By ensuring and honoring “External-Internal Communication Congruence” with children, we really help place them on a fast track to self-esteem and self-regulation.

What I mean by this kind of congruence is when we communicate and act (we can call these external processes) in ways that accurately, i.e.: congruently reflect what it is we truly feel, sense, think, and want (internal processes) to do.

It’s interesting to consider how often we adults actually do this. When we make a decision, are we sure it is our decision? That we are making it for ourselves and not for another? When we answer a question about how we are feeling, are we expressing the truth?

Yes, there are times when we need to use discernment and not disclose certain things, either to keep something private or to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, etc. In this post I’m referring to unhealthy examples that fall into a completely different category, such as when a person’s feelings, thoughts, needs and desires are discounted, minimized, or ignored. (And as this relates to children – not when we are attempting to steer them away from bad habits or decisions.)

Inherent in this practice of Internal-External Communication Congruence is the degree of self-respect with which we honor ourselves, or not. Are we robotically answering with words and actions we think someone will want to hear us say and do, thereby sweeping our own wants and needs under the rug? Someone who has done this since childhood may likely not be in touch with what they are feeling at all by the time they reach adolescence. How happy will this child be throughout life if this continues? What quality of relationships will they have if they remain passive and inattentive to their own feelings, thoughts, needs and desires?

Obviously this is a huge piece related to self-esteem and how we correctly foster it in raising and educating our children. We very much want them to be skilled in asserting themselves in life, but they first have to know how it is they actually feel, what it is they actually know to be true for them, and what it is they actually want. We can be sure to not make those assumptions and related decisions for them (in the right contexts), and, we can help them get in touch with what’s going on inside of themselves.

A simple coin flip exercise I’m about to share will help your older preschool or school-age child get in touch with the subtleties of their own emotions, wants, and thoughts, and also get them connected to their own intuition – their sense of what they knows to be true for themselves – or not; their sense of what is right or wrong; of whether to trust or not trust; of whether to act or not act, of how to act if action is warranted, etc.

Therefore, congruence – speaking and acting in accordance to how one really feels, thinks, senses, and knows – is greatly related to self-regulation. A child who knows and trusts how she feels, and then acts on this inner knowing, is respecting herself. She is validating herself. This is no small thing, as it sets the stage for further self-trust and leaps in self-confidence, self-respect, and self-competence – all vital skills for self-regulation.

When your child is unsure of how they feel about something – say, whether they should invite a classmate to their birthday party who has bullied them and some of their friends in the past but who also has shown appropriate social skills and kindness at times – pull out a coin. “Assign” to “heads” the decision to invite the classmate to the birthday party, and “assign” to “tails” the decision to not invite the classmate to this party. Have your child flip the coin and when it lands, ask them to describe how they feel about the “decision” the coin has made for them. Do they feel relieved? Glad? Sorry? Confused? There is no judgment in expressing the truth of what one feels and acting upon it, even if it does not seem like the “politically correct” response at the time.

In these types of cases when we fear that others may view our decisions as socially awkward, rude, or unkind, there are graceful ways of handling it, and we get more comfortable doing this the more it happens – and I think it’s good when it happens. In our example, a child may experience various kinds of feelings and will ultimately intuitively know what is the best decision. We can help them navigate their emotions and thoughts, and offer solutions, but it’s ultimately their feelings and inner intuitive knowing we should honor. That’s our job, and to keep our feelings out of it.

If your child happens to feel like they want to give their classmate a chance, you might sit down and think of a “script” for them to use to talk with their classmate about the expectations they will have for them at the party. An example might be, “I’d love for the whole group to get along and have fun, like the times when all of us have been kind to each other. Let’s agree not hurt each others’s feelings so we can have a really fun time.” Something like that.

This added step increases self-regulation skills, too, because it maps out ideas and skills required for developing cognitive flexibility – the exponentially all-important skill which is developed, in part and to a large degree, by using critical thinking skills which foster non judgment, compassion, kindness, self-and-other-respect, putting oneself in another’s shoes, forgiveness, solving problems, steps to building friendships, and trying again.

The coin flip trick is a simple exercise which when used regularly can help a child gain insight into, and respect for their internal experiences. Our encouraging guidance for them to act on their inner level of “knowing” what feels right for them will greatly increase both their sense of safety with us, and their own personal empowerment. In time, they will internalize this process without the use of the coin, increasing their skill set for validating themselves. They will also likely lead them to model to others the use of this same process of self-validation.

I’ve worked with children of all ages, including preschoolers, and find the language in our example works well with some 4 and 5 year olds. It’s also helpful to use age-appropriate and well-loved toys for playing out scenarios and lessons in a story format. The idea is to get the concepts across in language they’ll understand. I don’t think we can underestimate how much even young babies and toddlers can understand conceptually, and through play. What is especially, vitally important is our attunement to children. This deepens our knowing them, and children pick this up, so they feel more secure, more safe with us, and thusly feel more confidence in speaking their truth, knowing they will be psychologically seen and heard.

The overall goal here is to make our responses and the activity emphasize how the child’s emotions matter, that we honor what they are feeling and intuiting, and that they should pay attention to what their emotions and intuition tell them.

