Tending Your Feelings
The thing about dealing with our own kids is that very often the kid still inside us sort of wakes up and watches what is going on. And then old feelings get raked up. If you were the tantruming child, how were you treated? Did anybody try to understand why you were upset? Or were you treated as a problem? Maybe your feelings themselves were the problem. While you're trying to help your child, your inner child is reacting as well.
If you possibly can, try to stay calm with your child and allow your own feelings to come out later. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes you don't have the capacity to stay calm. Apologize if you overreact. Repair. Don't deny but don't get stuck, either.
When you have a moment to yourself--and for goodness' sake, put on a video or let the kids do something that will keep them out of your hair for a while so you can take care of yourself--when you take your moment, try to tune in and see what is happening inside you. I recently noticed the huge amount of shame I have that my kid is acting out. The belief is that if I were a better mother, my kid would not have a tantrum or I would be able to stop it. But that's not true. It's impossible for me to exert total emotional control over my kid. And it's wrong and damaging to try.
We hear this all the time, right? The judgement heaped on parents, but mothers especially, if a kid is acting in a way that displeases another adult. I'm practicing talking back to this inner critic. Sometimes I tell it off very fiercely. Sometimes, it needs gentleness.
Something else I've noticed it that the judgmental thought patters are the product of fear. What am I afraid of? I'm afraid of a tantrum escalating out of control. But there's more.
If we didn't learn to put words to our feelings as kids, if we were left alone to face our huge feelings by ourselves, they're just these terrifying monsters. Maybe we learned to stuff all those big angry feelings down. But they didn't go away. Now there's a whole store room full of monsters, waiting for us. The door opens a bit when our kids are angry, right? I see my own monsters, and I want to slam the door shut on them, which means I want to slam the door shut on my kid's anger.
Here's the thing: we have to be brave. We have to be brave enough to look at our monstrous feelings and feel them and set them free. When we do that, we have more capacity to help our children carry their big feelings. When we look at our monsters and see that they're really just the little kid feelings we've carried and carried, we can let go of fear and judgment. Maybe we had to stuff feelings in order to feel lovable. So we did, and we let fear guard the door to the scary feelings. Now we're adults. We don't have to be afraid of the feelings of little kids. We can say to our younger self, it's safe to let the monster out, because it isn't a monster, it's only you.
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