00:15:00] situations where children have, for instance, had, um, medical procedures that have frightened them and have involved being held down and, you know, poked with needles and these experiences are particularly impactful to little kids.

Um, and often if you’re like in a toddler phase and we haven’t even talked about the phases and the preoccupations of different phases, but toddlers are very busy struggling with big aggressive impulses, um, and big loving impulses, but they’re not helping each other out when it’s aggression, it’s raw aggression.

And so they experienced the medical procedures as raw aggression directed at them. And so that complicates the picture, um, their own inside development and feelings; and it can [00:16:00] actually be traumatic, but because the parents are busy trying to help and do what the doctors say and worry, they recognize the child’s upset, but they don’t quite recognize

how the child internalizes that experience. And that means how that experience becomes part of their inner life. And, uh, we had one child who manifested the problem when he entered preschool because he walked into the classroom and started barreling through the classroom and he wouldn’t sit down for group times.

And he, when restrained from running around, would then kick the teachers. And actually, when he got really worked up and they had to really hold him, he started to throw chairs. And, and this was very frightening for the [00:17:00] teaching staff as well as the kids and for the mom who really didn’t know why he was behaving this way.

And, um, this required extra intervention because a mom can’t just figure this out on her own, uh, nor can a teacher. And, um, the consultant who was working with a mom in this kind of situation was able to piece back together with her, uh, that there had been this experience and encourage her to talk to her child about it.

And, uh, when the experience, you know, you can’t just say, “Oh, you had this experience. It must be why you’re upset.” You have to go back and find out if the child can have what we call a feeling memory of the experience and piece it together. That was very frightening, but school isn’t the same. It’s not going to be a place where people do [00:18:00] things to you, where bad things happen.

And the teachers even could at least accept from mom that she’s talking to her child about this and say, “This is a safe place. Nobody hurts anybody here. Nobody holds anybody down.” And with that kind of work, the child is then able to sort out what’s going on in his inner life and have a new perspective on school. And, and he managed better after that.

[00:18:36] Kimberly Bell: And I think it, it makes me think about how many parents have to have their child go through a medical procedure and how frightening it is for them and how much worry there is about, well, this is the best thing for my child. But this is going to somehow. upset my child or will it damage my child?

And it brings me back to sort of [00:19:00] one of my favorite Hanna Perkinsese kind of um, mantras is a child can get through anything that can be talked about. And it sounds like, yeah, I like that too. That’s kind of the point we’re getting to is that whether it is being jealous of a sibling or being upset that mom and dad are going out and leaving them with a babysitter or starting a new school, or something as serious as hospitalization, that if you can understand a child’s reaction to those things and help them put it into words instead of behavior, then that experience can be integrated

and the problem can be solved.

[00:19:41] Barbara Streeter: You know, I like to say that reality is always better than fantasy in that regard. And children have all sorts of fantasies about why things happen. And if they’re fed the reality at, you know, in the doses that are just right [00:20:00] for them, at the right level, you know, in a way that makes sense to them; and if they are helped to know what to expect in the next situation, they will feel so much safer with themselves and with the world, so much more competent, and if they get to know their feelings internally, they will have better self regulation skills.

Excellent.

[00:20:31] Kimberly Bell: All right, well, this is a lot today. I hope everybody has enjoyed hearing this piece from Barbara. And we want to move on. We have another section of our podcast that we’re going to do each time called Let’s Rephrase That. Here at Hanna Perkins, we often have parents tell us that they enjoy the way that we talk to children, that our language is unique in the way that we talk to children.

So we’re going to talk about rephrasing it. So, the first one we want to talk about is how we talk about toilet [00:21:00] training, because we don’t use the word toilet training. Barbara, what is the word that we use? Toilet mastery.

[00:21:06] Barbara Streeter: So why

[00:21:07] Kimberly Bell: do we want to rephrase it from toilet training to toilet mastery?

[00:21:12] Barbara Streeter: Toilet training is when the adult trains the child.

So the child’s not doing it for himself. The child’s doing it to please the adult or to get the rewards that might be offered. Toilet mastery is that the child is getting to know his body and getting control over his body and being able to make choices about what to do with his body. And that builds self esteem.

And that builds empowerment. As things go, toilet mastery is a long process. And all developmental steps entail a process that goes back and forth and, um, [00:22:00] that’s certainly what toilet mastery entails.

[00:22:03] Kimberly Bell: And then also keeping clean and dry with the entirety of your body, not just with going to the potty.

Correct. And learning to take care of yourself and value that for yourself.

[00:22:15] Barbara Streeter: And it’s choosing to do what is socially appropriate, you know, and being able to make the choice is what’s all the difference. And the same thing goes with eating, if I can throw that one in, you know, to be able to choose what you put into your mouth as opposed to being you know, cajoled or, you know, forced into eating what mother thinks is the good thing for you.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t make sure your child has good nutrition, but the point is allow them to have a choice.

