Controlling Emotions: How Children Handle Frustration Can Affect Their Ability To Concentrate And Learn

From the earliest years of life, children begin to develop strategies to deal with frustration. Every day, whether they are aware of it or not, parents influence how their children tolerate frustration. In fact, during the first years of a child's life, parents have many opportunities to help their kids learn certain life skills to cope with frustration.

Educators and doctors also have opportunities to guide parents about parenting practices that help their youngsters handle frustration constructively. Children who learn to tolerate frustration successfully - unlike those who do not - will be more likely to become happy adults.

Kids Matter states that the ability to tolerate frustration has important implications for learning. By nature, the learning process confronts children with challenging situations that create anxiety and frustration.

Learning a new topic or acquiring a skill requires certain individual and unknown steps. A child needs a solid foundation of emotional security to take the risks necessary to fulfill the steps required to learn a new subject or develop skills.

According to Understood, if a youngster's developmentally appropriate needs are not meet, he will often take on a fragile emotional stance of fear or anger. The child's restlessness will have nuances of concern, and this will manifest itself in different ways.

The messages that the youngster is unable to express in words, will manifest with questioning looks, agitated body movements, emotional outbursts and other quirky behaviors. Children who endure harmful parenting patterns become more demanding and inflexible at the first sign of frustration.

When normal developmental needs are continually neglected, children begin to create a variety of defense mechanisms to avoid stress and discomfort. These children, due to the anxiety they feel, do not have the necessary endurance to learn the demands of coping with this frustration. In this situation, trying equals risking for a child.

A child will not be on guard if he trusts that his parents will give him the attention and affection necessary to satisfy his needs. This stability that develops over time instills an inner sense of security.

Not feeling threatened by feelings of lack, a child will develop emotional flexibility that allows him to successfully tolerate new and different experiences. They are also able to accept periods of mild tension, without feeling that anxiety or fear that weakens them.