Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Why do parents feel so much frustration when a child’s development suddenly goes backward? When we have a child who

• has adjusted to school suddenly doesn’t want to go

• signed up for soccer and starts throwing tantrums

• insists on talking baby talk on the way home from preschool

It’s often hard to connect the facts that an advance in maturity in one area of development (taking two steps forward) often results in a child suddenly reverting to younger behaviors (taking one step back) in another. A common example is the baby who loves the newfound independence of walking upright but starts waking at night and acting clingy.

It’s easy to feel frustrated and impatient in response to backtracking these behaviors. We often don’t know why they’re happening or how long they’ll last. “I thought we were through with that stage.”

It helps to understand a principle of human development that applies at almost every age. The process of reaching for new growth creates internal stress, and regressing can provide us with a mechanism for stabilizing.

Since children often don’t have the tools to understand and communicate that they feel stressed, regression signals us that they need extra support. Shaming them for their backward steps – “That’s what babies do” or “Why would you get upset about that?” – actually increases their anxiety because children who are regressing need connection.

Of course, we don’t want to give a child negative attention for tantrums or sibling fighting, but we can address the need for nurturance in other ways. “I know you want to be babied right now, but you’re too heavy for me to carry. I can give you a piggy-back ride.”

As we provide reassurance, we also want to help children to move ahead. “I understand you feel like staying home today, but we’ll be able to do something fun when I pick you up.” Giving in to children’s fears can add to their confusion.

Sometimes regression alerts us that intervention is needed.

Starting the learning the learning curve of a new grade and a new sport simultaneously may be too overwhelming, and we need to simplify the child’s schedule to provide more down time.

Sometimes a situation is too stimulating, and we have to reflect on whether it is working.

Backward steps are normal throughout life. However, when a child regresses over several weeks and seems unhappy, parents and teachers benefit from conferring with each other to see if more support for the child is needed.

Warren Wallace’s Escape from Alcatraz

Sometime during the night of June 12, 1962, three prisoners escaped from Alcatraz. They were never heard from again. Did they make it? Or did they perish in the cold, choppy waters of San Francisco Bay or get swept through the Golden Gate out to sea?

Their plan was to make it to Angel Island and from there to Marin County. They had cobbled together a raft using raincoats, a wooden panel, and lifejackets, which was later found destroyed. In order to complete their escape, the men would have had to swim to shore. For 60 years, people have been wondering if that was possible.

When Fox Weather reporter Max Gorden decided to do a story on the escape, he turned to our director of admissions, Warren Wallace, for the answer. Warren owns Odyssey Open Water Swimming, which guides hundreds of swimmers from Alcatraz to San Francisco every year, and has made that swim many times himself. Warren suggested to Gorden that they recreate the prisoners’ swim.

So at 9:30 p.m. on August 5, Warren slipped into the water at Alcatraz, without a wetsuit or goggles, and began what was to be one of the most difficult swims of his life. The Fox reporter and videographer and an Odyssey coach followed him in a boat.

Warren says currents in the bay would have prevented the prisoners from boating or swimming to Angel Island, so instead he swam the route the currents would have carried them. Ninety minutes later, cold and exhausted, he landed near Horseshoe Cove on the southeast tip of Marin County, a distance of three-and-a-half miles. (His swim was interrupted mid-course by a passing oil tanker.)

The biggest challenge wasn’t the relentless current, the three-foot swells, or the 62-degree water, Warren says. “It was the uncertainty. I know the normal Alcatraz swim well enough that I always know how my progress is going, where I should sight, and how much farther I have left. With this one, being unfamiliar with the course, the currents, and the sighting points, especially at night without goggles, it was hard to judge. When I started to feel cold or disoriented, I didn’t know if I was almost done or if I had two miles left!”

Here’s the link to the Fox Weather story and video. (The embedded link to the video doesn’t work in the Firefox browser.) For more, including a map of Warren’s swim, see the Odyssey blog post.

Recognizing Helpful Contributions

We have a delightful photo exhibit in our Hallway Gallery, and we hope families and classroom groups will spend time looking at the pictures and discussing their content. The montage shows Meher Schools students helping at home in a variety of ways -– arranging flowers, watering a plant, decorating a wall, engaging in many stages of cooking, helping a younger sibling.

We believe that displaying actual instances of children supporting others encourages them to believe their contributions are valuable and needed. The pictures are a great starting place for a discussion about the countless ways people of every age look for opportunities to be helpful to others.

Expand our vision of what helping looks like.

Currently most of the hallway offerings are of younger children, who are eager to learn skills that may seem beyond them. We want photos of older children to illustrate the important concept that one’s abilities to support friends, family, and even strangers increase as our capabilities develop.

We also hope to show even more examples of helping, things that might not immediately spring to mind – listening to a friend, talking on the phone to a grandparent, running an errand, entertaining a baby, picking up trash. It would be fun to post photos of adults trying to be of assistance. Your photos can expand our understanding of what helpfulness means.

Make learning to contribute a priority starting at an early age.

Discussions about helping are important because American children, especially those in middle-income families, rate lower than their peers in many other countries in helpfulness, and in comparison, to those in previous generations, because of their lack of regular household responsibilities and practical life skills like doing their own laundry or sweeping a floor. Our lives are so busy that it can be challenging to find the time and patience to teach children how to do tasks that make them feel self-sufficient and able to support others. This exhibit offers us the chance to reflect on our lifestyles.

The Meher Schools prioritizes teaching children ways to be of service.

Research show there is magic in the process of both teaching and documenting children’s efforts to be useful. When children engage in helpful activities, they feel motivated to do more. At The Meher Schools, we are committed to teaching children to take care of themselves, their environment, and each other, from the time they enter preschool. We hope you will join us in that effort because it is through our abilities to aid and support one another that we will help usher in a more unified world.