Parenting is Hard, resisting makes it harder

The child is standing screaming hateful words, throwing things, biting, scratching, kicking, hitting… totally gone ‘feral,’ as a friend calls it.

Everyone who has ever seen one will recognize this as an extreme temper tantrum, and just what they look like in a child older than about 3 (and adults.)

There are a lot of theories about how to handle a child whose brain has gone offline, and who is now fully out of control of all higher level brain functions. My personal favourite means is ‘don’t get there in the first place,’ but sometimes shit happens.

When it happens, it is popular to try to ‘stop it’ by doing common things.

Like the withdrawal of support and affection (sending to rooms, etc.) until the emotional expressions are all happy. Yay drugs! Choose uppers.

Like yelling. Yes, because yelling is going to calm anyone’s brain down.

Spanking has its advocates, because that won’t further overload anyone’s sensory input channels. It may push their brain into a traumatized fugue state, which probably looks like ‘it worked’ to some people who don’t know what that brain state means…

Counter-intuitively, what actually works is describing what is going on, in words.

You are really frustrated because that didn’t go your way.

How infuriating! You just want it to not have broken.

It is really important to you to get the red cup!

It feels like this method will ‘give permission’ for horrible behaviour. Kids don’t think that way, so that can be dismissed without really being addressed.

It also feels like this will amplify the feelings instead of eradicate them (the goal of the three options most often recommended by ‘experts,’ as listed above) It won’t, and I can tell you why:

When you have room in your world for the expression and understanding of emotions, they don’t hang around. Emotions are like hunger: feel and understand the message of the emotion and it dissipates, just as hunger dissipates with feeding.

So, instead of leaning away from emotions hoping they’ll just go away (or trying to shout them away, ‘cause really: how can that work?) stop resisting.

The emotion is the whole reality for this child right now, with absolutely no room for the child’s tiny body to hold anything else: learning, ‘getting it,’ the message behind punishment, ‘thinking about it,’ or ‘their attention’ to be on anything but this huge emotional reality.

Yes, even if it is something ‘silly’ like the colour of the cup.

It’s not about the colour of the cup, it’s about the feelings provoked by not getting the colour right, by not being able to decide which colour is right or not being allowed or able to pick the right colour, by frustration, disappointment, rage, grief, sadness, fury, and even by simply being totally overwhelmed by having to make a decision that doesn’t matter –again—about an issue that doesn’t matter but that stops the flow of everything until it’s decided.

It’s not about the cup, it’s about the feelings.

To ‘Make Sure’

 

Ran across a great ‘zen’ quote while stumbling yesterday:

Let go… or be dragged

Then, it came up in a conversation about ‘making sure’ –with teenagers.

‘Making sure’ is probably the most alluring, and least effective, form of security a parent can seek.

No parent wants to face the reality of the terrors of freeing a child to the world. As possibly-Phyllis Diller said:

having a child is giving your heart permission to walk around by itself for the rest of your life

Parenting is terrifying, and letting go is even more terrifying. It’s hard to do when a two-year-old wants to wear all their favourite clothes at once…

… without thinking about what they’re allowed to do with a computer.

When a 15-year-old struggles for independence and liberty, it’s not easier to let go. It’s particularly not easier than it would have been when the child was three. But that’s water under the bridge and time can’t flow backwards.

But ‘making sure’ has a synonym. That is: ‘making a mess.’

Trying to control the thoughts, feelings, goals and preferences of a child (especially a teenage child) is pretty much guaranteed to get messy. Some kids can withstand a lot of it, without it affecting who they are, or what they choose, very much… but those kids are rare (and it’s inherently disrespectful to them, too… they just don’t mind so much that their parents are.)

For most kids, the lack of faith in them that this ‘making sure’ demonstrates does real damage to their stability. They react in ways that are surprising even to them: they vandalize things, they sneak out at night, they make cavalier choices with their lives and bodies, they check-out of things they once cared about, they disconnect from the people they need…

Yes, trusting that the world is a safe-enough place for our precious teens is hard. Trust anyhow.

Yes, trusting teens out in the world is hard. Trust anyhow.

Yes, trusting that we’ve been ‘good enough’ parents to this point, so our kids will be able to cope (and maybe even thrive) is hard. Trust anyhow.

Yes, letting go is hard. Let go anyhow.

Let go… or be dragged.

Relationships with Humans

 

Relationships with humans are hard.

I’ve been having interesting conversations with folks about teens, rebellion and the ‘need’ (experts tell us it’s a need, so it must be, right?) for children to butt heads with their parents in order to leave the nest.

I’ve written about this before, but today I’m thinking about it from a slightly different angle… in a conversation about ‘normal teens,’ in response to this:

Some children really DO need to "butt heads to leave".

I said this:

In the same way that people who are genuinely frightened (the result of a break-in, or even a physical attack) start arguing when they don’t know what else to do with their fear, people who are leaving or on the verge of being left will often lash out, because they simply don’t know how to handle the fears or the overwhelming feelings that come with large life changes.

