Tonight Little Miss and Little Man are once again sleeping in the same room. The same bed in fact. Little Man at the head and Little Miss at the foot.
I remember doing that when I was little.
There was something special about getting to share your bed with your sibling or friend who might as well have been a sibling. There was a special connection there.
Our two wanted to sleep in the same room and hadn't since we moved to the new house two-and-a-half months ago. Up until then, they had shared a room since Little Miss was six months old. As much as our two fight, they have a connection. It's usually them against us. They have connected heart to heart. Kids can do that. They naturally want to do that. They yearn for connections to other people. As adults, I think we have developed walls and defense mechanisms because we have learned that sometimes those connections get broken. And brokenness hurts. Sometimes the brokenness hurts for longs periods of time and we don't want to connect with others.
But our kids haven't been met with that yet. I would hope that no child experiences that brokenness until they are adults, but unfortunately, that is not the way of the world.
All this leads me to a blog I have recently discovered: consciouslyparenting.blogspot.com . She is a therapist who specializes in attachment and relationships. The one particular post that has stuck with me is "An Alternative View of Tantrums and Emotional Upsets."
It put the little tricks I practiced when one of my dears was trying to burst my eardrums from screaming on their head.
She says that "Nurturing relationships is about taking the time and making the space for connection. Not just being in the same room or not interrupting. But connecting heart to heart....Nurturing relationships means moving in closer when others might back away."
This thought process can influence many aspects of our lives. Like when we are in the middle of cooking dinner and our little one comes up to show us their masterpiece created from scraps of paper, glue, and crayons, and we say "Yah. I like that" without much of a glance. We don't see their disappointed look because we are stirring the pot.
Or when our spouse comes home after a long day and we let them fester in their sullenness alone or, worse, take their sullenness as a personal affront.
Or when our little one doesn't get the last piece of chocolate and throws a major fit and we move them to their room for a time out/chill out/get yourself in check.
We are told to ignore tantrums or put kids in timeout or mirror what they are doing. Or we give in. Or we fix it.
But what do we want when we are having a really crappy, down in the dumps, nothing goes right moment...or day...or week? We want someone to listen to us vent then give us a hug or a hand squeeze or anything to show they listened and heard what we said.
So why would we deny our kids the same?
The Golden Rule: Treat others as we would like to be treated.
So why treat our kids differently when they are upset than we want to be treated? How would we feel if our spouse put us in timeout when we were venting or if they just repeated what we were saying or if they ignored us?
It's different, though, for adults. We have the words to express our feelings (most times). Kids don't. However, just because they can't verbally express their feelings doesn't make those feelings less valid or real.
Our job as parents is to support our kids. They are going to want to do some crazy-ass shit. Like move to a reservation as a single woman all alone in her first years of teaching. Or move to Chicago to try become an actress. Or go bushwhacking through a jungle only to be chased by a wild boar. Or join the military. Or try five different schools with five different majors.
Those are my siblings and me. We did that. And even though my parents didn't agree with us all the time, they supported us. My mom and dad are my heroes when it comes to parenting. I know I can still go crying to my mom and she won't brush me off or fix my problem or half-ass listen to me. She will sit there and hug me and wait for me to talk.
That's the kind of parent I want to be.
It starts when our little ones are still little. When they are throwing the fit because they can't have the last piece of chocolate. This isn't to say we give in. We don't give in. But we don't push them away from us. We don't mock them. We don't fix them. We treat them as we would want to be treated. We allow them to express their emotions and are patient with them. We stay with them in their emotional state. There are times we don't want to. We don't want to listen to them cry. But if we are truly present with them and their emotions, it shall pass sooner than later.
This is something I'm learning. Being present with my children is more important than the laundry or getting dinner on the table at exactly 6:00 or putting them in their beds no later than 8:00 or any of the other 100 things I usually have spinning through my head. I will always have 100 different things spinning through my head. Little Man will only be 4 years and 10 months old once. Little Miss will only be three years and one and a half months old once.
We are their foundation. We are what they will come back to in the future (or, if we fail, what they will avoid). We are their steady ships. We are their first connections. That is the most important thing to nurture in this moment.
Cheers,
Megs
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