Last week I wrote to you about seeing your children’s tantrums and difficult emotions through their eyes. In it, we walked through the perspective of toddlers and young children. I offered some strategies, not all my own, to help teach our children they are safe with themselves and us as they navigate the hard emotions in life. I deeply hope it gave you some insight because emotions and behavior require language above all else. In that light, I’d like to spend some time writing to you about, well, you the parent. I know anything can look good in writing, but the reality is that parenting is not an easy job; far from it.
Let’s Get Real For a Minute
When children have big emotions, tantrums, sleepless nights, and tears with the title “mama” or “papa” we all stay completely calm right? Sailing effortlessly up at 3 am to shoo the monsters away, waking with a smile to flip pancakes, remaining calm as our dear toddler exclaims her disdain for the eleventh choice you’ve offered? We are their parents, we should and can be in control. We can model resolve for our children, discipline, and that all grown-ups are happy. I grew up in the ’90s, everyone’s parents were working through some version of this. By the time I had Henry in 2017 the new tune was “child-led everything” which required you to shadow your baby’s every move and somehow notice when they were ready for something new.
I’m really, really hopeful in writing this that you read it with the ridiculousness I intended, but also with some vulnerability to acknowledge any narrative you have that the title “parent” is having it all together. Little humans are hard. When you enter the world of parenthood in any capacity no one prepares you for the avalanche of emotions that will come with your new little (or big) human. In our minds, there is such a dream, as in any role, about what we want in our new relationship. I can admit to you I had a Pinterest board of “Henry’s Style” before he was born. By the time I was in labor with Declan I knew all I needed was my own breastmilk and baby pajamas. I also had a tribe lined up to help me with my new baby and then toddler Henry. Not knowing the level of support I needed, along with the personal trauma I was experiencing, led to my postpartum depression with Henry. With Declan’s journey in the world, I knew I had to honor my own emotions and needs.
Caring for Self and Communicating
That right there is what all parents need when it comes to the tantrums and big emotions of our little lions, um, loves. If we as parents can acknowledge that we also have big and real emotions when our children are struggling with our language we can offer ourselves support. If we don’t acknowledge how hard the emotions are for us we will find ourselves flipping pancakes with a gritted smile, losing pieces of ourselves along the way, and modeling to our children that big emotions are so scary even mommy has to push them down.
So what can we do when our emotions run high after that sleepless night, the eleventh tantrum, or (pick your own poison)? Remaining calm when our children are struggling is important. This teaches our children that when they are experiencing a big emotion we can keep them safe. The reality is that getting to this place of calm requires a lot of work on the parent’s part well before their child’s big emotions. The other reality is that inevitably all parents will not be calm at a certain point in parenting, everyone loses control of their emotions. It’s okay. Really. It’s not the loss of control that is the problem (I repeat to myself daily). It is how we respond to that loss of control that teaches our children what to do when they lose control too.
In the first reality, taking care of ourselves to remain calm can look like a variety of tools, skills, and needs for the parent. The root of this work is to acknowledge that we ourselves are emotional beings with language and behavior. In acknowledging we are emotional beings we are acknowledging that our emotional self needs love, care, time, tools, and words. It requires us to be our own biggest advocate and begin to lean into areas of our lives that either we personally struggle with or emotions that we don’t understand. In leaning into what we personally struggle with or seek to find clarity on we are providing both emotional care and accountability for ourselves. In some cases, this can be done alone in self-reflection and in other cases, this needs to be done with professional counselors. Personally speaking, I live with Complex-PTSD and the tools I’m now able to lean on in times of emotional dysregulation came through the hard work of trauma-informed care. I needed help navigating my big emotions and that is okay, it’s okay for you too.
In the second reality, I want to be very clear that if you are losing your temper and either physically or emotionally hurting your child this behavior is not okay. I can understand the loss of control, you are not a bad person if you have done this, you’re a person who has lost control and in that loss of control caused harm. The important thing here is to name that you’ve done it, offer yourself grace, and then get help as soon as possible to prevent this kind of harm from happening again. In less extreme cases that are so common among parents where we are simply at our wit’s ends, yelling happens, punishment to control our child is dished out, and wine is poured to deal with that moment a similar strategy can be used. Tara Brach used a metaphor of a U-Turn and the strategy of R.A.I.N.
When in Doubt, Let it R.A.I.N.
In this strategy, Tara teaches us to recognize, acknowledge, investigate, and nurture. We can recognize that we lost control of behavior and that our own limbic system is activated. Then, we can acknowledge the emotion behind the emotion as well that we are out of control. From there we can investigate the “why” and nurture our hearts. In this healing moment maybe we recognize that we’ve worked a sixty-hour week and have no reserves or maybe you’ve been home all day but your child’s big emotions have also been home all day. No matter the reason, naming it will guide us to the type of nurturing our bodies and hearts need.
