Transcript for
Try looking at things through your child’s eyes – episode two

Narrator [00:00:02] Welcome to the Emerging Minds podcast.

Drew Radford [00:00:06] This broadcast is part of a series called Supporting Children Through Drought.

G’day, I’m Drew Radford. And in this episode, we’re exploring, looking at things through your child’s eyes and seeing from their perspective this may help you to understand some of their reactions and behaviours. It may also assist connecting and supporting them. To delve into this, we’re going to be speaking with mental health professionals and most importantly, to parents who live and work in remote locations about their own experiences. One of those is Jane, who is from a station on Eyre Peninsula.

Jane [00:00:46] I know I’ve had comments about my kids that are living on a property. They are very mature and that they you know, they act like adults when they’re really only still kids and which is fantastic. And it enables them to mix and be quite worldly. For people of their age, I suppose the only downside to that is that they’ve still got to be kids, too, because Iran loves the time in their life where they’re just a kid. So that’s you know, we’ve got to maintain that balance where they can still be kids as well. That’s one of the challenging things of droughts, just enabling those opportunities where they can still be kids. You know, it’s a fun time in your life. Often my son, who sits out and daydreams on the veranda and, you know, sometimes has these kids, like, theories about things, you know? Again, we encourage that and embrace it because, yeah, there’s plenty of times where he has to think like an adult. So, yes. So just give them that freedom and encourage kid like things like in days where it’s hot, whether we get the board games out. And laugh and they act like kids again. So it’s great. And so you just look for those opportunities when you can.

Drew Radford [00:02:05] Thanks, Jane. There were some great examples of putting yourself in your children’s shoes to talk about why that’s important. I’m joined in the Emerging Mind studio by psychologist John Dean. John, thanks for your time. And how important is it to see the world through your children’s eyes?

John Dean [00:02:24] I think it’s important what Jane says. I think that it’s important to get down and be a kid ourselves occasionally and have a bit of fun and find ways of doing that. And she suggests some ways of doing that. I suppose I agree that children can be quite resilient, but I guess going through difficult times can help build that resilience. However, I think that really that’s best build. If there’s an adult relationship that is able to sort of support a child around what their feelings might be and contribute to their decisions. Yeah, some of the things that are going on might be beyond the sort of level of development. And even though you may feel like they’re understanding, it’s good to cheque that they’re really understanding what’s going on. And we need to think about that as parents and decide together, you know, what is okay to share with our kids and what perhaps we need to be tending to ourselves and not perhaps sharing. It’s a real difficult balance. We need to be honest with our explanations without really distressing them by giving them things that are beyond their age to deal with. We need to help and calm down when they seem to be really distressed and that can be done through things like distractions. Jane’s mentioned and just through basic things like controlling, breathing, exercise, that sort of thing. And once they’ve settled down, we can have a talk to them about what actually is on their mind and how they’re feeling about that.

Drew Radford [00:04:02] John, you touched on about being conscious of how much detail you were giving children. This is something we delved into a bit deeper with Kirsty, who’s from a station in the far north of South Australia.

Kirsty [00:04:15] Yeah, I think sometimes you can forget that they are taking on those pressures. With the drought, I guess things are busy in a different way. Like work isn’t nine to five, five days a week, you don’t get your weekends. But then they are around all the time. So they get to see it and you get that great bonding time too. Like you’ve always got your kids around, which sometimes you want to scream. But then other times, like, you’ve got to see that in a positive light, not everyone gets to say the kids, you know, learn, develop. But yet they’ve got very old heads on very young shoulders. My six-year-old had his birthday in January, and just before his birthday I said, ‘Oh what do you want for your birthday?’ Thinking, you know, can I have a motorbike or a pocket-knife or something. And he goes ‘Oh I’ll have a think about it’. And I was folding washing one day and he said, ‘Oh I know what I want, Mum’. And I said ‘ Oh what that? I thought he was going to give me an idea. And he goes ‘I’d like a rainmaking machine to make dad happy’. I thought huh that’s impossible but yeah. And I think at those moments like. That’s what I meant by, they are very old, they grow up even though they’re little people. I think it just brings you back to reality of that they are taking your pressures on board. Every now and again, you have that reality check of they really are sort of living it as well.

Drew Radford [00:05:40] John, that’s a very raw experience that Kirsty describes there in terms of her six-year-old boy taking on the pressures of the family property and how he sees and views them. And that talks a lot to what you were saying earlier as well about being attuned to that.

