What do I do when my child is upset?

Your child – aged 4 or 14 or even 24 – is a puddle of tears on the sofa: what do you do about it?

Firstly, be aware that this is likely to cause you pain. No parent wants to see their child suffer. Yet that is not the same sentence as no child will ever suffer. There will be difficulty in your child’s life and part of your response will influence your child’s capacity to tolerate it. Stay with me…

 

Secondly, your pain will make it difficult to tune into what your child actually needs from you in that moment. In your pain, it becomes instinctive to remove your child’s discomfort. We go to comments such “It’s ok! Don’t cry!” or “There’s nothing to worry about, what’s your problem!” or “I know exactly how to sort this out!” In short, we find it so hard to deal with, that we cannot see that our child simply needs to feel the pain in the safety of our presence to be able to process it.

 

Thirdly, as it becomes difficult to assess what your child needs, it is a moment to stop and take stock. Can I respond in a more present and connected fashion at this point? What do I need to be able to do that?

 

Finally, notice that by trying to remove the pain, we negate their experience and invalidate their feelings. We are essentially saying “This is too much for me! I cannot cope!” and our child interprets this as “I’m too much for my parent. It isn’t safe for me to share this part of myself. I will learn to hide it.”

 

Tears and frustration indicate an overload in the sensory system – the upset person has not yet developed the capacity to deal with whatever caused the upset. When we, as parents, attempt to shut down the response, we are asking our child to keep this part of them to themselves – to deal with it on their own. When in fact, the child needs to be seen in this moment of despair with love, kindness, acceptance and compassion. 

 

How does our response to them in their moment of pain influence their ability to tolerate difficult times? 

 

When humans are given permission to experience difficult emotions in the safe emotional container of a loved one, without the need to chase it away and cover it up, they no longer fear the emotion as it has been allowed to exist. When we no longer fear an emotion, we can move into more emotional maturity where we consider all feelings to be part of the human experience and we accept them for part of life’s rich tapestry. In short; it still hurts yet it’s ok to feel the hurt. 

 

It is never too late to connect to our child in a different way, so if your child is 4, 14 or 24 and you have always told them to get on with it, you can adapt your response and begin to see moments of suffering as an opportunity to connect and allow your child to feel seen, held and loved in all of their difficult moments, as well as their easy and straight forward ones.

 

So, what can we do? 

Rather than: “It’s ok, don’t’ cry!” Try instead: “Cry as much as you need to. I’m here for you.”

Rather than: “There’s nothing to worry about! What’s your problem?” Try instead: “This is a big deal for you, I see that. I’m here for you”

Rather than: “I know exactly how to sort this out!” Try instead: “Do you want me to offer advice or to do something? I’m here for you”

 

These simple adjustments will take more time and require more emotional energy from you; I’d love to hear how you get on with them. And if you are not in the slightest bit sure of what I’m talking about – ask me! 

Personal Development - Dreams

Can I indulge my child in her dreams? Surely, I need to prepare her for the disappointment she will feel when the world tells her she isn’t good enough? I feel it’s my role to protect her from this pain and distress!

Since the start of the year, this blog has been exploring children’s personal development and our impact upon it as parents. Children’s dreams of the future often come up in my work and many times I have been asked whether we have a responsibility to temper our children’s castles in the sky. Whether we need to protect them from the heartache of unfulfilled fantasies. 

My answer is always, “Let them Dream.” As the safe haven for your children, we are also the guardian of their imaginations. Cradling and containing their hopes and aspirations, we give permission for them to become whatever they transpire to become – removing expectation of who we obligate them to be. 

Our concern to protect them from pain is, in fact, a concern for ourselves. 

Hear me out. 

It is hard to accept that our children will feel uncomfortable and unpleasant feelings throughout their lives, even though it is totally unavoidable. The parental role is to provide a safe, loving and compassionate container within which these feelings can be processed while they learn – over a very long time (20 years or more) – how to contain and process feelings on their own. 

Why not minimise pain? Surely it makes sense to protect our kids as much as we can? Of course, we protect them from the intricate details of big-ticket adult issues such as financial concerns and from exposure to inappropriate material on TV or the internet. Yet when we protect (distract/trivialise/belittle/shame) them from their own feelings, we prevent our children from understanding what feelings are and we reduce their capability to deal with disappointment and hurt when they are older. 

The longer we protect them from disappointment, the more impactful it is when they finally face it. This comes thick and fast at tween/teen time when they become increasingly independent combined with a dramatically changing body, lifestyle and level of responsibility. 

So our role is NOT to remove, distract from or trivialise the pain, but to support our children as they navigate it. 

What we are concerning ourselves about when we try to prepare them for disappointment, then, is the pain WE will feel when we contain and process their discomfort and hurt.

Tempering dreams serves to anticipate and try to minimise our own pain, but as L.R.Knost beautifully wrote: “It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.”

Children who can think beyond the realms of possibility are adults who create a new future. The genius German scientist Albert Einstein emphasised the importance of sticking to what you want to do, even when others think it's 'unrealistic'. "The person with big dreams is more powerful than the one with all the facts.”

So let them dream. And let them dream BIG. When they tell you their aspirations, ask them for more information. Get them to draw pictures, to describe what their dream looks like and to get enthusiastic about it. Dreaming big means having the mental freedom to think about what you really want out of life and forget about all the reasons why you can't make it a reality. It means having high standards for your life and setting the bar high for yourself. Yes, there will be disappointment on the way – and hurt and pain – and as parents, we are there to teach children to navigate pain, process it, allow it to be metabolised and seen and to allow it to pass through. We are the emotional buffer. 