I’ve lived in a navy family my whole life, first as the daughter of a sailor, and later married to one (still). I am experienced in the leavings (and returns) of loved ones… and I’m familiar with the dysfunctional and the enlightened ways of handling both.

Dysfunctional is what is considered the norm: depression, lashing out, infidelity, worry, ptsd, insomnia, ocd… the list goes on and on. But however ordinary and common those responses are, they’re hardly enlightened or even helpful. They are simply what people do with overwhelmingly large emotions when they don’t know what else to do.

It’s not surprising that people don’t know what to do –culturally, we don’t know what to do, we have few models of more enlightened or mature responses, and few teachers who could pass that information on. If I had a nickel for every time someone said to me, ‘I could never cope with my partner leaving’ or ‘how do you manage?’ I’d have a room full of nickels. And, it took me a long time to stumble across healthier ways of handling it.

Children leaving home brings up the same kinds of overwhelm, for themselves and their parents –and their friends, and their siblings… and we end up with the Freshman 15 (kids who eat to displace their feelings when they’re at college the first year) and Empty Nest Syndrome (for parents who can’t sit through long-distance ads without bursting into tears), et cetera.

There are two keys, I found, to understand comings and goings:

1. worry and,

2. control

There are two primary reasons people mind so much, life transitions of this kind: they don’t know what’s going to happen, and they don’t like feeling out of control of what’s going to happen. So they worry –that’s personal and internal stress that just adds to the real issues in their world—and they seek to control what they can reach, which is generally the other people close by. [I think it’s hilarious how rarely most people think of themselves when they’re looking around for something to control.]

Now, how to avoid and minimize both of those is a completely other post for another day, but that’s the core of it: children who express an apparent need to butt heads are picking #2. Parents who become depressed, teary or insomniac are using #1. Lashing out and ocd are #2. PTSD is #1.

Handling comings and goings with equanimity is hard:

• it’s hard to lean into the pain of separations, to know that the pain is not just okay, but perfect
• it’s hard to open a lifestyle up when someone comes home after the heartspace they had lived in has healed

Neither are anywhere near as hard as the results of lashing out, butting heads, depression… et cetera.

This is Why the Demand for Attention Must be Met

Editor's Note: This post contains affiliate links. Linda Clement only ever shares links to books she has read and believes are of value. No authors have been harmed in the sharing of these recommendations...




A great deal is written, and worried about, when it comes to attention-seeking behaviour in children. 

A lot of the concerns are a result of the very-disturbing adults we all know at least a handful of, who are examples of why attention-seeking behaviour run amok is so unattractive.


When parents (and onlookers) attribute that adult behaviour to children who successfully attained as much attention as they needed... there is a problem.

One thing that La Leche League taught me long ago was:  

a need met dissipates

a need unmet remains 

Children need attention. They don't want it or demand it or prefer it or brat it up because they're devious, selfish little hellions in need of a smack. They need it.

Like how they need food and shelter and protection from predators and fresh, clean water and shoes.

Well, maybe not the shoes. But attention, they need. 

In the absence of appropriate attention, children are unsafe both physically and psychologically. They instinctively know that they need attention, so when they are not getting it, they devise creative and astonishing methods of acquiring it. 

Often extremely effective creative and astonishing methods...




In the lovely, funny and pointed book about childrearing, Purrfect Parenting, Beverly Guhl points out that children prefer lovely fresh breakfast cereal that's crisp and flavourful, with fresh, chilled milk. When they are starving, they will eat stale old breakfast cereal that's dusty and served with warm, soured milk. 

What they want is the good kind, but they'll take any over none.



When they get none, they do the most remarkable things. Things I have known attention-starved children to do include (but is not a comprehensive list):

• throw an armchair through a (rental house) living room window (he was 5)
• stand on the train tracks to see if the train would kill him (he was 4)
• cut a flower girl dress to shreds with paper scissors the day before the wedding (9)
• gag herself in order to barf in a restaurant (she was 3)
• stand on a kitten (4)
• pick a stranger's baby up by the ears (6)
• sit and then stand on a baby's head (4 years old)
• light a basement curtain on fire (11)

Now, the thing about these amazing feats is that the children weren't angry --they were all acting with a deep concentration and hyper-vigilance about where the parent's eyes were. 

Every one of them smiled when they got caught --sending their freaked out parents right over the edge. But that smile was from the very heart of them: there, it worked.

Whew... relief --attention at last.

When these kids grow up, they'll have the most remarkable set of coping skills imaginable: like a train wreck their lives become the thing of legend --seriously unattractive, but so hard to look away. So hard not to talk about.

If, though, these attention-seeking adults had made eye contact with someone who took them seriously, and reflected their experience back to them and interpreted the extremely contradictory and confusing huge world for them with kindness, generosity and love, they wouldn't be the attention-seeking adults they have become. 


They would be able to co-exist with other equals from a position of being filled --not empty and starving and willing to do anything, sell anything, permit any kind of humiliation just to get looked at for one more moment. Just one more bowl of tooth-breaking cereal swamped with curdled milk in what amounts to a steady diet of it...

Humans need attention. They will get it, anyway they can.