22（英）What to do when your child is laughed at

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Hello, Himalaya’s subscribers. This is Mary Nelsen. And today we are gonnabe talking about self esteem and what to do when your child is laughed at. Formost adults, minor embarrassments are just a part of a life. Annoying, buthardly a big deal. But for many kids, embarrassing experiences can be veryupsetting, and in some cases may lead to anxiety and fear to take risks. Wecan't protect our children from embarrassment, but we can help them build theresilience and confidence they need to deal with it in a healthy way.

It's important to model the behavior that you want your children to learn.Kids do what you do. So how do you manage difficult emotions likeembarrassment? When you want to help your children learn healthy emotionalhabits? The first step is to consider how to handle similar situations in yourown life. Following are three steps you can take to send example for healthybehavior for your child.

First, don't obsess. If you tend to dwell on mistakes you've made, I can'tbelieve I did that. I could have died of embarrassment. It's more likely thatyour child would do the same.

Second, control your behavior and stay calm. If you lose your cool, whenan embarrassing situation happens to you or react by becoming angry or upset,you're sending a message to your child that it's a big deal.

Third, don't tease your child. Teasing is discouraging. Kids accidentallydo and say some funny things, but it's important not to mock their mistakes orpoke fun and embarrassing incidents. If small embarrassments are treated withridicule, kids may start associating even minor missteps with feeling of shameand humiliation. Teasing, even when it seems gentle, can be very upsetting tokids, especially if they're already feeling sensitive. Take your child's embarrassmentseriously.

There's no measurement for embarrassment, something that sounds small toyou, like giving the wrong answer in class, may feel huge to your child. Ifyour child is embarrassed, it's important not to dismiss his feelings, even ifthe situation that caused them sounds like no big deal. You may be trying tohelp when you're saying things like, it's not as bad as you think. But whenkids are experiencing upsetting emotions that can feel like dismissing theirfeelings, the best and easiest thing to do is stop and validate their feelings.

It's important not to overreact. If your child is upset, what he doesn'tneed is for you to get upset too, even if you mean to be supportive. And youthink that you're defending him by saying “those kids should be ashamed ofthemselves for laughing”. And don't assume that your child wants or need to doanything about it. When a self conscious child worries that a parent will overreact or make embarrassing situation even worse, he's likely to be reluctant toshare his feelings in the future. When your child is hurting, you probably wantto do all you can to protect him. But if your kid is feeling embarrassed,adding more attention to the situation can make it worse, not better.

My oldest son, Grayson, recently experienced a group of girls that weremaking fun of him and his name. They were taking his hat from him and playingthe game of keep away. Or they were even poking him in his side when he wasjust sitting at his desk, minding his own business. They thought that it wasfun. They thought that they were just teasing. And what he found is that it wasreally embarrassing because when they were doing things like taking his hat,they were laughing at him when he couldn't catch it.

As his mother, it was really difficult not to say negative comments aboutthose girls or immediately offer advice about what he should do. Instead, Ivalidated help setting those situations were for him. And I asked there wasanything I could do to help. He made it very clear that he did not want me toget involved. I shared a story about when I was a child and how I got teasedand made fun of by my curly hair.

If your child shares an embarrassing situation with you, validate herfeelings, but don’t dwell on them or over comfort. Instead, acknowledgepositive coping skills. Maybe she used self-control to not hurt back. If shemade a mistake during a piano recital, acknowledge her for staying focused andfinishing the piece. Reframing negative experiences will help your child identifyhealthy reactions and work through the struggle, building resiliency andthe belief that they survive and even thrive from these challenging situationsin their life. You could say: “I’m so sorry that happened today. I know it wasupsetting and I noticed how you handled it. It takes a really brave person tokeep playing when things are hard.”

Create perspective.

If your child fell on the playground, and other kids laughed, it may seemto him as though everyone saw, everyone laughed and no onewill ever forget it ever.

