Providing Your Children Shelter in the Storm
Sometimes as a parent it’s very difficult to know what to do in a difficult moment or situation. I can’t tell you how often I feel completely lost. One of my kids is behaving in a way I can’t tolerate, or is melting down, or the two of them are fighting and no one even registers I’m there until I start yelling. Suddenly, they hear me. They stop, maybe, at least for a moment. So I keep yelling, threaten a “consequence” (read: punishment), give a consequence, or just walk away because I’m so irritated I can’t stand there any longer.
None of that feels like the best solution. In those moments, I simply don’t have “the solution” in my awareness.
Perhaps the problem I’m having is that I’m trying to figure out what I can do rather than who I can be in those moments.
My goal in those moments is to do something, anything, just to make it stop. In doing so, my focus is completely on my own needs for the behavior to stop, and really not on what, or who, is underlying the behavior. My focus is not on my child and her needs.
I therefore often do something aimed at separating myself from the behavior, which instead of creating connection and trust, creates distance and mistrust. Connection and trust are far more likely than distance and mistrust to lead to calm and collaboration. It seems, then, that perhaps shifting my goal from doing something to stop behavior to being someone who can find connection amidst chaos may help.
Easier said than done. What does this even look like?
Archbishop Desmond Tutu has said that “To choose hope is to step firmly forward into the howling wind, baring one’s chest to the elements, knowing that, in time, the storm will pass.” This may seem to have little to do with parenting, but stay with me.
When something is going on with our kids that we are having trouble managing, our instinct is to try to force change. We convince ourselves that this needs to stop, now, or things are going to get worse, our kids will become demons, and we will have failed as parents. Archbishop Tutu is commenting on the futile nature of forcing change, and he is saying that what we need is hope that we can bear it, and faith that it will change. That’s a powerful message.
If we can begin here as parents, in a much more positive foundation of hope that we can handle this and faith our kids are going to turn out fine, then choosing different responses to their behavior becomes more natural.
He says to “bear one’s chest to the elements.” How do we do this? For me, this is about connection. We tap into our innate capacity for compassion and we allow ourselves to share compassion with our kids while they are stuck in their storm.
We recognize our common human bond. Instead of separating ourselves from our kids based on their behavior, we see the similarities between them and us. We’ve all lost it, yes? In fact we are about to do so in the situation. We’ve all argued with another yes? Again, we are about to do so in the situation. We are a lot more like our kids than we are different, despite the years of “maturity” we convince ourselves we have over them.
To bare our chests to the elements is simply to bare our compassionate souls, share our kindness, and recognize that we are the same even when they are amidst their chaos.
In this context, when our kids are in the middle of a storm, our job is to try to provide the calm shelter from it.
What that looks like in practical terms depends on who the parent is, who the child is, and the dynamic between the two. It takes a bit of trial and error to work it out, and it changes from situation to situation. It may look like a hug, getting down on the floor with a relaxed face and making eye contact, offering some encouraging and/or sympathetic words, providing a little space followed by some support, just sitting quietly with an open heart and warm facial expression and waiting (sometimes for a long time), a touch on the shoulder, perhaps some humor, or something else. What it almost definitely does not look like, however, is an attempt to use power or control to force change.
Next time we are confronted with our kids unmanageable behavior let’s try to shift our focus from what we must do to stop the behavior to who we want to be to support them. We truly are compassionate beings in our cores, we need only reconnect with this part of ourselves and grow it through practice. Then perhaps we can BE the solution with our kids instead of trying to find the solution for ourselves.