Living With the Active Alert Child

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ATTENTION-HUNGRY-

Is your child a bottomless pit of neediness? Do you give and give and give and never quite satisfy your child, who takes and begs for more?

Parenting Strategies for the Attention-Hungry child-

1)Take time to be alone with your child

2)Teach your child to say Goodbye

3)Take time for yourself

TROUBLE GETTING ALONG WITH OTHERS-

As a friend, the active alert child faces two challenges. The young child has trouble making friends. He/she seems to ask, "should I stand outside and watch because I and afraid, or should I jump right in and control the activity, even though I don't know what's going on?" The older child is concerned with how to keep friends. "Once I get them, how long do I have to know them before they are friends? Can we be friends if we've never had and gotten over a fight?"…If your child struggles with friendships, it is probably because he has troubles with social graces. He may not recognize those slight nonverbal cues that help him know it's time to let someone else talk or those territorial cues that help him discern when he is invading another person's space.

Parenting Strategies for Trouble Getting Along With Others child-

1)Teach them to Make friends

2)Teach them to Keep friends

FLUCTUATING SELF ESTEEM-

…As keen observers, these little people notice when someone does something they want to do well. Whether an older child or parent performs the task makes no difference to active alerts: they feel they are not good at it if they don't do it equally well…Active alert children also tend to internalize what goes on around them. They are vulnerable to their environment.

Parenting Strategies for Fluctuating Self Esteem child-

1)Accept their traits and learning styles

2)Accept your child's feelings

3)Build internal referents

PERFORMERS-

…Are you bewildered by how well your child behaves away from home? Do other people fail to notice the behavior that challenges you daily?…I propose two possible answers to this dilemma. Your active alert child behaves better with others because he/she is unsure of him/herself. He/she does not know if he/she can trust others to react positively to him/her, so he/she responds by turning on the charm and performing for them. It is easy for him/her to fit into this angelic role. He/she is so alert that he/she can, when necessary, quickly pick up clues to proper behavior. But he/she is performing because he/she does not trust strangers with his/her real self. Another possibility - one that parents should consider carefully- is that the environment doesn't offer enough structure. If that is the case, the school setting may actually make your child feel more secure.

Parenting Strategies for Performer child-

1)ENJOY!

2)Teach your child to enjoy other performers

EMPATHIC ABILITY-

…The active alert child has his/her own stressors, but he/she is also sensitive to other people's emotions…One could say that these children are interpreting nonverbal cues using their superior observational skills. Beyond that, however, I find many active alerts seem to be connected by and invisible umbilical cord to one parent. Often, that parent proves to be an active alert adult.

Parenting Strategies for the Empathic Ability child-

1)Accept and trust your child's instinctual ability

2)Identify feelings and label their source

PARENTING STRATEGY SUMMARY CHECKLIST

1)Active Learning needs active parenting

2)Don't use ambivalent noes

3)Engage and then Disengage

4)Act "as if" your child will follow through

5)Be a "cooperative coordinator"

6)Give your child a choice of what to do OR how to do it, but not both

7)Be leery of "whimsical servitude"

8)Know that understanding your child's behavior doesn't mean you are responsible for it

9)When your child is struggling with a behavior, join with him/her. Assist him/her in reaching his/her goal, and let him/her know you are on his/her side and will support him/her in ways you and he/she deem appropriate.

Linda Budd is a practicing psychologist and as such, she has prepared some tests or assessments of how you parent, what the family structure in your home (and your childhood home) is, how your particular active alert child fits into that structure and what he/she needs. The bulk of the middle section is that self assessment and the approach is that no one family structure will offer everything, that a combination of all 4 is the best - seeing where you are at and where you need to be is the key.

She also includes specific sections under the title of "Oh Those Special Times" where she addresses family, friends, caregivers, discipline, and a variety of other areas particular to the active alert and his/her environment.

As for the chapter of learning styles, she touches on the different learning styles of kinesthetic, auditory, and visual and how they interact with other factors. For example- environmental preferences, motivation, persistence, physical, sociological, etc…with a final section on choosing the right teacher for your child and how to advocate for your child.

The final chapters discuss active-alert adults, updates on her practice and a really neat question and answer section that deals with some real life experiences.

I will keep this book handy, as my children grow, I think it will be an appropriate overall tool to address our home environment, their sibling relationship and our parenting style.

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Thank you for joining us in the summary of Living with the Active Alert Child, by Linda S. Budd PhD; published by Parenting Press.

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