Next week is children’s mental
health week and the theme this year is “ Know yourself, grow yourself”. In our schools our children will be exploring
the different parts of themselves – the kind part, the mean part, the lazy
part, the super competitive part. They
will be meeting their big feelings and learning that all our emotions have a
place and a job and it is important to make room for every single one.
The tide has finally started to
change and we are now beginning to support our young people to shift themselves
from a “BUT” to an “AND”
From “I would like to go to the
party BUT I am feeling anxious about going” to “I would like to go to the party AND I am
feeling anxious about going”
This may appear to be a benign
change but within these small words lies so much agency both for ourselves and
for our children.
Within this context imagine your
child has been invited to a playdate.
They are super excited and they are super anxious. Their mind starts to show up with all sorts
of things like “will I be ok” “will I be able to find the toilet” “what if I
need a drink of water” “where will I put my coat” …and so the list goes
on. This is our child’s mind doing
exactly what it is supposed to do - thinking of all the possible scenarios so our
child can feel prepared in the situation.
Two things normally happen in this space…
We attempt to reassure them
by challenging their thoughts – “you are fine without me at school all day, you
are going to be fine;” “you have been away from us lots of time before and you
have been OK”, “you can always ask where the toilet is” … This can be helpful
because it supports our children to broaden their perspective and essentially
challenge what their mind is showing up with.
This can also be difficult because their mind will almost always be more
tenacious than you and will meet your challenge with endless “Yeah, but what if
….”
We invalidate them – “you’re
not worried you are just excited”, “everybody loves playdates there is nothing
to worry about”, “you are overreacting” ….
While well-meaning, each of these
scenarios (if repeated again and again) have consequences. Persistently invalidating our kids’ emotional
experiences can lead to two things. One,
our kids feel like we don’t get it and stop sharing their feelings with us. Two, they
start to question their own emotions because they are persistently told they
are not feeling what they think they are feeling. And we know excessive reassurance actively
maintains anxiety.
As a parent it can feel painful
to watch our kids grabble with tricky feelings and our instinct is often to
move them away from these feelings. But each
time we move them away we are missing an opportunity for growth. We need to use
these opportunities to focus on the longer-term gain of tolerating discomfort. None
of us, big or small, have control over our emotions. They show up when they
want, how they want and for however long they want. When our children learn that it is perfectly
normal to feel uncomfortable doing something new, they can feel uncomfortable
about something AND they can do it anyway.
As parents it is our job to be strong leaders. When
we feel confident that the situation is safe, although uncomfortable, the most
helpful thing we can do in that moment is to support our children to go and do
the uncomfortable thing.
The how….
·
Normalise feeling uncomfortable about new things
- “I get it. It is completely normal to feel worried about doing something
new”
·
Draw attention to the difference between unsafe
and uncomfortable. “I believe that you have big feelings about going to Jack’s
house AND I believe that you can manage those big feelings.” Our children look to us for cues about how
safe a situation is and how confident we feel about their ability to manage the
situation. Over time our confidence in
them will become their confidence in them.
·
Hold a sturdy boundary. This will look different for different
kids. It might be in one big step - they
go for the whole playdate – or it might be much smaller steps – they go for 10
minutes while you wait in the car.
We live in a world that consistently
allows us to choose comfort. We want to watch
a movie; we click onto amazon prime. We would like a new top; we order online
and it arrives the next morning. We want
to find the answer to a tricky maths question, we pick up our phones and type
the question in. Our kids are growing up
in a world of instant gratification and while this can feel massively convenient
in the short term, in the long term we are taking away the organic moments that
build their capacity to sit with discomfort.
Because of this we need to hold steady when our child is feeling uncomfortable
in a safe situation. This feeling is
often unfamiliar to our children and unfamiliar often feels unsafe. Supporting our children to feel the feeling AND
do it anyway may be hard in the short term but in the long term it will be one of
your most worthwhile investments.
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