John Dean [00:05:56] Yeah, what Kirsty says is quite confronting, I guess. And it’s great the way she’s responded to that, because she hasn’t dismissed what her little boy is said, and she recognises that it’s demonstrating just how he is feeling at the time. And younger children can come up with things that seem a bit fantastic but underneath that, they’re trying to express, I guess, what they’re wishing for and what their feelings are. So it’s great to use those happenings as an opportunity to find out what they’re really feeling and what they’re really wanting. So what is he really wanting for his dad? And how could he do something to help his dad feel better? Because that seems to be what he really wants, is for dad to feel better.

Drew Radford [00:06:47] So it’s really taking the moment and understanding what their reaction is and what their behaviour is relating to what’s going on about them from just a little anecdote.

John Dean [00:06:57] Yeah, I guess it’s always necessary to look beyond exactly what they’re doing or what they’re saying to try and find what might be underneath that, what their real feelings might be.

Drew Radford [00:07:08] Thanks John, for those insights and for your time in joining me in the Emerging Mind studio. We’re going to turn our attention now to really young children and infants. How do you see things through their eyes? Sam, who is from Remote and isolated Children’s Exercise, has a great example of exactly this.

Sam [00:07:30] A little boy came to creche one day and he was quite anxious. And it’s like, what’s wrong? ‘I need to be home’. Why? Why do you need to be home mate? You can stay here and have fun. ‘No, I’ve got to go home, and I’ve got to help dad. He needs help on the station’. So, you know, he knows that dad’s struggling and he wants to be home to help dad.

Drew Radford [00:07:52] It’s a powerful story. And to understand it further and go into it deeper, I’m joined in the Emerging Mind studio by psychologist Dr Andrea Baldwin. Andrea, is this story a good reminder that parents need to be conscious of what infants and young children not only see and hear, but also what they understand in the process?

Dr Andrea Baldwin [00:08:12] Yes Drew, it sure is. It’s such a heart tugging story. Because most parents can’t remember what it was like to be a baby or a toddler or pre-schooler. Little children are not little adults. Young children’s brains are growing really fast. They may be more than a million connexions per second. They’ve got a lot of developing to do and they don’t see the world the same way that adults do. So that little chap, he doesn’t understand his own limitations. So there might not be a lot that he can realistically actually do to help that. But he doesn’t realise that. So what’s big in his mind is his love and worry for dad, his anxiety to help. And he wants to lift the burden off dad, make him smile. That is huge. So his logic suggests that what he needs to do is stay home and be with dad and not go to crash. Now, what if that little two or three or four-year-old was refusing to go? If he was yelling or crying, struggling when you tried to get him in the car, his parents might think that he was being disobedient or oppositional. They might think that was naughty. They might feel that he was showing disrespect or even not loving them when in fact what’s going on is the exact opposite. He loves Dad. He’s worried about daddy wants to help. So these little ones, they often feel protective of their parents. They want to be close to them, make them happy and meet their parent’s needs.

[00:09:25] Often we don’t know what a child might have noticed or be thinking or worrying about because babies and little ones might not be talking yet or they haven’t developed the language anyway to have an adult sort of conversation. So we need to be able to watch and listen carefully so we can read them. Little children communicate through their behaviour, and sometimes we can misunderstand or misinterpret that. And sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that because a child is too young to really understand what they’re seeing and hearing, that they won’t be affected so by maybe media images or adult conversations. But even little babies pick up the stress and anxiety of the adults around them, and especially that it’s closest to them who are usually their parents and caregivers. So we need to be watching, listening, trying to understand what young children are telling us through their behaviour, through their facial expressions, how they react to things, the sounds or words that they use, their play, their drawing. It’s all about being tuned into them and having that close relationship so we can notice how they’re feeling. Because they do feel a lot of the same emotions that adults do during drought, so there’s sadness and anger and worry. They need us to help them develop the language for feelings and find ways to communicate and express feelings and find ways to cope with feelings. Because those skills to manage big feelings are just going to be vital throughout their whole lives.

Drew Radford [00:10:46] Dr Andrea Baldwin. Some good reminders there to look beyond initial reactions and behaviours. Thank you for joining me in the Emerging Mind studio.

Dr Andrea Baldwin [00:10:56] You’re very welcome.

Narrator [00:11:02] If this podcast brings up any difficult emotions for you, please reach out to someone you can talk to or call Lifeline on 13 11 14 or the Beyondblue support service on 1300 22 4636 at any time.

Drew Radford [00:11:20] Thank you for joining us for our Supporting Children Through Drought podcast series, this podcast series has been made possible by funding from country South Australia Primary Health Network, ending collaboration with parents from Isolated Children’s Parents Association SA Branch, Remote Isolated Children’s Exercise, Queensland Centre for Perinatal and Infant Mental Health in Children’s Health, Queensland Hospital and Health Service and School Link and Got It Programmes and New South Wales Health Murrumbidgee Local Health District.

Narrator [00:12:00] Brought to you by the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, led by Emerging Minds. The National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Programme. Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au