This final strategy is the key to reclaiming your own peace as well as teaching your children the important truth that mama (or papa) is a human too. That no one is perfect and everyone has emotions and a hard time. In our home it looks a lot like this, “Wow, mommy had a tricky time and felt so overwhelmed, I’m really sorry I yelled about the coats. Can I do that differently?” Henry chimed in recently with, “Yea mama, try it kinder.” I did, we hugged, and moved on with our day.
With Christmas just around the corner for those of us who celebrate (my anxiety reminds me daily), I bet you are thinking I am writing a darling tribute to their innocence. I would love to, there is so much about children that is breathtakingly beautiful. I’ve dedicated my life to researching and working with them. I can share a feel-good blog for you one day on the delight of early childhood. I’ll dig up some great quotes like, “I wish I could love anything as much as she loves bubbles,” from the movie Knocked Up. We’ll both feel very warm on the inside because writing about the positive qualities of childhood warms our souls like hot chocolate after playing in the cold snow (see, I can write it.)
However, today I want to talk about their inner emotional world, neurological development, and the frustrations that lead to big emotions. In writing, Honoring Your Peace, I wrote to you about how Dr. Becky’s book, “Good Inside,” led me to some radical shifts in my own parenting methods that I hope will guide you to find alignment in your own parenting. I did not however write to you in depth about the child’s perspective when big emotions come. I’d like the chance to share what I know both as a clinician, a mama, and a member of a brave mom tribe.
Consider Where They Are Coming From
Now that I’ve laid the foundation I will not be writing a blog about the parallels of the magic at Christmas and children and will be writing about big emotions we can begin. For today’s sake let’s start at the scene of the crime (or one of the crimes). You have a toddler, she has woken up from her sleepy slumber, opened her darling eyes, and declared she is not putting on clothing for school. As the bleary morning drags on alongside your coffee IV, she also declares she wanted oatmeal not pancakes, she only wears black mittens, and the granola bar you’ve offered so she has something in her belly on the ride to school is the wrong one. As she declares everything that is wrong she has also hit, charged you, screamed, and cried as if each “that is not a choice right now, let’s make a plan for oatmeal tomorrow,” was a declaration against her very soul. Tear-streaked (her, you… does it matter at this point?) you drive to school thinking, “goddamn that was hard” and she’s soothing herself from the injustice of the morning.
What just happened?
Well, on a very micro level a lot of different things could have happened. There could be a past pattern of you giving in to demands and now you’re setting limits so she’s rebelling against them. She could have an upset tummy. She could not have slept well last night. She could be working through a transition between co-parenting homes. All of the environmental scenarios could be very true and applied behavior analysis can tell us what is leading up to the outbursts of your darling toddler. However, regardless of what is happening environmentally the internal (covert) experience of your toddler is much broader (think macro) and common amongst the toddler tribe. She (he, they) are having big emotions that they cannot regulate and do not have words to explain their emotional world.
It Is Really A Matter of Neuroscience
You see toddlers (2-3 ½) function predominantly from their limbic system which is the part of our brain that says “fight, flight, freeze.” The part of our brain that allows us to reason is the prefrontal cortex and that doesn’t begin to develop until around age 4 and doesn’t finish developing until our early 20s (women finish their development before men, yes I just answered every question you had about your college boyfriend).
Around age 3 children also start to understand the concept of self versus others. Is this me? Do I like this? The combination of the development of self and the primary response of the limbic system creates the perfect storm inside of our toddlers. They want to assert themselves, define themselves, and know themselves. They also do not have the language yet to say what their big emotions are causing them to feel and without being taught do not have the emotional regulation to calm themselves down. This combination, as is true with most toddlers, creates a very loud couple of years for both parents and their children.
I used to be guilty as charged alongside many mamas of just wanting the tears to stop. An actual registered torture technique is to lock a mother away from her baby and play the baby’s cry. No, I do not want to know how they researched this. But anyways, when our children cry our genetics tell us, “no, awful, fix it” and we as mamas want to swoop in and fix it. Yet the swooping, beyond infancy, starts to tell our children that they cannot navigate their big emotions, and neither can we. It tells them their big emotions are wrong and have to be corrected. If there is one thing you take away from this blog, take this: big emotions live in all of us and there is nothing wrong with them. We are a feeling species, who developed language and then behaved.
