Helping Your Child Overcome Embarrassing Situations

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WebMD Feature Reviewed byHansa D. Bhargava, MD

You know the feeling: hot cheeks, wishing you could disappear. You'd do anything to spare your child that sense of embarrassment. 

But those feelings happen, and they're normal.

"Starting around 4 or 5 the world gets bigger for children, and so does their awareness of it, meaning they become aware of dirty looks, teasing, being pointed at, and being different," says psychologist Lawrence J. Cohen, PhD, author of Positive Parenting. "Partly that's developmental, and partly it's because of school -- they have so much more peer interaction."

Around this age, kids also start to develop an inner conscience. "When kids are younger their conscience is similar to that of a dog: It's external. Are you going to be praised or get in trouble? During the school years it's becoming internal and children become aware if they do something that violates their own sense of order," Cohen says.

Don't make light of it, says child development expert Betsy Brown Braun, author of Just Tell Me What to Say: Sensible Tips and Scripts for Perplexed Parents.

"It's really the parent's job to empathize and understand," Braun says. "Don't make it bigger than your child is making it, but don't blow it off. If your child says, 'Today I bent over and my pants ripped,' say, "Oh my gosh, that must have been hard.' Ask how she handled it and try to get her talking about it."

If your child says she can't go back to school because everyone will laugh at her, tell her you understand why she feels that way. "You can say, 'Not going back to school is not a workable solution, but I can understand that it feels like the only possible way. We'll have to work together to find a solution'," Cohen says.

A great way to show you understand is to tell your own embarrassing story. Emphasize how difficult it was (not how terrible it was). Admitting how poorly you handled it can help, Braun say, because "it helps your child understand she's not alone."

Braun and Cohen share more tips to help your child get past six common, embarrassing situations.

1. Passing Gas in Public

Farting, sneezing and spraying boogers, throwing up, or even peeing in class are common scenarios for grade-school kids. "The most painful embarrassing moments are ones over which you have no control," Braun says. "These fall under the category of 'couldn't help it.'"

She suggests reminding your kids that everyone farts. "Another thing I tell kids is, 'You know, the reason people laugh or react when something embarrassing happens is because they are relieved that it happened to you, not them.'"

Help your child acknowledge the situation, laugh it off, and move on, says Braun. Tell her to say something along the lines of, "Beans for dinner last night. Sorry." If kids are still teasing, say, "Oh get over it," and try to distract them. Don't pretend it didn't happen.

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Does IQ Test Really Measure Intelligence?

ByDenise Mann
WebMD Health News Reviewed byLaura J. Martin, MD

Dec. 20, 2012 -- Single tests that measure intelligence quotient, or IQ, may become a thing of the past.

A new study of more than 100,000 participants suggests that there may be at least three distinct components of intelligence. So you could not give a single, unified score for all of them.

Researchers' understanding of the complexities of the human brain has evolved, and so too has the notion of IQ, what it really means, and how it is most accurately captured.

“There are multiple types of intelligence,” says researcher Adam Hampshire, PhD. He is a psychologist at the Brain and Mind Institute Natural Sciences Centre in London, Ontario, Canada. “It is time to move on to using a more comprehensive set of tests that can measure separate scores for each type of intelligence.”

Using Many IQ Tests

In the study, all participants were invited to take a series of 12 online tests that measure memory, reasoning, attention, and planning as well as information on the test takers' background and lifestyle. The entire test takes about 30 minutes to complete.

According to the findings, there are at least three components that affect overall performance on tests. These include short-term memory, reasoning, and verbal recall.

Lifestyle factors count, too. For example, gamers -- or people who play a lot of computer games -- score higher on tests of reasoning and short-term memory. Smokers do poorly on tests assessing short-term memory and vocabulary, while test takers who have anxiety don't do as well on short-term memory tests, the study shows.

What’s more, the study suggests that each type of intelligence may have its basis in a different set of brain areas. Researchers used sophisticated brain scans called functional MRIs to map out these areas.  “Potentially, we can measure a more comprehensive set of intelligences," each of which reflects the capacity of a different part of the brain, Hampshire says.

 

RIP IQ Test?

So should the IQ test that has provided bragging rights for so many be discontinued or discredited?

Not so fast, he says. “Some very valuable research has been carried out using classical IQ testing. However, IQ is a massive oversimplification of the spectrum of human cognitive ability.”

IQ scores may also be somewhat misleading, Hampshire says. “Based on the results of our study, it seems likely that IQ differences will vary in scale or even direction depending on the exact type of intelligence that the test or set of tests rely most heavily upon. I would suggest that it is both more accurate and informative to measure multiple types of intelligence.”

He plans to see if there are other types of intelligence that were not captured in this study.

Hampshire said the findings themselves weren’t all that surprising, but the number of people who took part in the study exceeded expectations. “I had thought a couple of thousand people might log in and participate in the study over the course of six months. Instead, tens of thousands logged in within the space of a few weeks,” he says. It was a remarkably strong response from members of the general public, who gave half an hour or more of their time to support this research.”

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