This valuable advice from Isabelle Filliozat for teaching children frustration tolerance

Known for her theorizing around positive education, Isabelle Filliozat is one of the star psychotherapists among parents. Published on March 14, his book “EDUCATE: everything you need to know – Neither laxity nor violence The keys to positive education”, published by Robert Laffont, puts positive education in its rightful place by dismantling the ideas received which continue to stick to his skin. On her TikTok account, the psychotherapist highlights certain themes, and in particular, the management of frustration in children: “a big concern these days is frustration tolerance” she begins.

“Frustration tolerance is possible as soon as we have a good foundation of internal security” explains Isabelle Filliozat. However, the basis is the relationship that we maintain, that we cultivate with our children, our family. Indeed, in our society, we tend to point the finger at the result, namely a tantrum because the child didn’t get any candy, for example. However, learning to be frustrated cannot happen without emotional security from their parents.

To cultivate this precious parent-child relationship, here are some tips:

• Be an active listener;
• Welcoming the child’s emotions;
• Let him have his own experiences (while ensuring his physical and moral safety);
• Be attentive to your needs/desires/emotions;
• Avoid being reproachful;
• Guide the child without being demanding.

Obviously, each parent does their best to provide love and kindness. As a reminder, this is not a road map to be followed to the letter. Every parent and child is different, but remember to be the parent you wish you had.

“Candy Day”, a Swedish example to better manage frustration

In her video, the expert says “When I was a child there was a big jar of candy in a cupboard and we could access it whenever we wanted. The idea was that we would not abuse them if they were freely available and that is indeed what happened. But when I had my children, there were too many sweets in the sweets, too much sugar; I told myself that this was not the most appropriate solution. I read and searched for alternatives. In Sweden, locals practice “candy day”. Every Saturday, it has become a general culture, everyone rushes to the candy stores and it is the only day when children are entitled to candy. As the whole country supports this, it has become a normality and children never ask for sweets outside of this day. So I instituted the idea of ​​Sweden within my family (with the exception of birthdays for example, then we change the candy day).“

She adds that “a child is much more proud of being able to succeed at something and “doing well” than of eating all the candy. In reality, children are not in a permanent desire to disobey, to eat everything and to be in omnipotence. They become like this when they are not confident, when they are destabilized, when there is too much authority in front of them. At that moment, they are in this impulse to counter authority. But otherwise, kids love rules and they love to follow the rules” she concludes.