Fretting and Growling

As you may know from previous posts, here for example, I am prone to anxiety. I pick at the skin around my fingers (still!) and have a tendency towards eating when stressed. Lately, I've been getting better at dealing with all of this. I try to exercise more and be kinder to myself in general. I've also learned to be ok with only being able to do so much, especially in terms of Poppet production.

Poppet is already following in my footsteps, damn those genes! She bites her nails and gets tummy aches but thankfully hasn't yet taken to eating to suppress feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. I encourage her to talk things out, to exercise and to get good quality sleep. She's pretty good at managing it most of the time, especially since we found this book.

image via here

This book really helped to articulate how to deal with anxiety for Poppet. Worries are likened to tomato plants, in that if you feed them they will grow and take over the place but if you starve them they will die. One of the great things to come out of working with this book is the concept of  'worry time'. Of course you want your kid to talk to you about their worries, but not all of the time. If you schedule 15 minutes every day for 'worry time' and give them your undivided attention, children feel heard and also learn to only allow themselves to only think about worries during the prescribed time. It helped Poppet a lot and we rarely seem to need 'worry time' anymore but it's great to know the technique is there if we need it again. There are lots of useful activities in the book and I highly recommend your getting hold of it if your kid has a tendency towards anxiety. Hell, I even found some useful pointers myself! You can buy both books mentioned in this post over here.

With worries being a little less troubling, we're turning our attention to anger. Call it hormonal, call it being a child, call it what you will but Poppet can have a very bad temper. She often has trouble controlling it and says and does things which she desperately regrets not long afterwards. Of course this is part of growing up, but I've been struggling to find a good way to help her deal with it. At almost 8 years of age, I feel it's time she started resisting the power of her temper. After loving the worry book so much I thought I'd see what else they have on offer. Naturally, there's a book all about anger. It arrived in the mail yesterday and she loves it. 

image via here

We have only just started work on this book, but can't put it down. I think Poppet feels incredible relief to see she's not alone and to find that there is a solution to these problems. The books are both so well laid out and are written in such a conversational manner with lots of images and activities. Thank goodness I found them. So far, we are working on putting Poppet back into the 'driving seat' of her emotions. I'm sure it won't prevent all of her outbursts, she's only human after all, but it would be lovely to see a reduction in them. Having control over her temper will make her feel so much better about herself as well. She was grumpy with me today at lunchtime and instead of flaring into a rage due to her own disappointment with herself, she calmly told me she was sorry but that she was very tired. I couldn't ask for more.

Maybe these holidays won't be so long after all. Now, I'd better go work on some of that Poppet production I was discussing earlier...