Kids and Pain
Our culture’s avoid pain at all costs mentality is actually killing us. And our children. It’s wrecking mental health, relationships, and souls. Ever see a kid get emotionally wound up about something? What do most of us parents these days do? Hand the kid a phone. Distraction.
Instead of modeling and guiding our kids through the emotional waves they are experiencing, we shut down those expressions and forms of communication. Sadly, we miss the opportunity to build soothing connection with our child in those short moments of little hurts and big frustrations.
In reality, we miss a whole lot more as we send our children an unhealthy message about emotions: Emotions are inconvenient and to be shut down as quickly as possible. Over and over again we reinforce emotional numbing in the lives of our kids.
How’s this going to translate to adolescence, when the hurts are deeper and more complex? When the kids are little, that’s when we are to be building foundations of trust, safety, empathy, and pathways to connection. Emotionally anchoring the little ones with our soothing voices, gentle touches, and safe presence gives them a sense that we caregivers can tolerate and be with them in their distress, setting them up to trust us for an emotionally supported and connected adolescence (a whole other thing is understanding they ambivalently disconnect and reconnect throughout the developmental process of this stage).
I also know We can’t give away what we don’t have. Many of us wonder how we can do for our children what wasn’t done for us when we were the little ones. How we can we do for our kids what we still don’t really do for ourselves? By addressing our own pain, whether it’s past or present, we better equip ourselves to be the soothing, safe, and reliable parents our kids need us to be.
Dive Deeper…
Our course on attachment explores the concept of allowing your emotions space where you can be present with them and with yourself. Learn more about the course by clicking the button below.