407. Q&A: How do I support my child with language delays during playdates?

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:41):

Hello, welcome back to Securely Attached. We’re going to be answering the listener question on the Beyond the Session segment, and I’m so happy to be joined once again by Dr. Rebecca Hershberg. Hi.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (00:55):

It’s great to see you. Absolutely. Hi.

Dr. Sarah Bren (00:58):

Okay. So as you know, we love, love getting questions from our listeners. And this question was sent in by a mom, said, “How do you handle language differences among kids? I’ve always scaffolded or helicoptered my six-year-old kid who’s behind in language. She’s steadily improving, but behind peers. Is this something to let kids work out themselves or is scaffolding play necessary? She loves kids, but doesn’t have a ton of exposure or experience because we’ve been homeschooling.”

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (01:29):

That’s a very thoughtful question.

Dr. Sarah Bren (01:32):

Yeah. And I feel like it’s- Go ahead. It’s really reasonable. I’m imagining a lot of different scenarios that could be prompting this mom to want to step in or wonder if she should step in. And obviously there could be different siblings of different ages at play with this kid, or there could be peers that are the same age. But either way, I feel like when you have a kid who’s struggling with any skill that is … Any developmental skill that is necessary to engage with peers like language, but also emotion regulation or impulsivity or gross motor skills or fine motor skills, depending on what you’re doing. When there’s a discrepancy in the developmental abilities of kids who are playing, that can lead to a lot of frustration from both ends. The kid who’s…

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (02:36):

I was about to say the kid, both kids and also parent.

Dr. Sarah Bren (02:40):

Yeah. True. True, true, true.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (02:42):

I think it can be really frustrating not only for the two kids involved, the one with the potential delay or challenge and the more typically developing kid. And also for the parent watching the interaction, it can be frustrating and also just tough. It’s tough to see your kids struggling and especially this question, you’re watching your child either say something that’s potentially not appropriate or not understand something in terms of receptive language and it can pull on your heart.

Dr. Sarah Bren (03:18):

Yeah. And I think there’s this, and this parent clearly has put thought into this and she’s not new to this game, but in terms of using language like she’s like, what is the difference between scaffolding and helicoptering? I guess they’re kind of on the same two ends of a spectrum. One, they’re both about helping a kid. It’s the question is, when does it go from scaffolding, which is like, I’m going to give you a little bit more support just so you can kind of cross that finish line. And where does it turn into helicoptering where it’s like I’m crossing the finish line for you all the time. I’m just clearing things out of your way so that you never have to like deal with this- To get there yourself. … struggle and how to figure it out on your own. And I think that is like the perpetual question in parenthood. Like, how much should I help versus how much do I let them figure it out?

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (04:16):

Yeah. And I think as we say on this podcast often, I think, but is worth saying every single time, there’s no one right answer here and there’s no one off, right? There’s no like this one time I jumped in and helicoptered when I should have scaffolded and now I have messed up my child’s entire developmental trajectory. We all do both, right? We’re human. I think this is a really thoughtful question so long as we frame it as like, “What direction should I trend in? “

(04:49):

Being human and doing my best, what should I trend in? And one way that I’d answer that question is to think about the goal because I think if language, if expressive language and working on expressive language is the single goal or primary goal of a particular peer interaction, right? You have set up a play date so that your child can really start to practice expressive language. How you respond is going to be really different than if you have set up a play date to help your child gain more friends, experience some social emotional growth, but language is secondary, right? So I think those language is obviously a big piece of social emotional development and vice versa and it’s difficult to parse them, but one way to potentially start to do that and to think about your role as a parent is to think about, what do I want my child to gain at the end of this play date?

(05:51):

Do I want my child to have gotten out a full sentence by herself? Even if the other child starts to feel a little frustrated and whatever, will that feel like a really big accomplishment for my child and we can high five after and … Or do I want this to be more of an ongoing relationship because this is our neighbor and I want the peer to have enjoyed playing with my kid, which won’t necessarily happen to the same extent if my kid is constantly struggling to get a sentence out, in which case I am going to play a much more active role to create a more positive peer relationship experience.

