At 13 years old, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka knew what she wanted to do with her life. She had read \u201cDibs in Search of Self\u201d by psychologist Virgina Axline \u2014 a true story about an emotionally lost child\u2019s journey to healing through play therapy.<\/p>\n
That book, Kurcinka said, sparked her lifelong interest in the emerging field of early childhood education and child development.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew early on that I wanted to work with families,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Today, Kurcinka is a renowned parent educator, behavior and sleep consultant with a doctorate in education. Originally from Minnesota, she now lives in Bozeman with her husband. She is the author of the bestselling parenting workbook \u201cRaising Your Spirited Child\u201d \u2014 now in its fourth edition, which came out Sept. 2.<\/p>\n
The book aims to help parents understand their child\u2019s \u2014 and their own \u2014 temperament. Drawing on research, Kurcinka offers a strength-based approach to parenting challenges.<\/p>\n
Before becoming a parent herself, Kurcinka was already immersed in the world of parent education. She taught classes in Minnesota that helped families build healthy relationships while pursuing a graduate degree in family social science.<\/p>\n
Despite her training, she said, parenting her own son was a challenge.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was an aunt at 10,\u201d she said. \u201cI was licensed as an early childhood teacher. I had a masters degree in family social science. I knew kids, and my son was taking me for a run for my money.\u201d<\/p>\n
When her second child was born, Kurcinka noticed some distinct differences in the two children\u2019s behavior.<\/p>\n
\u201cSame mom, same dad \u2014 very different responses to their world around them,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I started researching how this could be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Temperament, Kurcinka said, refers to an innate wired response to the world around us. In early childhood, temperament impacts how a child responds to the world and reacts to new situations or interactions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s as much a part of us as our eye color or hair color \u2014 right or left handed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In studies of temperament, researchers have identified a range of traits that shape how children respond to the world around them, including factors such as activity level, intensity and sensitivity.<\/p>\n
With the hopes of finding strategies to navigate a child\u2019s temperament, Kurcinka noticed that most of the literature featured descriptors like \u201cdifficult\u201d or \u201cstrong-willed.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more I dug into it, the more I realized that my son was very much like my husband,\u201d she said. \u201cI adore my husband \u2014 I would marry my husband again in a second \u2014 and I just thought, \u2018Nobody\u2019s telling me that my son or my husband are difficult\u2019 or \u2018Let\u2019s get rid of this\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI coined the term \u2018spirited\u2019 because it is realistic,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is a spirit to them. (They have) vibrancy and exuberance and passion and sensitivity \u2014 that\u2019s who they are. Let\u2019s focus on those strengths. Let\u2019s address the challenges and give them the skills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spirited kids, Kurcinka said, are just typical kids with different thresholds for stimuli.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Raising Your Spirited Child\u2019 is about temperament and the traits,\u201d she said. \u201cThose traits can be put on a continuum from low to high, mild to strong, easy to difficult \u2014 they\u2019re on a continuum. The \u2018spirited kids\u2019 are on the high end of that continuum.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re more intense, they\u2019re more persistent, they are more sensitive,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are more energetic than their low-key peers.\u201d<\/p>\n
One example from the book is the difference between a spirited kid describes a family trip to the beach.<\/p>\n
The easy going, low-key kid hops out of the car, runs joyfully across the sand and starts building a sandcastle without hesitation. In contrast, the spirited child reacts very differently to the sensations \u2014 the beach smells weird or the sand is too hot.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like this fire hose of sensory information coming to them,\u201d Kurcinka said. \u201c(Parents) have to understand they\u2019re not just being a little jerk trying to ruin your family outing to the beach.\u201d<\/p>\n
What the book shows, she said, is that parents can predict these reactions and find ways to prevent or manage them.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to understand the fuel source,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat are the feelings and needs behind it? A common issue people come to me with is the \u2018morning wars\u2019 \u2014 getting out of the house in the morning is just, it\u2019s awful. There is no teachable moment in the middle of a meltdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first thing we got to do is take preventive actions with routine, with sleep and meals and our transitions in the day. If there\u2019s 20 meltdowns a day, even a saint can\u2019t be an effective emotion coach,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kurcinka said she hopes the book offers parents realistic strategies to help navigate and reframe daily challenges.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith spirited kids, they\u2019re not always the dream child a parent expected,\u201d she said. \u201cSo they can start to get labels like difficult, explosive, whiny or stubborn. But if you start using those labels, what happens is \u2014 that\u2019s my kid: He\u2019s explosive, he\u2019s loud, he doesn\u2019t listen.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the key things that Raising Your Spirited Child does is it transforms that vision,\u201d she said. \u201cThe book says, \u2018Oh, so he\u2019s persistent and committed to his goals \u2014 do you know that\u2019s a predictor of future success?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Kurcinka\u2019s book is available online and in bookstores throughout Bozeman. In February, she will have a book signing at Barnes and Noble.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany strategies parents are exposed to don\u2019t work for spirited kids, because they have that greater intensity \u2014 that more reactive arousal system \u2014 and so their parents start to feel like, \u2018What am I doing wrong?\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cI want to let them know you\u2019re not doing anything wrong. Your child came this way, and there actually are great assets to being this way, if we understand it and work with it, we can teach them the skills they need to thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 13 years old, Mary Sheedy Kurcinka knew what she wanted to do with her life. She had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[266],"tags":[27982,359,40585,834,10401,2597,18,117,33055,19,58873,17,167,1281,2973,33054,33053,4226,33056,58874,51797,58871,58872],"class_list":{"0":"post-90315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-behavioural-sciences","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-branches-of-science","11":"tag-child","12":"tag-cognition","13":"tag-education","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-entertainment","16":"tag-human-development","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-interpersonal-relationships","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-mental-health","21":"tag-neuroscience","22":"tag-parenting","23":"tag-primate-behavior","24":"tag-psychological-concepts","25":"tag-psychology","26":"tag-social-psychology","27":"tag-temperament","28":"tag-tncen","29":"tag-vertebrate-developmental-biology","30":"tag-virginia-axline"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}