Getting Distracted

Earlier tonight, I set out to write a blog here for Dad-O-Matic with a suggestion for how to handle a crying child and found myself writing about distractions in the context of life. Ironic how that happened, being distracted by my own inspiration to write! Anyway, upon finishing that up and posting on my own blog, I promptly came back to write about my original topic: using distractions with our children to help them to stop crying.

The Situation

Being a parent we are often confronted with a situation where our child is crying and there just seems no way to get them to stop. This can happen at bedtime, lunchtime, when you are out running errands, or anytime that is just inconvenient for us parents. It’s a true test of parental patience. Some parents are very patient with their children, while others don’t even have a fuse to burn for 2 seconds!

The way it usually starts is the child wants something they can’t have, like candy or toys. Or they want to do something they can’t do, like stay up at bedtime or run up and down the store isle shrieking at the top of their lungs. Sometimes the crying is due to sheer exhaustion, depending on the child’s age. These are familiar situations for most parents. And it’s not that anyone’s child is truly unruly or badly behaved. There are various reasons for defiant or rebellious types of behavior that causes children to cry uncontrollably. The most common I have found with my own children are that they are just testing me to see what they can get away with or they simply want more attention.  

Our Reactions

I’m not a psychology expert, nor did I study child behavior. But as a parent, I can guarantee you I have become an expert at raising my children. My children are a blessing for having taught me so much about human conditioning. As men it can be easy to gravitate to aggressive means for control, especially those with higher levels of testosterone. Some men have been raised to believe, through their own childhood experience, that force is the way to gain control. And the images we see in movies and on TV certainly glamorize that type of behavior, even though we know it is wrong. When things don’t go the way we want, we can get upset. This may be more true for men than women, as women tend to be nurturers. However, when your nerves are shot because your child won’t stop crying, emotions can take over that are not constructive for either gender. You want it to end, but you have no solution. And all the books and articles you’ve read on child rearing somehow don’t answer your specific situation. When you step outside of your own conditioning you can learn a lot about what you are experiencing.  

Finding Solutions

Fortunately I was also blessed with ample patience. My dad was extremely patient. He was careful and enjoyed paying attention to small details. I learned a great deal about patience through watching him. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had my own moments of frustration. But when I stop thinking about me and what I want, to turn my focus on what my child wants I have found myself to be even more patient than I am under normal circumstances. This can be a difficult thing for anyone to do, especially when there is such urgency felt to solve the child’s problem immediately so they will stop screaming and crying. It’s easy to lose control of your own thoughts and switch to some sort of survival mode. But if you have reached that place in life where you place others ahead of you, because it pleases you to do so, then it is easy to learn to focus on your child.

We are a society of “instant gratification needs“. When our children scream and cry, we want it to stop immediatley, especially when the cause is not related to being hurt in some fashion. It’s hard to find anything more aggrevating than a child screaming because of something as simple as not getting a piece of candy. And it’s easy to reprimand and lay down the law with our brow wrinkled and force in our voice saying “because I said so, that’s why“. But it really can be the least effective method, only creating more disharmony with your child. So how can you get your child to stop screaming and crying quickly? Distract them.

Distraction Works

With our third child Sam, we had a hard time with him at bedtime. There were many nights where he would just cry and cry and cry before finally falling asleep. When he was a baby I would hold him until he fell alseep. But as he got to be a toddler, this became more difficult. So, I would lay down next to him to appease him, but sometimes even that didn’t help.

One night when he was about two years old, while laying with him as he was crying, I just started talking to him and asked him some questiions about how his day went. I asked him to remember a couple specific events. I was pleasantly surprized when he choked back the crying and answered me! I had managed to distract him from why he was crying. I continued with other questions and dialogue. And not too long after he dozed off to sleep in the middle of his sentence. I had used this technique before with my two older ones, but had never really realized what I was doing until with Sam.

This technique of distracting also works with my youngest who is now two. One night recently while we were having supper she had no interest in eating. After three or four stern warnings to eat, she began fussing because she just didn’t want to. I pulled out my distraction technique and began asking her questions unrelated to our discussion of eating supper, like what color her shirt was. She loves purple, and usually is wearing purple so it was an easy question for her to answer. After a few other questions, I then pulled some reverse psycology and told her she shouldn’t eat because it would make her strong and she didn’t want to be strong. She promply started eating, and smiling while doing it.

All Things In Moderation

Distraction is one of those things where after a while, children will pick up on your antics. So you should use it in moderation. Don’t try to employ distraction as soon as the child starts crying. This may aggrevate them more because they haven’t been able to vent their frustration yet. It will be more confusing as they are trying to process their frustration at the same time as answer your question. It usually worked best for me several minutes (3-5) into the episode because my children had forgotten why they were crying to begin with. I have found it to work well with my children 2 to 5. Sam is now 5, and I am still able to distract him when necessary. If you have a baby (under 2), since they likely can’t answer you back yet and have some kind of conversation with you, you should practice talking to them with a soothing voice, rather than expect them to understand that dad’s big booming voice is the authority!

Ultimately all children respond differently to various rearing methods. I have learned that with my children, distracting them helps me to calm them, and generally we are also able to solve their discontentment in the process. I’d love to hear how this works for you, or if you have your own methods for calming an upset child. Feel free to contact me here http://contact.charlieprofit.com.

About Charlie

Charlie Profit has been happily married since 1997 and is father to four wonderful children. He has Faith in Christ, is a Conservative Libertarian, and believes in limited government with free markets. He is a Talk Host, Podcaster and Blogger at www.charlieprofit.com. Charlie is a veteran broadcaster and owns his own broadcast and new media services company CAB Radio, coaching Internet Talk Hosts and helping companies with their Social Media presence.