Brave Face

We have been working a lot on building confidence, bravery, persistence, and independence. It's a painful process a lot of the time, but we had a great breakthrough this weekend.

When things get frustrating for Buttercup, her reaction is to completely shut down. She can't be talked through something, she won't walk away, she just is completely unreachable- crying without being to self-soothe, or calm herself down.

When she's in a better mood, we practice "brave face"


"strong face"


"smart face"


"I can do it" face


and of course "silly face" which I'm sure you can imagine.

I've been talking to her about doing hard things- sometimes instead of crying, you can just put on your brave face and do the hard thing anyway. Hard things include writing lower case 'e', riding a bike with training wheels, blowing bubbles in the bathtub, swimming, walking back to the car etc.

Biking has been a really touch and go thing so I decided we should go all the way around the block, so she did her helmet by herself, I grabbed Fred and we headed off. She soon got stuck on a very small hill with her pedals and poor leverage points. I continued walking giving her the choice to stand up on her pedals or get off and push for a few steps and try again. The total Shutdown began. It was an extremely painful 35-minute walk around the block- there are two hills en route and you can only say "KEEP PEDALING, NEVER STOP PEDALING, you're on a hill" so many times before insanity begins.



When we got back to the house, I traded dogs and we went around again- I was determined to break through getting her to persist to success. This time Buttercup didn't get stuck at all, but she did fall twice. I was a bit behind her and was wincing at how she would react to an actual injury. Surprisingly she cried for a minute, got up herself, and got back on her bike. I was shocked! Could it be??? Things I say are actually getting in her head and laying eggs in there????



She later fell again, didn't cry at all, turned and told me " Crying isn't a good choice". I was Speechless!



We ended up doing three laps, and she ended up being VERY proud of herself and her accomplishments. We even called Mama Lisa right away to tell her how well she did on the bike.

Now, to translate this into other aspects of life :D