Tag Archives: sadness

Who Do Your Child’s Feelings Belong To?

When I became a parent for the first time thirty years ago, I was focused on sleeping through the night, first colds, milestones and solid foods. I think it’s just as well that parents don’t get to see the whole journey at once. There may be far less children born if we did.

From the moment my children were born, I did everything in my power to ensure their happiness. For every unhappy situation that arose, I was right there to provide a solution. If they felt anxious about doing something, I would tell them they were wonderful and they could do anything. If they felt unloved by friends, I would make sure they knew how lovable they were. At every turn, I tried to take away their pain because I understood happiness to be the absence of emotional pain. This unrealistic perspective and my inevitable failure to control my children’s happiness left me feeling, on a regular basis, that I was falling short as a parent. I now understand that I was attempting to do the impossible. A person’s feelings belong to him or her, as do the experiences that produce those feelings. My children’s feelings were not mine to have, to face, or to deal with.

This new understanding forced me to recognize that my parenting perspective needed revision. Facing adversity, disappointment, envy, sadness, and fear are natural and inescapable emotional experiences in all our lives. A child not doing well on a test, being rejected by a friend, not being chosen for a team, losing a pet or loved one, or fearing monsters under the bed are all situations that most parents can identify with. At times like these it would feel counterintuitive as a loving parent to withhold comfort, and I’m not suggesting we do. Comfort and love are to parenting as air is to life. I would like to suggest, however, that we add another layer to our parenting realm that I believe can dramatically increase our children’s chances for both a happier childhood and a happier adult life.

Emotional pain exists for similar reasons that physical pain exists. If we heed our physical pain, we learn how to live away from danger and harm. Similarly, emotional pain, if addressed properly, can help us live harmoniously with ourselves and with others. To learn from our emotional pain we must face our feelings, understand them, and ultimately deal with them in healthy and productive ways.

Children who learn to deal with all their feelings, not only the happy ones, do themselves a great service. These are the children who will develop a strong sense of self and will be more able to stand up to bullying, develop leadership qualities, and have the determination and perseverance that will make them more successful in school, in relationships, and in their adult lives.

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Explore and Elaborate

When your child tells you they are feeling sad. Spend time exploring their story and let them know that you have heard it and understood it. You can do this by retelling it using words that they can understand. Use this retell as an opportunity to introduce them to other feeling words that describe their feelings – this can be a word they are unfamiliar with – as this is a great opening to increase their “feeling vocabulary.”

Once you feel your child is satisfied that you have understood their story and their feelings, you can elaborate, using questions like “Have you felt like this at another time?” or “How do you think the other child felt?” or “Why do you think they behaved that way.” These questions put your child in the mindset to learn from their experiences and to problem-solve.

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Questions and Answers

Children don’t start out avoiding feelings of sadness, frustration or anxiety. They want to talk about them as much as they do the more comfortable feelings. But they quickly learn that these feelings are often taboo. Parents can make an enormous difference to this.

Children will often be your best guides and help you to help them talk about their feelings. Children ask questions, lots of them. Answer all your children’s questions with honesty, particularly when they are about negative feelings. Often, our initial reaction is to console, explain or eliminate negative feelings. This does not provide your child with the tools to deal with similar situations in the future.

For example, if your child expresses fear, avoid reactions like, “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” or, “Don’t be scared.” This can make your child feel unheard and shuts down communication. Accepting all of your child’s feelings, allows your child to accept their own feelings and work with them.

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I’m Sorry Karen Klein

Bullying saddens me. With four children, the subject has been the focus of my attention many times over the past twenty-nine years. I have had to deal with bullying in the school, in the neighbourhood and as they got older, bullying in the workplace. When I watched the YouTube video of Karen Klein being bullied by a group of grade seven boys, I was both saddened and horrified. I suppose there are no rules about the direction that bullying can take.

I felt more distressed as I began reading the comments posted on this viral video. They included anger at the situation, anger at the boys, anger at the parents, wanting the boys to suffer for their crime and even wanting them to die. There were also those who used this as a platform for their own hatred and prejudices by commenting on the presumed ethnicity of the boys. And finally, there were those who felt that what had happened would and could never happen to them.

I don’t believe that this is a simple problem involving these boys, their parents and Karen Klein. I’m not saying the boys should not be held accountable for their actions and take responsibility for them. They should. Nor am I saying that their parents should not be doing some soul searching. They should. I’m saying that the problem extends further.

Responsibility also lies with those who respond to this situation with hatred, perhaps because deep inside of them they know that given the right circumstances they could do the same. Responsibility also lies with those who react with piety because it makes them feel better about themselves. Responsibility also lies with those parents who firmly believe that this could never happen with their children. This naivety is the fuel for ongoing bullying.

Responsibility also lies with those who feel good about themselves for being a part of a “non-bullying” campaign in schools but don’t realize that a campaign like this only works if the schools are vigilant and proactive because children bully in secret. Responsibility lies with those parents who teach their children to stay away from trouble and turn the other cheek. You are responsible. I am responsible.

There are only two questions that we should ask about this situation. What do I do to perpetuate this? What can I do to make it better?

There are two places where our children learn humanity – at home and at school.

Walk into a book store and look at the parenting section. There are a huge number of books to choose from. This is reflective of the many parents wanting to do better. There are many resources for parents and many parents who are enlightened regarding bullying and how to teach their children to not bully and to not become bullies.

However, from the age of three, in many cases, we entrust our children, for a large part of their lives, to schooling and many of us assume that schools are doing it right. But are they? Teachers can barely cope with getting through the curriculum of academic subjects. With the competitiveness between schools to perform, any spare time that they might have is spent aiming for higher academic achievement. It is no wonder that there is no room for educating our children in empathy, peer pressure, bullying or crowd mentality.

We no longer question the content within the curriculum of our schools for fear of being left behind. For many parents, the academic school curriculum is not enough. Their children spend time after their school day at extra “something” to put them further ahead. I think we should question this education model. I would rather my child know less about chemical compositions and more about being a decent human being. With all the research that has been done in the past few years on emotional intelligence we now know it can be taught and more importantly, children with higher emotional intelligence are more likely to be successful in all areas of their lives.

Why can’t all of this be it’s own subject at school? Let’s call it “Humanology.” In this class we can teach children to be empathic, rather than dealing with the fallout of bullying. We can teach them perseverance instead of punishing them for not working hard enough. We can teach them self-awareness, self-regulation and motivation. We can teach them that it is not our relationship with computers and books but with people that determines our success.

Our children rely on us to teach them, show them by example and let them know what they should focus on. Bullying is everyone’s problem. I’m sorry Karen Klein.

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