[00:22:48] Kimberly Bell: Hanna. Here’s another one. So whenever our child does something that we want them to continue doing, it’s the easiest thing is to say, “Good job. I am so [00:23:00] proud of you.” In Hanna Perkinsese, we say,

[00:23:06] Barbara Streeter: That must make YOU feel so proud.

And I have to give Debbie Parris credit for, Debbie Parris is one of our colleagues, and she was the one who said, Self esteem comes from the self. And motivation to learn, motivation to achieve, motivation to do the right thing, really should be coming from the self, so that the child can feel proud. When it’s done for somebody else, it’s always a chore.

[00:23:41] Kimberly Bell: So in every episode, that was, that was fun. That’s my favorite part. I think of Hanna Perkins is the, the way that we speak to children is, is different and, and I think empowering in a lot of different ways. So the next section that we’re going to have, um, every episode is we’re going to take questions.

So if anybody that’s out there [00:24:00] listening, if you want to submit a question to us, um, you can do so on our YouTube channel. And, um, today’s, we have a question for today. Today’s question comes from Cleveland. A mother says she’s embarrassed at playdates when her 4-year-old son won’t share his toys.

He’ll be playing with one toy, and the moment the other child picks up a different toy, then that’s the one he suddenly wants to play with. She asks, how can she get him to share?

[00:24:31] Barbara Streeter: Well, the first step is to acknowledge that it’s very understandable that he doesn’t want some other child to be playing with his toys.

It’s a new experience, probably, or new-ish, and, um, they’re his toys, and that’s important. Um, you know, the second step is to give him some opportunity to discuss [00:25:00] ahead of time what he thinks he might be able to share and what he really doesn’t want another child to touch. Children have favorite toys and, um, it’s upsetting if somebody else is playing with it.

So mother says, Let’s put all those toys that you don’t want to share away because when your friend comes over he should be able to choose, you know how good it feels to choose what he wants to play with. And then if he is playing with something that you want to play with too, you can either ask him if you can play together or you can ask him if you can play with it after he’s finished.

[00:25:46] Kimberly Bell: It’s very, it’s very considerate, I think, of the child and also this idea that it’s important to be someone who shares, but it’s also OK to have special things that you don’t want to share, that that’s a normal human [00:26:00] experience, and that kids shouldn’t have to share everything.

[00:26:04] Barbara Streeter: Actually in our preschool, children are allowed to say no, and that’s to be accepted by the other children when they ask to play with whatever the first child is playing with, and that’s somewhat unusual.

I think parents want their children to show up well, and they want them to share in all circumstances. And it’s really unfair to the child, because if they’re allowed to say no and have that feeling, they’re much more likely in the future to want to share – again, from the self, as opposed to because, because somebody on the outside is making you do it.

[00:26:52] Kimberly Bell: This is a lot of amazing information, Barbara, and we obviously can’t go into everything in one episode, which is why we’re going to have a [00:27:00] podcast series. So I can’t wait for you to come back so we can talk about more things. But if people I’d be happy to. If people want to know more right now. Uh, we do have a book called, um, that’s the ultimate guide to understanding your child’s behavior.

It is called “Timeless Advice for Parents of Young Children.” And this book was written by a group of Hanna Perkins early childhood development experts. And we’re going to put a QR code up on the screen and a picture here of the book. And you can scan that to find it on Amazon for less than $20. From tantrums to preschool jitters, it unlocks the mysteries of your child’s mind.

It’s easy reading with short chapters that are organized by common situations. And it offers gentle and loving strategies for so many challenges that parents face in the way that Barbara and I have been talking about them today. “Timeless Advice” can bring out that nurturing, patient, and resourceful parent that lives in [00:28:00] all of us.

Plus, every purchase supports, um, the non-profit Hanna Perkins Center. You can find it at Amazon. com. All right, that’s our time for today. If you’d like us to answer questions about your child’s behavior, send us an email at hiddenlanguageofchildren@gmail.com or visit our website at hiddenlanguageofchildren.org. Thank you for joining us. We’re grateful to all of our listeners today. We hope you enjoy this conversation and found it to be helpful when making parenting decisions appropriate for your child. The Hidden Language of Children podcast is a production of the non profit Hanna Perkins Center for Child Development in beautiful Shaker Heights, Ohio.

If you like this podcast, please like and subscribe to hear future episodes, share it with your friends and family, and we welcome your comments and questions in the comment section of our YouTube video. Again, you can contact us, hiddenlanguageofchildren@gmail.Com. For more links and information about our approach to [00:29:00] healthy child development, Visit our website at hiddenlanguageofchildren.org. I’m Dr. Kimberly Bell, and we w