This is audio only and it is nearly an hour long. If this sounds like something you need to listen to, please make the time to do so. You could put it on while you are driving or wear earbuds while you fold laundry during toddler naptime. I listened immediately when I found it because I knew from the title that it would be information that I could use specifically in parenting my second son, Henry, who is 5. I remember that it was (appropriately) pouring rain the day I listened and I had to start and stop as my kids were playing around the house and needed me from time to time.
In the clip, Pam talks about acknowledging the child's feelings, allowing children to cry and supporting them while they do so.
Basic marriage advice usually includes some version of pointing out that women simply need to talk about their problems but men think they need to fix the problem which sets off a crazy cycle of miscommunication. Here's a little video that illustrates this pretty well. It's Not About the Nail!
Anyone who has suffered a loss knows that people can say the darnedest things to a grieving person. Things that are insensitive and completely disregard and invalidate feelings of sadness. You don't comfort a sad person by trying to make them happy or distract them from their sadness or tell them that things aren't so bad. But these are standard responses of adults to children in America. We can generally point out the mistakes that are made in relating to a grieving adult but we turn around and make these mistakes ourselves with children. Strangers will even intervene and try to fix a crying child's tears following one of these strategies without really knowing the child or having any real understanding of the situation.
We have a really amazing picture from the book of Job of how to relate to a person in grief. Job's friends heard of his great loss and went to him. They ripped their clothes and put ashes on their heads.
"And they sat with him on the ground for seven days and seven nights and no one spoke a word to him for they saw that his suffering was very great." Job 2:13
They sat with him.
No one said a word.
They felt with him.
They didn't say God must have needed a few more angels or that they could help Job regain what was lost. They sat with him and grieved with him.
I think that in American culture, we're not the best at comforting those who mourn because we think that we have to stop the mourning. It bothers us to be sad or to be around sadness. So we try to fix it or we downplay it or ignore it all together. It's too hard to just be with someone as they mourn. We feel like failures when we can't stop the sadness. But emotional pain is not like physical pain. We can't just put a bandaid on it. With physical pain, we try to stop the pain to start the healing. With emotional pain, feeling must be endured, allowed, and supported for healing to take place.
If we are bad at supporting adults in their sadness, we are worse at supporting children in their sadness.
My five year old cries a lot so I thought I was listening to that podcast to better prepare for his inevitable display of tears, lots of tears, but as I listened I was confronted with all of the ways I was mishandling my older son, Gavin's, tears.
Henry forces us to acknowledge his feelings because he wants to be held when he cries. He throws himself on one of us and goes limp and whimpers and groans and really forces the issue of being held while he cries. I don't know how he does it. He is extremely persistent about getting the comfort that he needs when he is sad.
Because Henry cries more, I thought he was my more feeling child. Gavin, on the other hand, doesn't cry as much but he is more sensitive to tactile things. His shoes can't be too tight. His food neither too hot nor too cold. Textures bother him and Heaven forbid there be a wrinkle in his sock. Gavin's tears are usually because of something that is annoying to him. He doesn't seek comfort as often and generally cries about seemingly small problems.
For very complex reasons which I'm sure both cause and are caused by the boys' different crying patterns, we have developed very different ways of responding to each. When Henry cries, he demands comfort by literally throwing his body into our arms. So, we comfort him. We hold him. When Gavin cries, it is usually very easy to pinpoint the cause. We try to fix the problem and stop the tears. As quick as we can. I say things like "Is that something to cry about?" I shut him down.
Furthermore, for very complex reasons which I'm sure both cause and are caused by the way we respond to the boys' crying patterns we have one boy who can generally cope in stressful conditions and one that generally cannot cope in stressful situations. This is hard to write. It is painful to recognize evidence of my own faulty parenting. But it is better to recognize problems and make adjustments than to continue, blindly, down a dangerous path.
I listened to that podcast and watched the rain pour down outside my window. I realized that I could not continue on my current path if I was to raise emotionally intelligent men. I have been praying for God's help in this matter ever since that day. Some days I still make the same mistakes. Other times, I feel like God alerts me to say "This is it. This is the time to allow your child to feel." So I stop trying to fix the tears and I acknowledge the feelings. Some of these moments are small and seem insignificant and are easily forgotten. Others prompt an entire blog post.
I had the following exchange with Gavin a few days ago. He came home from grandma's house limping. I knew he was exaggerating but that he needed me to acknowledge his hurt foot. He said "Do you know why I'm waking like this? It's because I hurt my foot." I said "Oh, what happened? Did you step on a Lego?" "Yes! How did you know?" Lucky guess. I said "That must have hurt. Legos sure are sharp and pokey when you step on them." He slowly straightened put his foot and tested his weight on it. "Ok. I think feels better now. I can walk normal."
Then came a doozy of an emotional outburst. Gavin cried for an hour. It was hard to take but I feel strongly that this was a formidable experience for his emotional development. It actually requires its own blog post. I hate to leave you hanging but maybe you can listen to the You Tube link that I posted above sometime before I publish part two.
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