Am I Really Okay with My Kids’ Feelings?
I was behind on my errands to begin this week. We hadn’t done any grocery shopping over the weekend and were completely out of berries (if you have toddlers, you understand the gravity of this error). I had a full day of work while my boys were at preschool, so I knew we would have to stop at the store after school. I packed snacks for pick-up to sustain my 2 and 4-year-old through this errand and prepared myself to move as efficiently through the store as possible to make things go quickly. My boys are incredibly tired and emotional at the end of the school day, so adding in an extra errand is always a risky excursion.
From the moment I took them out of class, I could tell they were fragile. There was pushback on each step of getting in the car and getting buckled, tears over the chosen snack I brought, and arguments about one brother looking at the other. Maybe on another day I would have just tossed in the towel and called it a wash, but, berries.
I pushed through and wrangled them into a shopping cart to dart through the store and rush home. Then it happened, my 2-year-old tossed an onion in the cart instead of handing it to his older brother and feelings were had. My 4-year-old screamed, “I wanted to put the onion in and he didn’t hand it to ME!!!!!” followed by a long, rumbling growl and tears. People turned around to observe the scene, and I felt all the panic a parent feels when their kid's struggles are on display. I felt my cheeks warm and my grip tighten on the cart as I quickly tried to quell my son’s anger. I wasn’t responding out of care for his disappointment and frustration, I was responding to make it stop because there was a hidden message running through my mind, “He probably looks like he’s spoiled because he’s throwing a fit about such a small thing. People are going to think I spoil my kid.” I can logically tell you that this is not true, but boy, it takes some effort to stop that message from overriding my system in the moment of a public tantrum. I immediately start thinking about what the onlookers are thinking, how they might be judging me, my son, or both of us for this emotional demonstration. And that’s just what it is, he is demonstrating his emotions and the gravity with which he feels them, and letting that emotion out (smart!). If he had the tools to express it differently at that moment, he would have. On days when he isn’t worn out and tired/hungry, he can tell me in a more controlled way that he is disappointed and upset, but he’s out of those resources by the end of a day at school, and quite frankly, I often am too.
I realize that part of what is underneath my desire to stop his outburst is that I too am uncomfortable with disappointment. I’m especially uncomfortable with expressing it. I connect disappointment with being ungrateful and spoiled, unable to put others before yourself. I could point to several reasons this exists within my schema, and I can see how it impacts me when my kids demonstrate those emotions. I want to stop it. I want to pretend they don’t feel that or convince them it’s not a big deal. It is so hard to sit in their disappointment.
It may be the case that when you were growing up, there were acceptable and unacceptable emotions. There were the ones people were comfortable with (usually happy, joyful, and peaceful), the ones people were comfortable with as long as they were expressed acceptably (maybe sadness, loneliness, and disappointment), and the emotions that were not acceptable (anger, jealousy, and fear to name a few). As kids, when we received messages that we shouldn’t have certain feelings, or received messages that we could only demonstrate certain emotions in a “correct'“ way, it makes it difficult for us to leave room for those emotions in ourselves as adults and in the lives of our children. We become uncomfortable with our kids’ outbursts because we’ve spent so long tampering our own feelings to be acceptable to others. That’s a lot to let go of!
Here are a couple of reminders I give myself to help me unpack this baggage and give my sons a more open emotional landscape on which to grow:
Childhood is all about practice, not mastery. This reminder is important because it helps me establish realistic expectations for their emotional control. We can help our kids learn ways to release their feelings, with the understanding that it is practice, not an expectation that they will have full emotional stability at age 4 (or 14 for that matter). The logical part of our brains isn’t fully developed until 25, so expecting a kid or teenager to react logically isn’t a fair expectation. That being said, we can take opportunities to broaden their skill set and give them chances to practice those skills with lots of grace for when they just can’t.
My emotional baggage is mine to unpack, not my sons’. I need to uncover why I’m so uncomfortable with expressing disappointment and address that so I can parent from a place of empathy rather than fear and control.
I remind myself that I am there to help them through their emotional struggles, not to stop it or squash it. We can teach our kids coping skills by walking them through the emotions. When we try to convince them not to feel something, we inadvertently teach them that the feeling is not okay.
This is not easy or quick work, but it is so important. Imagine a generation of adults who feel confident to lovingly express their disappointment, who feel in touch with their emotions and the emotions of others, and who know how to take responsibility for what they feel. We are giving our kids a long-lasting gift by addressing this discomfort within ourselves. We are giving ourselves a gift too.