Dr. Sarah Bren (06:26):

Yeah. And I also think it also depends on like, just like you said, like what’s the big goal of this interaction, but also like who is at play? If this is a new friend, I might scaffold more. I might be a little bit more of an auxiliary language buddy for my kid. If this is a kid that they’ve played with a bunch of times and they know each other at this point, I might pull back a little bit more. I think is the kid that my kid is playing with a kid who gets frustrated really easily, I might stick around more. Are they pretty easy going? And if there’s a bump in their interaction, they can kind of let it roll off their back. I might pull back more. So it’s like you’re kind of really reading the room and the environment and the people in it and taking in a lot of different pieces of information and making a judgment call that might be totally different at the next play date.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (07:30):

The other thing about six year olds, and I have found this a lot without going into detail about my own kids’ different challenges, young kids are so forgiving and like they don’t really think about these things sometimes as much as we think that they do. And if we name something for them, it can actually make things go a lot smoother. So it might be that you jump in and you say, “Thanks so much for being patient while Annie is getting the sentence out. ” She’s really practicing on putting her words together and like kids are like, “Great.” It’s like as opposed to sort of, you can jump into scaffold not only your own child, but the other child’s response to help them understand that what they’re seeing is real, right? So instead of waiting for them to say like, “Spit it out. ” Or like to just sort of jump in and be like, “Hey, you’re being really patient. Sometimes Annie has a hard time getting words out and so we’re just practicing right now and you’re being a great friend.” That can be a really helpful thing for a peer relationship also.

Dr. Sarah Bren (08:40):

I think that is like a very important point to make because I think also people, just to be clear, like scaffolding can be, I support the language like, “Oh, my kid is having a hard time communicating.” So I know what they’re trying to say, so I might offer them a word or offer them, help them complete the sentence or clarify it so the other kid understands, right? I’m being an auxiliary, I’m their language auxiliary person, right? But really scaffolding can also look like I’m just narrating the process. I’m helping them read each other. So I’m not necessarily fixing my kid’s language or supplementing it as much as I’m naming to the other … Like I’m helping almost narrate to both people. “Oh, I think they were asking for that. When do you think you might be done? “Or that would be like supplanting the language, but it could also be like, to your point, naming for the other child how to interpret.

(09:49):

Oh, I think that she’s going to take a little bit of time to get this sentence out, but if we wait a second, she might actually, she’ll say it. So let’s pause and just wait until she’s finished. So you’re, it’s like more of that like refereeing or like sports casting.

(10:10):

I guess one other thought I’m picking up in this parent’s question, which is that this kid loves kids, but isn’t having a lot of exposure or experience because of homeschooling. I think the fact that you’re picking up on the fact that their kid loves with their kids says things are working okay. Also, tuning into your child’s way of showing you if things are feeling really frustrated or feeling actually maybe okay, like you were saying, Rebecca, like kids actually can kind of roll with this a little more. Sometimes we project onto them and if your kid is interested in other kids, wants to pang with kids, looks forward to times when they do get to play with kids, chances are it’s not so distressing for them to interact with kids that they want to avoid it or they don’t like it or it’s activating for them in a negative way.

(10:59):

So looking to our kids to let us know like, is this a problem for them? It doesn’t sound like it, right? It doesn’t sound like this is interfering with your kids’ interest in continuing to kind of navigate these even sometimes clunky exchanges and maybe it’s not as bad for them as we think it is.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (11:20):

Well, I was going to say it’s almost like don’t fix it if it’s not broken. It’s potentially a little bit of like a, which we see all the time in this current kind of parenting space because of how much information we’re bombarded with. And we talk about it a lot on here. There’s almost like we can get in and overthinking. Something is working great and our kid is clearly doing great and it seems good to us. And then suddenly we’re like, wait, what if actually we are helicoptering too much and what if we … And so it may be, it may not be. Again, part of, of course, this is a really thoughtful question. And at the same time, if this question does come from your own internal thought process and potentially getting stuck, it’s okay to just look on the outside, like you said, Sarah, and just be like, wait a second, whatever I’m doing is actually working. My kid’s doing well, she’s starting to make friends even though she doesn’t have a lot of peer exposure.

(12:10):

She’s not getting super frustrated. The peers aren’t. I’m actually not going to worry about whatever this is called. I’m just going to sort of do it because so far so good.

Dr. Sarah Bren (12:21):

Yeah. Well, good luck and thank you so much for writing in. I hope this was helpful. And if anyone else is listening and has questions, you can always send them into us. You can go to drsarahbrend.com/question and send us any questions you have and we will do our best to answer them. All right. So see you soon, Rebecca.

Dr. Rebecca Hershberg (12:39):

Great to see you.

Dr. Sarah Bren (12:41):

Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.