Personal anecdote 💗 When our children’s feelings are stirred up
Hello …. How are you today?
This week, I invite you to think of ways we can relieve our children when they feel perplexed by their own feelings, esp. during the Holidays, when culture tells us we must be happy 100% of the time.
In this podcast, I’d like to share with you a personal anecdote with my kids, who had to struggle with very challenging emotions.
You can listen to the podcast with this player, or if you prefer reading you have a written version below. Enjoy it!
It’s Three Kings Day; this day isn’t celebrated in many parts of the world. In Spain and several Latin American countries, however, it can be more relevant than Christmas. The most important gifts for children are given today. On the evening of the 5th, children leave a pair of shoes under the tree or outside their doors for the nocturnal visitors to fill with gifts. They also leave grass and water for the exhausted camels before going to bed. My children know the truth about Santa Claus and the Three Kings but in spite of that, they give us a list of what they’d like us to buy for them for us to consider what we can give them. I can't blame them because I did the same even as an adolescent. And despite all the rituals, there’s something that makes a lot of noise inside my head. Is it really necessary to buy so many gifts? I’m not thinking about it from an economic point of view, I’m thinking about it in the sense of accumulating, of asking for the sake of asking, and of the parents' sprint to go shopping or to order the specifically detailed items online. I understand that giving away a little something is always exciting but I also find all this hustle and bustle disconcerting and dispensable.
And I am not the only one, my son is going through his pre-adolescence, at times he is a small child, and he finds the preparations and the Holidays a lot of fun, but he’s started to have mixed feelings. And it’s at this point that I’d like to connect this blog’s topic about how to help our children and the stirred up emotions the Holidays bring about. The thing is my son has begun to find no point in all this paraphernalia, so he just lets himself go with the flow. And precisely because of these challenging feelings, he resorted to the now classic “can we talk mom?” This is my children’s sacred space to talk to me about anything that’s hurting or afflicting them. This week the one that started was my son, my daughter followed later. He needed to get something out of his chest, and of course, I was there to comfort him. He looked at me and asked:
“Mom, why am I sad?
What does it mean?”
I’ve learned that the anxious mind always tries to find a mental reason for everything. That’s why I invited him to connect with his body, and to contact the places where he felt discomfort. Then we breathed deeply together to help him calm down and he sent love to the parts of his body that hurt in response to his emotional distress. This allowed us to get in touch with the present moment and to open a peaceful space to investigate what was going on. Like a daisy, we began to take out petal after petal; we questioned what started to emerge, and little by little we got to the core of what was affecting him.
The truth is that he discovered that he didn’t feel "sad", he felt confused and empty as a result of not doing anything. When he stopped for a moment after so many hectic days - the plans with friends, the endless gifts, and the stimuli from the outside, he blamed sadness for his boredom. We talked about it, we discussed how wonderful it is to be able to pause and I suddenly heard a sigh of relief from him.
That’s why I believe that culture can sometimes be so harmful because it sells us the idea that just because it’s the Holidays we have to be smiling from ear to ear, otherwise there’s “something wrong with us”. When my son calmed down, we spoke about how he could find so much richness in his inner world. I also suggested that he enjoy the moments of calm, austerity, and rest.
Some hours later, I went out for a minute and when I got back home, my daughter, the pragmatic and the warrior, was tearful. She asked me: "Mom, can we talk?" And she showed me the photo album she was looking at, where she was really very young, a tiny shiny person.
I stopped what I was doing and we cuddled. As I’d done with my son, I asked her to contact her body, to leave the mental space for a while. When she was more relaxed, I asked her: "why do you think you're crying?", "Why do you think the album made you sad?" and I encouraged her to tell me what was happening in her own words. She replied, tears rolling down her cheeks: "Now I have to study, I miss the time when I was little and I just had to play, now I know everything (and I thought: oh yes, you discovered who Santa and the Three Kings are) I even know that death exists". When she told me the latter, I remembered how difficult it was to incorporate the idea of ​​death in my own childhood. I really got what she meant, it was very harsh for me. Although she is younger than my son is, she is no longer the gullible and dependent child of her early childhood. The veils from transitioning into her second childhood are beginning to fall.
We brainstormed around what makes her happy nowadays; I tried to elicit how she felt about her homework, and what makes her feel strong on a daily basis. We talked about how with every loss, there is birth. The time when she only had to play might be over but she’s begun to play with mathematics and the written word. I told her how in my experience (and in everyone's) resisting pain only increases it. I invited her to relax, go with the flow, accept things, and enjoy the wonderful beginnings that she’s had so far. When I saw her breathing calmly, I left her to play on her own in her magical universe.
After having those conversations with both of my kids on the same day, I looked for my husband and told him everything. We embraced; we could understand our children, they’re growing up and their view on life is getting more realistic. We know that we need to surrender to transitions, and that we have to trust the process because there might be moments that hurt but only opening to our full range of emotions, we can savor the moments of genuine happiness.
Let’s toast to our inner child, or if it sounds very “new age”, let’s toast to the most innocent part that lives in us. We revive our childhoods on special days like the Holidays and in conversations with children – our sons and daughters, nephews, neighbors, students, etc. – Let’s always honor ourselves and our histories.
A big hug ❤