Normalizing Crazy

Article from Studio3Music - The #1 Kindermusik Studio

Normalizing Crazy
Ever noticed how prevalent cycles are in life? Every day the sun comes up, it goes down. The earth rotates around the sun causing predictable seasonal cycles. The dryer has a cycle. The dishwasher has a cycle. Moms have those cycles. Even businesses and school years have cycles.

Guess what? Your kids' development tends to cycle too. Understanding these cycles can help you avoid taking a spin on the crazy cycle when your normally sweet child's behavior takes a turn for the worse.

Jean Piaget, noted sociologist, observed that children's development is not linear and progressive like the gradually rising line graph measuring a successful company's sales. Rather, children develop cognitively on a relatively predictable cycle with periods of equilibrium followed by disequilibrium.

According to Piaget, children go through a stage of disequilibrium when they have learned new information about the world and now their brains must "accommodate" that information and adjust their other ideas about their world (which Piaget called "schemes") to it. The child must learn and master a new set of skills. Trial and error learning is taking place, which includes uncertainty, struggle, and frustration.

Conversely, when a child is in the phase called equilibrium, she is "assimilating" the information learned, having fun with her new skill and knowledge. This phase lends itself to more ease and pleasant emotion.

As children cycle through these learning phases, their behavior reflects the emotional comfort, or discomfort of the phase. A child experiencing disequilibrium may suddenly seem more difficult to get along with, or edgy and challenging.

Think about what it is like for you to drive in an unfamiliar city. Until you know where you are going and how to get there, you can feel uptight and even bark at your spouse if you go the wrong direction or miss a turn. When a child's internal map is shifting, he may feel anxious and act out unpredictably until things become more settled. And of course he doesn't understand what is going on.

When my son hit age four, my darling boy went through a particularly snarky period. I sought advice from a trusted friend, who just happened to be a seasoned first grade teacher with an award-winning knowledge of brain development in children. My lucky day! She explained to me this "normal" crazy cycle of equilibrium and disequilibrium.

My fears of raising a juvenile delinquent were calmed. She recommended the excellent books on the child development by well-known author, Louise Bates Ames. Ames' books explain the various developmental cycles of each age. Once I knew what to expect, I could better interpret behavior and ride out a cycle of disequilibrium with less fear and stress.

Recognizing a season of disequilibrium does not mean you excuse unacceptable behavior or give your child permission to be a thorn in the side of your family for a time. It simply helps you to have patience and to calmly assess what discipline tool is needed to help train your child to handle the new place in life she is discovering. You can lovingly and consistently deal with the individual situations as they arise. And when things suddenly get smoother, you can celebrate equilibrium!

More on equilibrium and disequilibrium next time.

-posted by Donna Detweiler, who found that the truth about equilibrium/disequilibrium cycles set her free from fear during difficult days.

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