Yes, you read the topic line correctly. My friend Kathy came across this wonderful article in The New York Times and knew I would want to share it in my Monday Morning Coffee. And she was right!
Meet Clark. A 5 year who was a little anxious about returning to kindergarten after two years of pandemic isolation. Sometimes he cries.
But when his mother recently told him she was feeling a little anxious about an upcoming meeting, he knew he could help. He told her, “Mama, I am nervous all the time. I know what to do.” What followed was a stream of uplifting advice worthy of a Brene Brown TED Talk. Clark’s mother was stunned to hear her son repeat, albeit through a 5-year old’s filter, all of the coping skills she’s been trying to teach him.
Here is Clark’s advice for coping with anxiety, accompanied by a few brief explanations for context from his mother.
- “You gotta say your affirmations in your mouth and your heart.”
“Another mom talked about saying affirmations with their kid before school. We tried it. Sometimes I tell him, ‘Say it like you mean it.’ I guess he translated that.” — Clark’s mom
- “You say, ‘I am brave of this meeting! I am loved! I smell good!’”
“He knows you can be scared of something, so he talks about being brave of things. I love the grammatical construction. I’ve never corrected it because I like it better. I don’t know where the ‘I smell good’ came up, but I like it. I’m going to use it a lot.”
- “You gotta walk big. You gotta mean it. Like Dolly on a dinosaur. Because you got it.”
“He really loves Dolly Parton’s ‘Coat of Many Colors.’ When kids are making fun of her in school, she still went in and was brave and talks to those kids. I don’t know where the dinosaur thing came from.”
- “Never put a skunk on a bus.”
“I don’t know what it has to do with being nervous.”
- “Think about the doughnuts of your day!”
“We used to go to this little record shop. There was a room in the back and a whole section of records for a dollar. I would take him down there with a dollar bill, and he came back with a Burl Ives record from the ’50s. There’s a song on their called ‘The Donut Song.’ It’s goes, ‘Watch the doughnut, not the hole.’ After we listened to that song a lot, that became our thing. Every night at bed he tells me about the doughnuts of his day.”
- “Even if you cry a little, you can think about potato chips!
“When he’s upset, sometimes I tell him to think about things he’s looking forward to. Potato chips are high on his list.”
- “You gotta take a deep breath and you gotta do it again.”
“I’ve been teaching him breath exercises when he gets upset.”
- “Even if it’s a yucky day, you can get a hug.”
“There have been so many times when there’s nothing I can do. I tell him, ‘Even if it’s a bad day, when you get home, I’ll hug you.’”
Great advice we can all use!
Make it a great day!
Source: The New York Times, Well with Tara Parker-Pope, February 3, 2022