Helping Toddlers and Up Navigate Emotion
So what do we do with our big feeling language-lost little humans? Starting in toddlerhood we can teach them to stay in their big emotion, ride it until it calms, keep them safe for that ride, and give them words for the experience and tools for the emotion they just felt. That their feelings are messages that something isn’t right for them and that is okay. They don’t have to agree with everything a grownup or parent says, even when a boundary is held. I spend a lot of time reframing Henry and Declan’s language of “worst day ever, I don’t like you mom!” to “Mom, I don’t agree with you.” Then I validate it’s okay to not agree with me and it’s also true that in sub-30 weather coats, hats, and mittens are a rule that has to be followed to go outside. Yes, I know, ninjas do not wear shirts little men.
Validating our children’s experiences and opinions teaches them their emotions aren’t scary. That their emotions are signals to their inner world that they need help navigating. Sometimes the world does not agree with our opinion, coats have to be worn, but it’s okay to have feelings about what we disagree with. This path is not an easy one, but it is a brave one for parents and children alike. Turning in to face our emotions instead of shaming their existence teaches children (and us) how to navigate our inner world to create an outer world that makes sense to us.
Next time your little one is having a big feeling first keep their body safe, stay the course of your boundary, and give them the words (and tools) for their experience.
Last week I wrote to you about “The Importance of Not This.” In it, I shared the unearthing of our way of life that the pandemic brought, at least to my friend group and I. After reading this piece you might be asking yourself, “what are they putting down?” “What is it in fact that they are saying they don’t want? I could keep this blog short and sweet and tell you the answer is everything. I would feel fully satisfied with this answer because my integrity says, “yep, that feels right.” However, if you are a mama, papa, or singleton who is still pushing your humanity down like my friends and I on the walks with our strollers I thought, perhaps, you might want a few examples.
Putting Down Toxic Familiar Structures
On a very broad scale what my friends, family, and I are putting down, among the greats like Glennon Doyle, are our gender roles and what society wants for us. Prior to the pandemic, the majority of us were subconsciously following the script both our extended family and society wanted for us. My script looked a little like this, “good girls get good grades, they do not party, they are obedient without question, maintain their purity for their husband, and will find a good man to lead their family as God leads us.” I shit you not, this was the script.
During my childhood, a battle raged between, “this does not make any sense, hard no for me,” and “I want to fit in and belong in my extended family.” As I got older I found out that my girlfriends were all fed their own similar script, give or take the virgin bride. I also found the men, though I admittedly have few close male friends, were given the script of, “be a provider, have no feelings, and man up.” Quite unfortunately, I have memories of my extended family ridiculing my father because he was not assuming his dominant roost in our home. When I filed for divorce one uncle literally wanted to schedule an exorcism for my dad because he was siding with his daughter. A demon must have been talking to him if a woman was being believed; in 2020…
In my own life, my divorce and the pandemic created a drastic unearthing that was necessary for my survival. I do not wish my experience on anyone and yet I am grateful to daily be putting down what and who does not honor my humanity. Unfortunately, I have a few very close friends who were also putting down toxic family roles and some who were also leaving intergenerational trauma. The unfortunate part is that they and their family lived through generations of trauma and the incredible part is my friends (and I) are breaking the cycle of trauma in our own families. We’re putting down abusive behavior that spanned generations and saying loudly, clearly, and firmly, “this is not the way.” A few weeks ago I took a five-mile hike with one of my brave friends. Hot teas in hand we walked against the earth with pride and love for each other.
Shedding Norms, Feeding Our Souls
In many other of my friend’s homes their experiences were not as extreme and yet they were no less true or hard. Several of my friends realized that in their marriage, somewhere along the way, it became a team of the kids and mom versus dad. Dad existed as his own, breadwinning entity, and they were living separate lives. That separation stripped my beautiful friends and their husbands of emotional intimacy among other things. These friends bravely said, “no, not anymore, I’m not running this house or raising these children by myself.” They put down the role of the wife as a selfless caregiver and the man as the heroic provider. Instead, they chose day by day to rebuild connections in their homes instead of filling the roles that were robbing them of intimacy.
Another friend realized after years as a stay-at-home mom her heart wanted to build a business and build one she did. She’s still in her early years of building it and when I walk into her winery my heart beams with pride over what her mind created and body built for herself. I’m sure, as a business owner myself, the first years of running the business brought challenges of their own. But she’s putting down the narrative that she can’t have financial freedom as a woman and she is building it for herself one wine pour at a time.
Individually each of our experiences is different and yet collectively we are all saying the same thing. I will not conform to the roles assigned to me above connection with my own soul. I will stop any gendered role, male or female if it is not serving my highest good. If something looks, smells, or acts like a cage it is most definitely in fact a cage. If connection and humanity are stripped away from us individually or collectively this is a sign that the role we are filling must go. Or perhaps, the systems supporting these oppressive roles must go. That is a story for another time.