Of course you know that’s not true， but kids, especially younger ones, often struggle to see beyond their ownfeelings, which can make embarrassing situations feel like front-page news.Kids can be egocentric, so when something embarrassing happens to your child itcan feel like everyone is thinking about it as much as he is, when in realitymost kids will have moved on and have already forgotten about it. Following aresome steps you can take when your child has felt embarrassed.

1.    Ask Curiosity questions: Help yourchild understand his feelings by asking open-ended questions. For example: Yourchild isn’t the only one who’s ever fallen down on the playground, so you couldbegin by asking how he felt when other kids did the same thing? What ideas doeshe have to solve the problem?Anything you can do differently in the nexttime?

2.   Share your personal stories: Sharing examples from your own life will help normalize embarrassment. “Idropped my handbag at the grocery store the other day. It practicallyexploded all over the floor. Everyone laughed, but then several people helpedpick things up.”

3.    Don’t compare: Make sure yourstory doesn't imply that your handled embarrassment better. And, be careful toavoid comparing your experiences with other kids. (“You think that’s bad, whenyour brother was your age…”) Your child may end up feeling like hisexperiences are unimportant — or not serious enough to warrant how upset he’sfeeling — which can make him feel worse for not being tougher.

4.    Let your child take the lead: Sometimes questions are helpful, but there may be times when your childjust doesn’t want to talk about it. “Letting kids take the lead is important.“If your child says, ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ or seems too upset, don’tpush.” Embarrassment is a big feeling and sometimes kids just need space tocool down.

Helping your child gain perspective without minimizing his feelings willmake it easier for him to move past negative experiences — and give him animportant tool for building self-awareness in the future.

Embarrassing situations happen to everyone from time to time, but if yourchild regularly comes home from school upset, or has a major change in behavioror mood, there may be something more serious going on.

Bullying: Unfortunately, kids aren’t always kind.Most children will be made fun of at some point during their lives. Sporadicepisodes of embarrassment are unpleasant — but not unusual. However, if yourchild regularly reports being teased or humiliated by his peers — especiallykids who are bigger, older or more ‘popular’ — there’s a chance he’s being bullied,and it’s time to step in.

Behavioral changes: Feeling a littledown or anxious after an embarrassing incident is normal, but lingeringbehavioral changes — not sleeping, low appetite, excessive worrying —those arenot normal.

Overreacting or obsessing: If your child’sreaction to something embarrassing seems out of proportion to the situation orhe seems unable to move past it,that's also you might want to step in.

Avoidance: Most kids who’ve had an embarrassingexperience feel reluctant about returning to the class or social group wherethe problem occurred, but persistent avoidance is cause for concern. Some signsto watch for include frequently being too sick to go to school or asking to goto the nurse during a particular class, making excuses to avoid seeing friends,cutting class, skipping extracurricular activities or refusing to attend schoolentirely.

Life lessons :It’s natural to want to protect yourchild from experiences that are hurtful or upsetting, but in the end, the bestway for your child to build coping skills is through experiences — withencouragement and support.

Being embarrassed is part of life, It’s tempting to try to protect orrescue your chid from difficult things, but in reality learning how to dealwith those experiences in a healthy way is a skill that will serve your childwell as he grows up.”

As a parent, it is always more painful to watch your child suffer andafter this lesson I hope you realize that these challenges are opportunities tohelp your children to learn, and also to feel supported and encouraged by you.Like all the challenges that we are gonna be sharing and talking about thoughall these lessons, they are opportunities, so we really do celebrate thesechallenges as a way of learning and teaching our children. I really appreciateeach and every one of you for tuning in and learning about different tools andskills that takes as a parent to help your children to developed into healthyand confident young women or man. In next lesson, you are gonna hear from mymom, Jane Nelsen, where she is gonna talk about conflict, and how to deal withthe quarrels and fights between children. Until next time, enjoy the rest ofyour day, and it is always a pleasure to speak to you each and everyone of you.Take care, bye bye!