About
Children
Hidden Messages
by
Elizabeth Pantley
What our words and actions are really telling our children
The Dentist
Dori opened the curtains to the morning sun and sat on the edge of
her daughter’s bed. Her usually chipper earlybird just slid deeper
under the covers. “Come on, Naomi, time to get up!” Naomi groaned
and announced that she wasn’t getting up today. “And why not?” Dori
asked, although she was sure she knew the answer.
From somewhere under the covers came a tiny, frightened voice, one
that under normal circumstances could be heard from blocks away. “I
don’t want to go to the dentist. I’m scared.”
“Oh, Naomi! There’s nothing to be scared of, honey. It’s nothing to
have baby teeth pulled. The dentist said that it won’t even hurt,
because baby teeth don’t have much of a root at all. It will be over
before you know it.” Dori tried to fight the feeling that her
daughter wasn’t as strong or brave as she should be.
Naomi stalled. She groaned, she squirmed, she stretched—but in the
end, Naomi finally crawled out of bed. She felt cold, despite the
morning’s warmth. After getting dressed, she came into the kitchen
and poured her usual Paul Bunyan-sized bowl of cereal. Dori walked
in just as Naomi was about to add the milk. “Stop!” she called out.
“Remember, the dentist said no breakfast this morning!”
Naomi’s bottom lip began to quiver. “It’s not fair, Mom!” she
protested. “It’s bad enough I have to go to the dentist. Now I can’t
even eat my own breakfast?”
Dori hurriedly scooped the cereal back into the box. “You know it’s
for your own good. You need to follow the doctor’s instructions.”
“But I’m hungry!” Naomi shouted.
“Well, it doesn’t help to get all upset about it.” Dori continued in
a calm and understanding voice, “Go brush your hair and your teeth
and get ready to go.” An exceptionally loud clomping of feet
signaled Naomi’s exit. Dori rolled her eyes.
A few minutes later, they were in the car headed toward the
dentist’s office. After Naomi changed the radio station a dozen
times, Dori finally reached over and turned it off. “Calm down,
honey!”
“I can’t,” Naomi whined. “How long is this gonna take? What time
will I get to school?”
“I’m not sure how long the procedure takes. But the dentist said
you’d be taking the rest of the day off to relax and recover.”
“No way!” Naomi complained, “I’m ‘spose to meet Sara and Julia at
the playground for recess! We were gonna try out the new tire swing!
If I’m not there, they’ll get mad at me.”
Her mom smiled at her. “Of course, they won’t be mad at you. That
would be silly. Just tell them about your teeth being pulled.”
Naomi contemplated that for a moment. Then she gathered herself,
straightened her back, and matter-of-factly announced that she would
not be having any teeth pulled today.
“Oh, yes you are!’ her Mom laughed.
Naomi tensed in frustration. She felt like crawling out of her skin.
“It’s not funny, Mom…” Naomi’s bottom lip was quivering again, the
way it did when she was a toddler confronted by something she
neither understood nor felt comfortable with. “It IS gonna hurt.”
Dori took a deep breath and glanced at her daughter, “Honey, it’s
okay. I really trust this dentist. He does good work. It will be
over quickly, and remember, he said it probably won’t hurt at all.”
Naomi mumbled the word, “Probably” and her shoulders hunched as she
slid deeper into her seat, watching the world rush by her window.
She imagined that behind every window of every house they passed was
a girl with more bravery and better teeth than she had. What was
wrong with her? She was worried about baby stuff. And suddenly, she
felt very, very small.
The Hidden Message
“Don’t be so foolish! The emotions you feel are silly and
inappropriate. I’ll tell you how you should feel; if you don’t, then
something’s wrong with you.”
Think About It
“Stop crying, it doesn’t hurt.” “Everything will be okay.” “You have
nothing to worry about—you’re just a kid.” “You’ll do fine on the
test.” Such natural adult responses! But your child is very likely
thinking: “But it DOES hurt!” “I AM worried!” “It’s NOT okay!”
Children, like adults, do feel what they feel; telling them that
they don’t just confuses and frustrates them, but doesn’t make the
feeling go away. In fact, the child will feel wholly misunderstood
and lonely in her fear, and the emotional monster that has been
created then feeds on itself. In addition, when it comes to physical
pain, every human being has a different tolerance level for pain.
What “doesn’t hurt” for one person may indeed hurt another. It’s
impossible to judge another persons pain—physical or emotional.
So if denying your children’s feelings doesn’t help, what about
explaining away the problem or giving sage advice? Neither of these
ideas helps, either. Your child is so immersed in her feelings that,
while you’re busy explaining or advising, she’s busy trying to
convince you of her very real concerns. The result is that you both
talk at, instead of to, one another, and neither of you really hears
the other.
The problem is that we view child-size concerns through adult eyes.
But seeing the picture is a matter of proportion: a child’s problems
are relative to her size. Remember how huge, for example, a
countertop seemed when you were a kid? That’s because you were so
much smaller. When you grew above that countertop, you forgot the
frustration of reaching for a snack placed there for you when you
couldn’t even see it. Our fears are like that. And fears of one type
or another are always with us--only their scale changes. Our
countertops simply grow higher as we become older and more
experienced.
Changes You Can Make
Could the answer for Dori be as simple as acknowledging her
daughter’s feelings? Letting her know that her feelings are
real—simply by virtue of their being felt—and that her concerns, her
pain, and her worry are normal? Yes, indeed! That’s the key to the
best response: validation.
Next time your child approaches you with pain, fear, or worry,
stifle the urge to respond in those usual unhelpful ways, such as
defying the feelings, minimizing the fear or waving away your
child’s concern. What your child wants most from you at a time like
that is to simply have you listen to her concerns and acknowledge
her feelings. “Yes, honey, I know you’re feeling scared. Even
grownups don’t like to go to the dentist.” Once her feelings are
acknowledged, she’ll be much more likely to hear your words of
explanation or advice which, in turn, may actually help soothe her.
If you deny her feelings, she’ll feel compelled to prove to you, and
to herself, that her feelings are valid to save face. If you give
her feelings validity, you can then help her understand and surmount
them. You can then help her develop strategies to deal with the fear
or pain that she’s struggling with. The ideas you express, once she
feels safe enough to express her fears, are the foundation for
strategies she’ll build later in life when confronted by fears of a
more adult proportion. Plus, when you help her understand and
identify her emotions, you will help her better understand herself,
and to trust her own perceptions about life.
There’s another important benefit from this approach, too: if she
doesn’t feel ridiculed even when she expresses fears she herself may
think are a little unwarranted, she’ll be more likely to come to you
for the big stuff. She’ll be more likely to turn to you rather than
to inappropriate, and perhaps dangerous, people and situations.
You’ll be the safe port in a storm she’ll so desperately need later,
a place she can go where she’s sure to be understood and comforted
no matter how silly her fear seems.
Robert and Elizabeth Pantley with their four children.
Click
here
to visit Elizabeth's web site and peruse her full range of books and
services.
Parenting educator Elizabeth Pantley is president of Better
Beginnings Inc., a family resource and education company. Pantley
frequently speaks to parents in schools, hospitals, and parent
groups, and her presentations are received with enthusiasm and
praise.
'Behold, I will bring them from the north country, And gather them
from the ends of the earth,
Among them the blind and the lame,
The woman with child and The one who labors with child, together,
A
great throng shall return there...And My people shall be satisfied with My goodness, says the LORD.'
Jeremiah 31:8, 14
~~~
©2009 Charis Childbirth
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May 2010
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