Choosing Therapeutic Activities

In my practice, I am always connecting with other professionals who offer services that my clients may also need.  In a recent conversation with one of these professionals, a wonderful occupational therapist that I often refer appropriate cases to, she happened to bring up a question she often hears from parents: are there activities I should be doing with my child that will enhance the therapeutic process?  In this world of overscheduled children, it is often difficult for parents to narrow down the activities with which they should get their children involved.  This leads to a desire to “kill two birds with one stone” and focus energy on activities that will be enjoyable but may also work on issues that the child is facing.  This discussion with the occupational therapist caused me to take a deeper look into what other activities could be used to help kids work on the issues that bring them to my office.

For my colleague, her answers are straightforward.  Any activities that involve fine or gross motor skills and offer sensory input are great.  If you have a child with fine motor issues, enroll them in piano, guitar, art class or rock climbing, for example.  All of these activities require the use of pressure and muscles within your hands and strengthen those things.  For balance issues, yoga, gymnastics, karate or dance might be a good recommendation.  But what can I offer as suggestions to parents whose kids have ADHD, social anxiety or poor self-esteem? I began to look at what skills I was trying to build and what activity would help build those same skills.

So if your child has social anxiety or low self-esteem, you would be looking for an activity that builds confidence and allows them to build comfort with being part of groups and builds leadership skills.  Girl or Boy Scouts seem like a great way to achieve these things.  Volunteering is also great for this.  Look for opportunities for your child to become a part of the community at large.  Work at a soup kitchen or food drive. 

If your child has ADHD, you will likely be looking for activities that promote working memory and executive functioning skills.  In order to accommodate their need for stimulation and activity, you might steer your child toward active things that are more solitary in nature such as running or swimming.  As an added bonus, you could involve them in things that are active but involve strategy such as fencing or rock climbing.  Activities that require thinking ahead or anticipating an opponent’s next move will help them train their brain to slow down and organize information.  Chess is a fantastic game for these kids.

Instead of just signing our kids up for whatever activities in which they express an interest, given the limitations on everyone’s time these days, I think it is smart to think about how an activity might help them learn the life skills they need in a fun and natural way.  Instead of having to fight with them to practice skill building activities that seem like work, they can be building the same skills in a way that they enjoy.  While this doesn’t replace the need for therapeutic intervention, it certainly could lessen the time that is required and build skills that could grow with your child throughout their lives.   Using these methods can help you incorporate these interventions into your child’s activities in a more time efficient and enjoyable manner. 

Building Self-Esteem

We have become a society of trophies for everyone no matter their effort or ability.  In an effort to build the self-esteem of children we may have gone too far in our praise of everything they do.  In doing so, I fear that we have created a generation of kids who have extremely poor self-esteem.  Let’s face the facts: not everything they do is praise worthy.  If we praise them for everything, how do they learn what it feels like to lose or not be good at something?  How do they develop the ability to be a good sport even when they feel badly about their performance?  But the largest issue that comes from this trend is that they can be completely unprepared to face an adult world where bosses will not always offer praise or compensation for all of their hard work.

When I express these opinions to parents who come seeking my help with their children, I am often met with horrified stares.  Believe me, I do not believe in tearing children down with negativity and I am not saying that building self-esteem is not important.  All I am saying is that there are better ways to actually accomplish that goal.  Self-esteem is born from a sense of mastery.  So encourage children to try a lot of things and praise them when they are actually good at something.  That way your praise has meaning to them.  Trust me, they feel different when they are actually good at something and your praise will mean more if you reserve it for those moments.  This is not the same thing as finding what they are good at and taking the joy out of it by forcing year round instruction and demanding excellence.  If this is something your child wants, that is great, but in my experience such an approach is often more about the parent than the child. 

Set expectations for your children.  If you have expectations and they are clearly communicated to your child they will work hard to live up to them.  When their hard work pays off and you are proud of them, they will be proud too.  Their pride is really the key.  I never just tell my children that I am proud of them.  Someday, unfortunately, I won’t be around to tell them that all the time.  And while I am often proud of them and express my pleasure and pride in particular actions, behaviors and achievements, I always tell them that they should be proud of themselves.  I want them to be able to validate their own feelings and not always look to me to judge their level of competency. 

Give your kid choices and point out when they make good ones.  It is common for us to ruminate on bad choices that we have made or pawn the choice off on someone else for fear of making a bad one.  In order to gain lasting confidence your child must see that they make good choices.  Your validation goes a long way to promote this.  Even small choices build to better bigger choices.  It can be tempting to just choose for them or force their hands, but nothing is learned or gained when you do that.

Finally, as social creatures children must find “their people”.  It is important for them to understand that friends that are worth having will like them for who they are. Some people aren’t going to like them at all.  They don’t have to be liked by everyone.  Your children also don’t have to like everyone.  In fact, it is important to teach them how to be respectful and kind even when they don’t like someone.  All they really need is a small core group of peers who have similar interests and allow them to be themselves.  If they have that they will feel good about themselves because those friends will validate their experiences and like them even when they aren’t the best at something.  Learning this now will help them choose better friends and a better mate as adults.  So while there are many things you can do to build self-esteem and it will always be an ongoing process, praising our children for everything they do is not one of them.  Good friends, a sense of mastery and the building of good decision-making abilities will be better life long habits to begin now.