Q: How to help sensitive children to become tougher?

When my daughter was younger, she frequently had melt downs that lasted over an hour on things that we thought were inconsequential. It could happen anywhere, in the car, in an unfamiliar relative house, when she does not want to change her shirt, if the pencils are in the wrong order, if we offered her food that she did not like, the list goes on. We spent a term of dance class carrying her almost half of the time as she refused to get down to join the class. My friends knew her as the unsociable child and would ask concernedly then if she attended school already. She was a sensitive child who dislikes new environment and changes to her routine.

We explored many ways to change her behaviour. However approaches that tried to conform her to our views of what was normal/proper through discipline, time outs etc do not work. We learnt this through plenty of tears (from her) and guilt from us following a misguided belief on our part that such approaches will go to waste if we did not follow through and that she will learn that she gets her way if she protested long enough. But she often outlasts us in her protests.

Instead what worked was:
    1) Acknowledging that she liked routine and needed to be eased gradually into new activities. This meant going together with her for classes, not pushing her to be independent like the other kids, valuing her affinity with the teacher etc. We realised that once she is familiar with the class and environment she was free from her previous inhabitations and participated confidently in class.
     2) Respecting her dislike and likes e.g She disliked loud noises and crowds. Hence finding a spot far away from the crowd where you can still view that spectacular fireworks together without her shouting to leave with her hands over her ears ,was a better alternative than persuading her that she was missing the fun of having a front seat view.
    3). Taking the time to tell her the next day’s activities in advance and getting her opinion on what she liked to do. Sometimes her plans does not fit into ours and we make compromises and negotiates with her that she gets to do something else that she likes. Occasionally there are tears but definitely less earth shattering.
   4) Holding her and acknowledging her emotions when she is feeling down. e.g She bawled loudly in the cinema (the only one to do so) while watching Disney's The Good Dinosaur. We comforted her and asked her how she felt while resisting the urge to tell her to quiet down. While she is still very emotional, she can now articulate and reason to us why she feels the way she does. Eg. If she cries randomly during dinner time when both myself and my husband are not back home, she tells my mum that she just misses us. This makes her outbursts easier to manage.

Ultimately, I think we cannot ‘toughen’ a child by expecting a change in personality. Rather than constantly having a contest of wills, it would be easier and more effective to accept their personality traits and then work around that to develop the positive aspects of their personality.