We’re in the car, returning from celebrating the Jewish holiday, Purim, at Temple Har Shalom. We’ve had a fun night, including participating in the rowdy re-enactment of the Purim story and being served a lovely catered dinner. The sky darkens, and the kids clutch new toys won at the Purim carnival.
“The one part I didn’t like?” announces Rose without provocation, “is that I didn’t get more cookies.”
A small, cramped place in my brain lights up in silent accusation: After all that fun, you’re dwelling on the cookies you didn’t eat?
From the moment we arrived, a table of traditional Purim cookies, called Hamentashen, were available. We told our kids they could choose one cookie after dinner. There are things, as parents, that we’re loose and easy with; cookies before dinner are not one of them.
Dan speaks up: “That must’ve been hard to see kids grabbing cookies all night. All those cookies just sitting there! And you had to wait. That felt unfair!”
“Yeah,” Rosie replies with the buoyancy of a newly inflated balloon. She returns to wriggling the rubber worms won at the beanbag toss. Hamentashen cookies become the proverbial hatchet, now buried.
Somewhere down the bumpy road of parenthood, we’ve been duped into believing we can manage our children’s difficult emotions by telling them how to feel. “Shhh, you’re okay,” we whisper when they’re howling after a fall. “You’re lucky you got one cookie!” we insist. “It’s not a big deal, you have hundreds more,” we say when a beloved pink bead rolls down the sewer grate.
Telling your children not to fret while fat tears sail down their cheeks is like speaking to them from behind a glass wall. The excellent and logical soliloquy on why cookies are special treats is lost on a child who’s gripped in disappointment.
The good news is that if you apply empathy (which is simply nonjudgmental listening without problem-solving or lecturing) like a bandage to a wound, children feel heard, understood and not bullied into defending their position. (Trouble will escalate if your children become invested in defending their feelings). You don’t have to believe or not believe that being denied unlimited cookies warrants disappointment. You simply acknowledge and allow your child’s feelings. And feelings don’t last forever. When your child eventually moves from the primitive brain of “emotional stuckness” back into executive function, she can consider a rational explanation regarding your position on sugar before dinner.
Natalie Christensen and Nathan McTague, childhood educators, are coming to Durango to offer their nationwide workshop, Building an Emotionally Safe Space. Here, you will learn the latest brain science to understand how emotional processing affects children. They say, “Everything we want for our children, students and families hinges on healthy emotional processing and the development of optimal neuro-emotional habits.”
This means that although it feels like we want Compliance Now! what we really want is children who choose to cooperate (at least the majority of the time) because a two-way street of respect has been forged that doesn’t rely on bribes, threats or rewards.
As I practice “peaceful parenting,” I can feel my muscles of patience strengthen, and the space of my own pause before reacting, lengthen. This prevents me from saying something I’ll regret and helps me see my child as needing support and encouragement, rather than needing to be wrestled into submission. This truly is a practice, one which I appreciate the opportunity to deepen. See you at the workshop!
Reach Rachel Turiel at sanjuandrive@frontier.net.Visit her blog, 6512 and growing, on raising children, chickens and other messy, rewarding endeavors at 6,512 feet.
If you go
Building an Emotionally Safe Space workshop will be held from 2 to 4:30 p.m. April 19 at Rocky Mountain Retreat Center, 848 East 3rd Ave. Durango. Cost is $30 per person or $40 per parenting team. For more information, or to sign up, call (970) 903-0672.
