«Don't hit!» Self-control for children

The shouting in the sandpit sounds martial. «Uahhh, I'll hit you!» - «That's mine!» - «Go away, you idiot!» I can tell who's involved just from the voice, and a glance into the fray confirms my assumption: the culprit is my four-year-old son. He's throwing sand. He is shouting. And he's lashing out with a shovel. It doesn't belong to him, but to a younger boy who wants it back.

Not two minutes before, the playground had been almost idyllically quiet, the soundtrack to this sunny day consisting of children's laughter and friendly parental conversations. Now all eyes are on the play. The first leading role in the drama: my son, the aggressor.

The second main role: me, the challenged parent. The plot: A mother tries to call her child to heel, while the bystanders wonder why the boy is behaving so anti-socially. Does the mother not have her child under control?

When I tell Melanie Otto, a teacher at the Transfer Centre for Neuroscience and Learning at the University of Ulm, about my playground experience, she reacts differently than expected. It's a fantastic learning situation, she explains, «For parents, of course, a conflict like this is anything but wonderful at first.» But such experiences are ideal for training self-regulation and social behaviour, known as executive function in technical jargon.

The 36-year-old scientist also knows what she is talking about based on her own experience: she worked as an educator for a long time and has been researching how children learn to regulate their emotions and how their social-emotional skills are promoted for a good five years. She is also investigating how parents and educational professionals can support the development of these skills.

How the inner stop sign works

Our brains are equipped to enable people to deal appropriately with feelings such as frustration or anger. «The executive functions are the basis for what we understand by self-control,» says Melanie Otto.

These abilities are located in the frontal lobe of the cerebrum, the youngest part of the brain in terms of evolutionary biology. This centre is the slowest and longest to develop and is only fully developed in young adults. An essential part of this executive system is the so-called inhibitory control. This self-regulation and impulse regulation is our inner stop sign and prevents us from acting rashly - and perhaps wrongly.

The brain is to blame

What often seems like defiance to parents, like a conscious refusal to follow certain rules, is often due to the immaturity of the child's brain, which is simply not yet able to control some reactions.

At the age of four, my son already knows very well that he is not allowed to hit a smaller child, just as his kindergarten friend has understood that the TV is switched off again after an episode of her favourite programme. My four-year-old goddaughter has also realised why she shouldn't snack on so many sweets. But the moment my son has to hand over the shovel, his girlfriend is not allowed to watch another episode of «Yakari» and my goddaughter's bag of jelly babies is taken away, the impulse takes over. The result: anger! Tears! Screaming!

What seems like defiance to parents is often due to the immaturity of the child's brain.

«It's our right to feel that way. Of course we get angry when we feel regimented or treated unfairly,» says Claudia Roebers, Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Bern. «The crucial question from the perspective of self-regulation is how you deal with this feeling.»

I think of the many moments when I am on the verge of joining in with my children's screams of rage. How much self-control it takes me not to freak out when their shouting never ends. And I admit to myself that it doesn't always work.

Adapt behaviour to the situation

«It's sometimes good to remind ourselves that we adults don't demonstrate masterful self-regulation in many situations either,» says Claudia Roebers.

We have learnt that you don't tell a friend «You farthead, you're not my friend anymore!» because they don't have time or don't want to go on a date. You don't bite the arm of the person in front of you at the bakery because he's got the last piece of chocolate cake.

Negative feelings such as anger, fear or aggression are normal. What matters is how you deal with them.

But just one look at social media shows that some people would do well to curb their anger before expressing it unchecked. This is exactly what you need to practise with children, says Claudia Roebers. «They have to learn to adapt their behaviour to the situation and deal with their emotions in a socially acceptable way.»

This is also important because the development of impulse control in children has an impact on their entire lives. This has been proven by various long-term studies. In the 1970s, researchers from the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine at the University of Otago in New Zealand tested the self-regulation skills of a thousand kindergarten children.

Over the following decades, they monitored how the test subjects had developed. «It was shown that childhood self-regulation not only correlates with later adult self-regulation,» says Moritz Daum, Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Zurich. «Children with high impulse control are also physically and mentally healthier as adults, and they are also more socially competent.»

The marshmallow experiment

Not only that. Waiting for something - a treat, attention, attention - is also part of this executive ability and an important developmental step. Apparently, the ability to wait for a reward is not only an indication of willpower, but also a success trait.

