Michael Hempseed - Calming Your Child: De-escalating Tantrums, Anxiety, Aggression, and Other Challenging Behaviors

CALMING
YOUR
CHILD

Copyright 2022 by Dame Sue Bagshaw

Copyright 2022 by Michael Hempseed

All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022935499

Print ISBN 9781641706667

Ebook ISBN 9781641706704

Printed in the United States of America

Edited by Spencer Skeen, Peg Sandkam, and Erin Lund

Cover design by Carlos Guerrero

Book design by Maggie Wickes

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

CALMING
YOUR
CHILD

De-escalating Tantrums,
Anxiety, Aggression, and
Other Challenging Behaviors

Dame Sue Bagshaw, MD

Michael Hempseed

This book is dedicated to all those who served courageously throughout the coronavirus pandemic. It is said that a person can have no greater love than to lay down their life for another. Those who bravely battled the pandemic often did so at a great risk to their own personal health. We want to thank all the doctors, nurses, orderlies, ambulance staff, cleaners, laboratory technicians, researchers, and those who volunteered for human trials. Your valorous efforts have saved many lives.

We humbly thank you for your service.

Contents

Disclaimer

All the information in this book should be considered general advice, and it may not apply in every situation. This book is not intended to replace the advice of a qualified and competent health or helping professional. If any of the techniques in this book cause distress or unpleasant experiences, we recommend that you stop them immediately.

We have made every effort to ensure this information is accurate at the time of writing.

No names or identifying characteristics have been used in the stories of people with mental illness.

Get to Know the Authors

D ame Sue Bagshaw is a medical doctor who has devoted her life to the well-being of as many young people as she possibly can. Sue was born in Hong Kong and gained a medical degree from The University of London. She likes to say that she and her husband, Phil Bagshaw, met over the same dead body while they were both in medical school. (Now there would be an interesting dating TV show!) In 1995, she established 198 Youth Health (it was called 198 because the address of the building was at 198 Hereford Street, Christchurch, New Zealand). This was a youth one-stop shop with doctors, nurses, youth workers, and counselors all providing free services to those in the city of Christchurch who were most disadvantaged. In 2012, it was renamed 298 Youth Health when it re-established after the Christchurch earthquakes. In 2019, Sue was knighted (made a dame) for her services to young people. (Damehood is the New Zealand equivalent to the honor of receiving a Presidential Medal of Freedom in the US.) Her husband established the Christchurch Charity Hospital, a free hospital to offer lifesaving medical care to those who were overlooked by the public health system. They have four children together and seven grandchildren. Sue is the founder of The Collaborative Trust for Research and Training in Youth Health and Development, an organization created to promote the training of youth health professionals and to conduct research into the well-being of young people. She is also a senior clinical lecturer of pediatrics at the University of Otagos medical school in Christchurch.

Michael B. Hempseed is an author and professional speaker who aims to take complex scientific information and present it to a popular audience. He gained an honors degree in psychology from the University of Canterbury in 2008. Michael has spent a considerable number of years working directly with young people, including time at 298 Youth Health. Today, he speaks all over New Zealand on topics such as suicide prevention, improving sleep, and understanding and healing trauma. His first book, Being A True Hero: Understanding and Preventing Suicide in Your Community, has been used by the New Zealand Police and New Zealand Army medics, among other organizations. He is married to Evita, who he met in 2014. In March 2021, they welcomed their first child into the world. Michael has a taste for adventure, and he has been skydiving and paragliding. He loves to travel and has visited thirty-seven countries. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, the Killing Fields in Cambodia, and the temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia are among the many places Michael has visited.

Sue and Michael live in Christchurch, New Zealand. In 2010 and 2011, their city was hit by a series of significant earthquakes that killed 185 people. For several days, Christchurch was headline news around the world. When the media went away, the earthquakes took a massive social and emotional toll on many people. Over the past decade, Sue and Michael have both been heavily involved in trying to offer help to those whose lives were shaken by those events. In 2019, a mosque in Christchurch became the scene of one of the worst terrorist attacks in recent years. Both of these events have led to a substantial number of behavioral problems in many children. Over the years, Sue and Michael have learned what works really well and what does not. Many of the techniques that they have discovered not only work for children who have lived through significant disasters, but they can also work for all children who show challenging behavior. This book is not just Sue and Michaels thoughts on life; it is the result of years of practical experience with young people, as well as careful research.

Introduction

R aising and caring for children today is much more difficult and complicated than it was just a few years ago. Today, many parents and teachers face tremendously challenging behavior from their children. Recently, a teacher with over forty years experience told us in her whole career she hadnt seen anything like the high rate of students behavioral problems we have today. We have heard similar statements repeated over and over again from many parents, helping professionals, and other teachers. We will show in later chapters that this is not just their imaginationbehavioral problems and mental illness have been increasing in children at an alarming rate in the last decade, and the last three years in particular.

A substantial number of parents and teachers struggle to know how to manage the growing list of difficulties. Parents and teachers can become frustrated and overwhelmed, be at the end of their tether, and even feel hopeless when they try to manage their children. It is our hope that as you read through this book, you will learn immediate techniques to calm and soothe a child in the moment who is upset, but we also want to look at many of the underlying causes of this challenging behavior; ultimately, we want to prevent these issues from arising in the first place.

We are not here to blame you; instead, we want to help you find a positive way forward. Throughout this book, we acknowledge how hard it is to see a child, whom you love, struggle and be in high states of distress.

This book is aimed at parents and teachers who have children roughly between the ages of four and twelve, although we do expect that some parents and teachers of children outside this age range will also find the book helpful. A number of people we sent the draft to said they found it helpful for their children who were in their twenties!