I leave you with the words of another titan of inspiration, Maya Angelou: 

“A person is the product of their dreams. So make sure to dream great dreams. And then try to live your dream.”

Personal Development – Mental Development

Doom Scrolling was first coined in 2018 and it took prominence in Covid when we were all seeking extra information and chasing an understanding of how to process the changes that occurred so suddenly.

Doom means darkness and evil and the world feels dark right now.

While this term may have been invented very recently, the concept is far from original. I vividly recall being glued to the TV following the September 11 attacks and the tsunami of 2004 – desperately trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

We are hardwired to scrutinise, seek out and be drawn to the negative, because it can physically harm us; this fascination is in fact a survival instinct. From an evolutionary point of view, we seek negatives so that we can protect ourselves against them – I’m thinking predators, natural disaster, and other dangers to which our ancestors were subject. Why do you think we are so inclined to discuss the weather?

In modern society, however, we are unaware that we are seeking negative information. We are drawn to it instinctively and ensnared into it by social media algorithms which recognise our interest and expose us repeatedly and intermittently to the same. It makes sense; we are curious to discover more, we think information and understanding will make us feel better and so we scroll and scroll, believing that the solution lies in the detail. And yet we feel worse.

This compulsion to engross ourselves in negative news may grant us a feeling of being better prepared through being informed, yet it leads to worsened mood, disrupted sleep, increase in ruminative thought and compromised mental health as the fears are given extra airtime and therefore feel heightened; the opposite of our goal to feel reassured.

All well and good! Noted! I hear you cry. And what do you expect me to do about that? You also holler.

Firstly, simply become aware of this tendency. Instinctive tendencies can only be altered when we gather a conscious approach towards them.

Secondly, notice how you can help yourself by consciously setting limits on your exposure, knowing that minute by minute checks will not alleviate your unease: they are likely to increase it.

Should you have a tendency to watch the news at home, switch it off. The impact on your children of a constant stream of ticker tape news will not help them to understand the situation better.

If you have older children, take extra care to ensure that their devices are being monitored and their news consumption is tempered. Talk to them about how easy it is to be drawn into the news and how it can impact us.

Be mindful of how you are modelling news consumption to your children. And if you don’t want them to behave as you are, change your behaviour.

And finally, acknowledge to yourself – with kindness and gentleness – that there is a heaviness apparent as we metabolise the devastating and heart breaking news coming from Ukraine. By all means, stay informed. By all means, be aware of changes. Yet know that you can support yourself and your family best when you are well resourced through rest, through space to switch off and through time for connection with those whom you love.

Personal Development for Kids – Part 2

PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT - PUBERTY

Continuing from last week on the topic of Personal Development, I promised a piece on puberty this week… a few eyebrows have been raised at me in the playground since as this is topic is so deeply entrenched in history, in censorship, in our own childhood and in our culture. 

What do we do when our children start asking questions?

The traditional answer “Ask your parent of the same gender/mother/father!” or “You’ll learn about it at school” simply isn’t going to cut it because if this one is left to chance, your child will learn everything (literally) from social media, playground myths or snippets from Netflix, YouTube or the Internet. Often much earlier than you’d like… which is going to give them SUCH a skewed notion of The Birds and The Bees (whatever that means – it never made sense to me!).

Should you mess up your parental controls on devices and should your child stumble across inappropriate content, you want your them to run to you, knowing that you can cope with the questions, rather than internalise images that could cause distress, confusion and worse. 

The curiosity and, therefore, the conversation can start much, much earlier than our own hang-ups permit. 

Begin by naming body parts with their real names – explain the difference between vulva, vagina and clitoris (and if you don’t know – find out!) and penis and testicles - and use these words in your daily life without embarrassment. If you are embarrassed about them, so will your child be. And this will bring shades of shame to a part of the body which is simply that to a child: a part of the body. Goodness knows, you’ll happily sing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes!

Should  relatives insist on using infantilised words, gently correct them and explain that you don’t want your child to experience confusion or shame about their bodies, so you are using the actual words and having an open discussion. You can tell parents or parents in law that you understand that they may feel uncomfortable about that. 

Equip yourself with books which begin to mention changes that happen in children’s bodies as they mature into adults so that your child can ask questions. Integrate age-appropriate short picture books into your child’s library. You’ll be surprised how often they ask to read them. The key here is to read them with them – they are not a secretive read alone texts, rather opportunities to connect and learn. 

There are books suitable for all ages (pre-school upwards) to respond as soon as your child asks – “Where do babies come from?” – so that you can say “I’m glad you asked that, I have a book we can read about it this evening.” Be ready to pre-empt the question and to whip out a book at bedtime – giving yourself time to settle into this new discussion in a calm and unflustered way. 

Talk to children of both genders about periods and be honest that they happen “Mummy’s tummy is sore because her period has started. She has gone for a lie down with a hot water bottle to settle it. There’s nothing to worry about; it’s part of the female human body and it happens every month when a human body is able to have babies.” As they get a little older, you can explain that it includes a bleed from the vagina and start to discuss that bleeding is not always a bad thing to remove any shock factor when it happens. 

The easier you have made it for your child to ask the questions, the earlier your curious child will ask questions about the mystery of life – which you can uncomplicate from the start through the quality of your response. 

Yes, I am working on making this easier for me and yes, it can still make me feel uncomfortable to mention such words and it has taken some courage to write this. But I am determined to reduce – even remove – body shame as much as I can. And I encourage and invite you to do the same. 

Mental development next week…