How do you 'soften the blow' with your emotionally intense child when you're offering a criticism?
No answers Pinecroft, but I live your question.
DS, Mr. Anxiety, breaks down at the slightest hint of criticism, and will try to cover his ears to avoid hearing things he doesn't want to hear. "Why are you so mean? Why do you say such horrible things to me?"
I've tried a thousand times to explain that sometimes things are really important for him to hear, even if he doesn't enjoy hearing them. That's it's totally OK to make mistakes but we need to learn from them. That we all mess up sometimes, and that's just fine, but we need to take responsibility and try to fix what we can.
No go. Break down, blame others, avoid all responsibility, fall apart.
I have realized that his past teachers at school have avoided criticism, have avoided making him finish work that's giving him problems (he has writing and EF issues), because they can't handle it when his tears start to well up. Result: he's not learned to deal with tough things, and he's learned he can avoid problems, and not have to finish stuff. This is biting us big time in new middle school this year.
When his grandfather died earlier this year, and I tried to commiserate saying "I know this is really hard", his response was "This isn't hard, it's
impossible." And he did everything in his power to avoid all discussion, exposure or anything that would remind him of the death, because by pretending it didn't exist he could avoid having to live in that unpalatable reality. Given his druthers, he would never have dealt with the problem. However, four days in his grandmother's house and extensive visitation, funeral, etc activities were unbelievably brutal to get through, but ultimately allowed him enough exposure to come to grip. By the end, he could co-exist with pictures, conversations, and even jokes about what grandad must be saying about us right now, watching the commotion he had caused. It was really, really hard to get there, though.
Long, long way of saying: DS's nature is to do everything possible to avoid confronting difficult feelings and realities. His own failures are high up the list of things "impossible". I don't know how to help him assimilate these realities better. I only know enabling the avoidance carries a huge long-term price. Advice would be deeply welcomed.