Note: this post was edited; it was originally published as “Congruence and Self-Esteem” on Oct. 9, 2009 on my previous blog, Our Holistic Kids.

Within a period of two weeks I observed two very different styles of nurturing from two different caregivers in different schools.

Both teachers are wonderfully kind and caring, wanting only the best for their students. And, like every caregiver – like all of us – they do the best they can with the skills and awareness they have at the time. That said, the outcomes the teachers’ actions had on their tantruming students had very different results, and I wanted to write about my observations in light of seeing how different forms of the help we provide produce different outcomes…

The tantrums of both children had different dynamics for which I recommended different strategies. The first observation looked like this: Miss Leslie teaches five year olds.  My client, “David” was having trouble with transitions, and had meltdowns during these times and then difficulty self-regulating. He’d get so upset he couldn’t even make decisions. The trouble for David and his teachers was that when it came time for nap, he screamed and screamed, refusing to sleep. His teachers had no true sense as to why this was happening.

We looked more closely at the transition time before nap. There certainly was a lot going on in a short period of time. It looks like this: Recess, then hang up jackets, wash hands, set up cot for nap, set up for lunch, eat, clean up, settle into cots for nap. That’s the routine. (I don’t like that the kids don’t have time to sit upright after eating for proper digestion but that’s a different point for a different post.) Although David appeared behaviorally to be calm up until it was time to set up cots, my sense was that his anxiety level was ramping up at warp speed during that period. His meltdowns seemed to occur because of the extreme over-stimulation he felt at some point in this time period. It was too much for him to do all these activities in the manner of the class schedule.

Even though David’s teachers wanted to encourage responsibility by having the kids do as much for themselves as possible, what benefitted David and ultimately solved the problem was asking them to reduce their expectations of David and build in more supports for him during this tricky time.

What Leslie ended up doing differently had a wonderful outcome: she simply made David’s cot up for him, which involved getting it from the stack of cots, setting it down in his spot and setting his sheet and pillow on it. It took less than a minute. She realized she didn’t have to view it as giving in, or as babying him. She rightly viewed it as supporting him and nurturing him in this way. She also provided more physical nurturance to David during transition periods in general by putting her hand on his shoulder, or reassuringly rubbing his arm kindly, while being “present” with him for a few moments. Specifically, her setting up his cot helped so much that David immediately began transitioning and napping with no meltdowns.

*This simple change David’s teacher made allowed David to experience success in the transitions, to feel a sense of control within these transitions, and to therefore feel good about himself as someone who is competent.* This is identity development in action.

Every child senses if they are competent in something or not; Leslie’s wise support helped David experience and strengthen his “I am competent” schema, which is no small thing, especially for a preschooler developing foundational identity constructs.

The second scenario I observed involved a teacher who was so over the moon about a three and a half year old who tantrumed in her classroom that she unwittingly “saved” him from natural outcomes. By not using appropriate strategies in a timely manner she impeded “Jake’s” abilities to experience problems and learn to solve them.

Miss Jan is a wonderful teacher; she is extremely caring and is a loving presence in her classroom. What I respectfully showed her was how she had become enmeshed with this little boy; that is, she was actually too involved with him emotionally to see that some of her behaviors were adding to the problem of his acting out. She wanted to help him feel better, but by giving him too much of the wrong kind of attention for negative behaviors, and at the wrong times – i.e.: feeding into his tantrums – her overall goal of helping him backfired.

So in this case we agreed that she would jump in less and let the second teacher in the classroom get more involved with Jake during the times when he acted out. Both teachers would be sure to use the strategies I recommended consistently, multiple times per day, every day, to include not feeding into or “giving” too much of oneself to the point that Jake manipulated the staff. Please note: this is not to say that I recommended withholding warm feelings or that I asked Jan to be something other than the caring teacher she is. It is to say that I asked her to begin to see the situation differently, and to see these new approaches to managing Jake as an even better way to love him. I essentially asked her to reformulate her methods of caring for him, without compromising the depth of her fondness for him.

For example, we agreed that Jan would continue to warmly nurture Jake with hugs but only during appropriate times, i.e.: when there was a transition in activities; during play time; in the hopefully rare occasion that he got hurt physically from say, a bump or bruise; and always to reinforce when he was displaying positive behaviors.

These changes caused Jake to act out even more initially, and this was to be expected. Over time, both teachers kept the balance between co-teaching and intervening without feeding into negative behaviors. They and Jake’s parents used all the strategies consistently. Jake developed more “self-and-other”, and “actions-and-results” awareness, and *benefitted from the consistent, repetitive, appropriate, external balance he experienced from his teachers (and parents)*.

The benefits were noted as more stable moods, less attempts to manipulate adults’ emotions, and more compliance. Eventually his tantrums began to decrease and he was not asked to leave the school.

Both stories have happy endings. For both boys, this translated to more behavioral successes which resulted from increased feelings of control and self-competence. These feelings and experiences, in turn, inform their developing sense of self which in both cases positively impacted their social-emotional trajectory, providing continued confidence in new activities and ways of relating.