Day by day, choice by choice, we are all asking ourselves, “Am I filling a role, or am I filling my soul?” If the answer is a role, we’re putting it down. Perhaps today you’ll join us and start shedding what no longer serves you.
I’ve written to you before and I am confident I will write to you again about society’s impact on our lives. My own lived experience, professional research, and the work of others have brought me to one conclusion; society has an agenda that has very little if anything to do with us as individuals. As a woman, I’ve expressed the oppression I have felt as a woman to be small, polite, obedient, submissive, quiet, and filled with servitude (Brave Not Perfect). It was almost two years ago I wrote “Too Strong for Who” and the words in that blog are still true today.
As the years have gone by, I’ve been able to stand back and look beyond my own gender, race, and socio-economic status. I know my privilege and restrictions as a white, middle-class, woman. I will say loudly and clearly that I do not understand the experience of others because I have not lived their lives. However, in stepping backward I am able to see if society has its preference we all have a submissive, suffocating role to fill. In the creation of capitalism and the nuclear family the roles society has for us were created far before our inception.
Bucking the Standards
Why am I writing this to you? You might be thinking I have a baseball bat (or ax like at my trash the dress party) against modern life. I don’t, but I have some real problems with how we are living. I also don’t have a single loved one who has not encountered serious problems in their life because of societal standards. We are living in a society where profit and image are held above our humanity yet our humanity is pleading to be heard.
Prior to the pandemic, alongside almost everyone else, my friends and I were buzzing around “fine.” We were following all the latest trends for raising children, running those children everywhere they needed to be, keeping our weight down, complaining about when we couldn’t keep our weight down, doing 99.9% of all domestic work in our homes, some of us were working, some of us weren’t and didn’t have access to financial freedom, and the list goes on and on. Yet during this time after dozens of playdates, morning coffees, and afternoon margaritas not one of us said, “You know what, this shit is crazy, who the hell made the rules of this game, and how do we quit?” Instead, we took the badge of motherhood and being a wife with honor and buzzed right alongside the beehive.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, I have spent many nights with friends cozying up with a glass of wine listening to story after story of “not this.” As we sit and honor each other during these talks I sit with the dichotomy of deep regret and gratitude that it took an international pandemic to unearth our way of life.
Grow and Learn Together
I have always been a child who learns the hard way. I poured bacon grease over my hand once just to prove to my mother that I can stabilize the jar while pouring out the hot oil. You cannot in fact do this safely. The lessons that came from the pandemic to my friends and I felt very similar. Like a lesson we could have learned from each other painlessly. The difference was that we did not have a wise mother telling us what was safe, good, and right for us. Instead, we had a world telling us exactly the box we needed to fit into in order to find our happiness. No wonder we got burned.
The pandemic itself became unearthing for better or for worse. Keeping up our lives as they were before was not sustainable. In hindsight they would have probably crashed at some point we would have all just had to have reached our own trauma limit instead of collective trauma. In a way, the pandemic brought a gift, the gift of, “not this.” The “not this” looks different for each of my friends that I cozy up next to, but the words bring the same truth; I am not fully myself and I want above all else to be gloriously human.
In their stories, my friends share loneliness, burnout, desire, crumbling perfectionism, toxic relationships, mental health breaks, and the list goes on and on. Yet this time instead of pushing our strollers while we pushed our feelings down we’ve been able to say to each other, “I don’t want this anymore.” I am honored each and every time a friend shares their truth with me. While our experiences vary, our struggles are almost always the same. I’m suffocating in this life, I need to breathe and just like the Little Mermaid, I want more. Unlike the Little Mermaid, the more is not a prince charming.
In these conversations, my friends don’t know what is next. I sure as shit did not know what was next two years ago this time. I’m still not quite sure. That part is OK. The profound impact of “not this” is the first step towards integrity towards ourselves. There is too much to shed, too much to unpack, and to learn about ourselves, to truly know what it is we want. How could we, with all the noise of the world?
As I’ve watched my beautifully vulnerable friends come to the realization that they want more out of their lives I’ve seen each of them bravely stand up for themselves. The standing is always the same. “Not this.” Each friend is flush with joy they have come to these words and full of rage about what has brought them here. Perfect, they are absolutely perfect. Through their powerful words and willingness to be open to the unknown, they are walking themselves back to their humanity.
I’m grateful to be walking beside them loudly declaring, “not this,” well before I softly fold into myself and say, “ah, yes, this.”
