Each year of childhood brings new challenges and with it growing independence and maturity: qualities that we as parents must support at the appropriate developmental level.  This promotes psychological health.

Not too long ago I had a 5-year-old child in therapy with a Separation Anxiety Disorder.  This is a condition where there is excessive anxiety concerning separation from those to whom the child is attached.  One manifestation of her anxiety was that she protested each time I needed to talk with the mother separately from her.  At this age I would expect that she could tolerate short periods of time away from her mother.

I had recently added the Tag and Didj to my waiting room and suddenly considered that the Tag was much like having a parent read to the child.  She was not familiar with the Tag and so I introduced it to her and had her “read” in the waiting room while I spoke with the mother.  It was fantastic!  She had no difficulty being separate from her mother and so enjoyed the stories.  I have Ozzie and Mac, Po’s Tasty Training, The Little Engine That Could, and Walter and the Farting Dog Goes on a Sea Cruise.  In subsequent sessions, she began to look forward to choosing her book and waiting while I spoke with her mother.  This increased her self-confidence and self-esteem because this was now an activity she could do on her own. Of course, there were other interventions for this family, but the Tag certainly helped in the process of her becoming more independent as was age appropriate.

It is important that children learn to be separate with growing independence, as is developmentally age appropriate.  As parents we want to foster this because this builds a sense of independence, accomplishment and pride.  The LeapFrog tool, Tag, certainly facilitated this child’s independence.

-- Edited by: LeapFrog Paul

LeapFrog products were given to Dr. Audrey Punnett by LeapFrog in exchange for her honest feedback. The opinions expressed in this blog are her own.

In my previous blog post, I wrote about a young boy who was being bullied, and how his emotional state changed throughout my session with him. As a licensed psychologist specializing in work with children, I frequently see children who have experienced bullying, and this is the advice I would give to parents to help a child stop bullying.

Many children who have been bullied will hurt or threaten others in some way using their size, strength or popularity to do it. In fact, children often bully because they see others dong it, they want to hang out with the right crowd, it makes them feel stronger, smarter or better than the person they are bullying, and/or it may be one way to keep others from bullying them. 

In order to help a child stop bullying, help him/her to think about how it feels to be bullied. Teasing, hitting, keeping others out of a group are all things that harm someone. So the next time he/she is about to bully someone have him put himself/herself in their shoes, think about how it will make them feel and then walk away and do not do it. When he/she has these feelings encourage him/her to talk to an adult (parent, teacher, school counselor) who can help him/her problem solve situations that might arise so he/she will be prepared to act in a way that does not harm others. And feel free to bring this up with him/her anticipating their challenges. 

The best thing parents can do is to help their child understand how this will make the other feel and problem solve ways of handling potential situations. On a bigger scale work you might work with your school on Stop Bullying programs. 

As a licensed psychologist specializing in work with children, I frequently see children who have experienced bullying. It is heart wrenching to hear the stories of how cruel children can be to one another. However, it seems to be a part of learning appropriate socializing behavior during the early school years.

Recently I added the Didj and Tag to my waiting room materials, courtesy of my good friend, CEO Jeff Katz. Not too long ago a 9-year-old boy came into my office and I could tell he had a bad day. Never one to complain, I asked him how things were going and he replied, “Fine,” but then grimaced. As a parent I am sure you have had this experience where the words do not match the affect and this was the case here. As I persisted to find out more, he broke into tears and told me how he overheard other children cheer when he was not selected for their team. This then lead to how he feels he is not good at athletics, and then of course to all the other ways he felt he was not good enough. My attempts to help him get perspective on this by talking about his strengths were met with counter arguments, which I could not refute.

Suddenly I had an idea. I knew he was good at computer games and I told him I had a new gaming system. I showed him the Didj and let him choose between "Sonic The Hedgehog" or "Star Wars, The Clone Wars" games. He chose Sonic and immediately became engaged in the game and even enjoyed the spelling exercises as he was getting them right. After playing this a while he wanted to try Star Wars and soon was answering the math questions and getting them right, too. His emotional state changed dramatically as he was having much success and he left the session with the perspective that he was not all that bad and that what had happened with the bullies was only a small part of his day.

As a professional who frequently cautions parents on too much use of gaming, I was quite impressed with the possibilities for learning and for improving self-esteem with the use of this LeapFrog learning tool. Thus, I wanted to share this story with your readers.