I am thinking of how I discuss negative emotions with my children… grief, sadness, fear, failure, worry, regret, pain, disappointment, etc., etc.  I think I have some significant areas where I can grow when it comes to this.  Overall, a learning experience from this evening has taught me that I can practice much in this area…

Tonight Adair was reading on the couch and I mentioned “ice skating” to her, in that it will be so fun for her to go next week for her field trip!  She and her class are going to get a lesson and then some free time!  How fun!!!  I thought.  Mmmmm, apparently NOT.  She shook her head with the look of “Oh NOooo.  That’s not me.  You are incorrect mother.” to which I replied in an encouraging and vigorous head nod of my own accompanied with a wide and excited smile.  Of course you know what that produced in my daughter… even more confusion and dismay on the face of my sweet child, which was then followed quickly by an aggressive head shake in the NO NO NO NEVER GONNA HAPPEN YOU CAN’T AND WON’T MAKE ME OR YOU’LL BE THE MOST HORRIBLE MOTHER ON THE PLANET direction.  All I could do was stare at her with an encouraging smile, and apparently I must have kept nodding my head yes, because then her cute aggressive no-no-no-head shake gave way to a slowed down version, which e v e r s o g r a d u a l l y melted, and lead to her sweet little head giving way to a slump as it fell forward to do a faceplant into her awaiting cupped hands.  This of course, was where her tears and incoherent speech became evident.

This is when a light bulb went off.  Instead of continuing on with what I normally would do… a cheer leading crazy thing where I try to put a positive spin on whatever the problem is, I instead opted to slow down with her and literally feel her anxiety.  And although I never reached out to touch her, and instead only moved closer to her and sat next to the couch on the floor near her, I could still FEEL her dismay, her frustration, her shock, her betrayal, and her fear. Now, I realize I am probably the last person on the planet to get this, and that every other mother out there in the world is perfect with a capital P. Forgive my honesty here, forgive my hiding in plain sight moment. I know I have practiced this before, maybe with friends, but it seems it’s been a while since I have done this with my children.

I sat with her tonight and let her cry out and babble her rational, and I let her try to get to the bottom of the fear… with the open ended questions… and somehow she magically just came to a point where she said “Is all of my class going to be there?!!?!” and I replied “I think so…” which lead to her responding with a huff, “Well, if they are all going to go, I will go!” And although she said it, I could tell she wasn’t that happy about it, but nonetheless, that was the apparent end.

I don’t know exactly what lead her to that place, but she got there, and in that moment I heard the quiet voice that advised me not to be a cheerleader, and instead to acknowledge.

Sometimes I’m so thick, I think I miss those subtle cues, but thankfully today, I heard it, I listened, and I felt.  I didn’t fix… I didn’t try to cheer… I didn’t spin…  I didn’t try to construct a new reality that seemed better to believe… I just let her be temporarily grieved, and a magical outcome occurred.

My understanding learned from this?  Talk less, listen more.  Be ok with the negative emotions, whoever they belong to.  Not everything is on the sunny positive side…. and that’s ok.  Learn to deal with negative emotions, not by sweeping them away and ignoring their presence, but instead by acknowledging them and being ok to let them take up whatever space they need in that moment.

I don’t know why at times we turn into that person who has to have all the answers, and feels the privilage or duty to convey such.  I don’t know why at times it seems like we need to look like we’ve either been there and done that, or heaven forbid that we act like we are smarter than that and have never felt this or that given emotion, or worse yet, that we invalidate the acutal emotion itself.

Pause.
Step in.
Join.
Go alongside.
Journey with.
Talk less.
Listen more.