This is shown by the famous marshmallow experiment by Stanford professor Walter Mischel. The US psychologist conducted a study on the self-control of four-year-olds from 1968 to 1974.

The children were given a marshmallow on the table and told that they would receive a second one if they did not eat the first one until the experimenter came back. But they had a choice. They were allowed to eat the first marshmallow straight away, but then they didn't get a second one.

In the 1980s, the researcher revisited the children and found that the longer the children had waited in the original experiment, the more competent they were described as adolescents in academic and social areas. They were better able to deal with frustration and stress, resist temptation and even showed a greater willingness to perform at school.

Parental guidance is important

Impulse control actually develops over time. However, children can be helped to develop their potential for self-control and procrastination. In order for children to train their impulse control, they need the guidance of adults.

When parents put their feelings into words, the child also gains access to their own feelings.

Prof Dr Moritz Daum

They are often not yet able to formulate their needs, impressions and feelings, so they react emotionally and physically rather than in a linguistically controlled manner. It is therefore important that parents verbalise what the child is feeling. And that's not all: «If parents verbalise their own impressions and feelings as often as possible, their children learn a lot about how to access their own emotions,» says Moritz Daum. The professor of developmental psychology is researching the question of how people become social actors in the first place and is investigating, among other things, the influence of spoken language on development.

Expressing feelings

In conflict situations, verbalisation by adults helps. The maxim «Let the children sort it out amongst themselves» is often too much to ask at the beginning of kindergarten. Parents and carers must more or less actively accompany the process and show solutions so that the children can learn different ways of reacting.

At first, the effort is greater. It takes more time to resolve a conflict than to simply end it with an «End it now!». «But it trains the executive system. As a result, children eventually learn to find a social solution on their own,» says Melanie Otto.

Between the ages of three and six, i.e. at the start of playgroup and kindergarten, there is a kind of developmental spurt in the brain. The realisation that certain rules make sense grows enormously, as does the ability to empathise with others.

«I don't like being hit, so my friend doesn't like being hit either»: This essential insight works better than any ban.

How early impulse control is developed is also a question of temperament.

Caught up in anger

However, my four-year-old is sometimes so caught up in his anger and frustration that neither this realisation nor my words get through to him. A friend's daughter, who is the same age, feels very similar: she jumps and stomps like Rumpelstiltskin and can go on like this for half an hour.

«Sometimes the only thing that helps is to leave the situation, take a few steps to the side with the child, perhaps change rooms,» explains Melanie Otto. «As long as the centre of conflict is visible, as long as your son can see the coveted shovel, he can't concentrate on the conversation.» How early and how strongly impulse control is developed is not just a question of socialisation. «Normally developed children, even siblings from absolutely average families, can differ greatly in how well their self-regulation skills are developed,» says Claudia Roebers.

The development of the human brain can be influenced, it adapts to its use.

Perhaps the older son was an exemplary friendly child, while the younger sister is known for biting and pinching playmates. Or the first-born has been known to lash out in the sandpit if you even look at her moulds, while the second-born has no problem sharing.

«Children are born with a certain temperament. Up to fifty per cent of whether you are calm or quick-tempered is in your genes,» says Moritz Daum. «So there are children who naturally have an easier time regulating themselves than others.»

This genetic starting point is not a knock-out criterion, nor is it a certainty on which one can rest. The development of the human brain can be influenced; it adapts to its use.

Four-year-old mediator

So my son will not remain a shovel hitter if he can train his executive system sufficiently, for example by seeing how his parents deal with emotions. And through everyday life with his peers. Our nursery school teacher recently told me how the four-year-old tried to settle an argument between two older boys.

«You're not allowed to hit each other, you have to talk to each other and say what annoys you. You have to take it in turns who gets to decide.» He recited the entire catalogue of rules of his institution. The big boys ignored what the little boy was saying, but his teacher was delighted: «He's made a huge step forward.»

Development researcher Melanie Otto has found that there is often a relatively unstable phase around the fourth birthday when it comes to emotion control and perspective-taking. But six months later, it is often as if a switch has been flipped. «Then the children can also look at different points of view in an argument and put themselves in the other person's shoes.» Since then, I've taken hope: The next playground summer will be more peaceful. For sure.