Things I Thought at the Dentist!
I recently had the pleasure of visiting the dentist for a procedure called root planning.
And I can let you know that it is as unpleasant as it sounds. It was conducted over 2 consecutive days and involved eight injections. Yes, that’s right, 8 injections!
After injection number four, my dentist said
“I’m going to sit you up as you’ve drained of colour a little bit. Is your heart going ten to the dozen?”
“YESH” I replied, already partially numb. Not only did my heart feel like it was going to jump out of my chest, I felt cold, my legs and hands had begun to violently shake and I wanted to burst into tears (in fact I think I did).
“That’s your adrenaline” he said chirpily. “Your body wants you to run away as it thinks I’m attacking you, but your rational brain is telling you to stay still. It’s not nice, but the feeling will pass. Keep concentrating on your breathing”
So why am I telling you this? Well, this incident caused me to reflect on the effects of stress on children and how we can best support them through stressful times.
My physical reaction to this one-off stressful situation was both perfectly normal and deeply unpleasant. I have a very well developed cerebral cortex (even if I do say so myself!) and so I was able to process the physical sensations in my rational brain and regulate myself during this stressful time.
Children do not yet have the cognitive abilities to regulate their stress responses in the same way. Hence, they may feel similar unpleasant sensations in situations that as adults we find baffling. My son used become distressed in the 3d cinema for example. We knew that there was no danger but his nervous system clearly didn’t.
Stress responses can lead to distressed meltdowns in young children (I prefer not to use the word tantrum) and seemingly disruptive behaviours in school age children such as walking out of classrooms (flight), or hitting out at other children (fight). They may also appear to switch off, zone out or not listen (freeze).
We can help children to manage their stress responses at home and in the school environment by adopting a similar approach to my wonderful dentist:
Acknowledge and respect feelings
Imagine if my dentist had said “don’t be silly” or “there’s nothing to worry about”. This would be missing the point entirely. I rationally knew I was going to be okay in the end, but it was my body that was experiencing the unpleasant sensations and this was not in my conscious control. Acknowledge feelings by simply saying what you observe:
“I see that you seem frightened/concerned/anxious/nervous”. “I notice this seems stressful for you”.
Name what is happening
Knowing that my shaking and palpitations were the effect of adrenaline and not of an anaphylactic shock from which I was going to DIE horribly helped me to regulate my fear response. Help children to understand what is happening in their body by describing what happens to them when they become stressed.
Reassure that this feeling won’t last
It really helps to know this. I cannot describe the relief when he reassured me that the ‘tearful shaky runaway’ feeling was temporary.
Keep your own emotions or worries out of the picture
My dentist may well have been panicking and thinking “blimey – I’ve never seen one go that pale before!” but I’m fairly confident that this wouldn’t have helped. If you find yourself ‘catching’ a child’s anxiety or stress, take a few deep breaths to regulate yourself and keep grounded.
Breathe
It really works. Model relaxed breathing for the child. 2 in and 4 out. Or 4 in and 6 out. (It doesn’t really matter – as long as there are more out than in!)
Stay With
Imagine if my dentist had left the room while waiting for the anaesthetic to take effect. This would have amplified my terror and made my symptoms worse. This has important implications for children. Many behaviour modification techniques stress a time out of the classroom or a naughty chair or/step or forced separation from a caregiver. This is literally terrifying for children when what they need is for a rational adult to help them regulate their strong emotions. Find ways to regulate with TIME IN and not TIME OUT. If you need a child to reflect on their behaviour, then the time to do it is after they have calmed down.
It is important to remember this was a one off incident, Children with long term exposure to stressful events will develop further long term health and behaviour problems and that will be the subject of my next blog.
I’d love to hear of your experiences of TIME IN. Please leave a comment below and thanks for reading. Xx
Jacqui