My kids and notes: Year 7.6
July 19, 2022
Learning empathy and how to cope
I didn’t show (feel?) any empathy for my mom when I was growing up. I remember her getting mad at me for not sympathizing about her moments of (physical) pain. I can’t remember FEELING any concern for her when she had minor moments of OUCH. I don’t have any memory of that feeling so assumed that I didn’t though of course memory is imperfect. It’s like how we don’t have an equivalent of “bless you” / “gesundheit” / “salud” for sneezing that I know of in our native language. I just didn’t register an “ouch” as a thing to respond to. I have the same sort of numb non-empathy / impatient reaction to when JB is being super dramatic about relatively small (to me obviously) things like dripping juice on their art and declaring it ruined.
I worry about illness, serious injury, and deep emotional distress, but I don’t over the small things.
I shared this with my therapist in a recent session. I had always assumed it was because I was a uncaring kid and that’s carried over into adulthood. Her theory is a little different. She thinks that I never had a model for being “weak” (having emotions, being vulnerable, needing empathy), so I didn’t know how to respond to it in others. I still don’t, apparently, because I struggle deeply with parenting JB through their moments of small crisis. I get angry first, or I get annoyed. Especially because JB is given to random dramatic declarations to get attention when my reaction isn’t what they want: “You don’t love me” and “Fine, I’ll do (whatever happened to them) to your stuff!”
I hate dramatics, so I get more mad or non-responsive.
Eventually I might find myself remembering that they’re a kid and of course the small things matter deeply to them and that I’m supposed to be showing them empathy but that’s usually a long haul from Point A to Point B.
In that recent juice incident, I had to talk them through the fact that we all make mistakes. We all have the choice to learn from them or not, to ask for help or not, and of course it’s going to be sad, disappointing and frustrating but if our choice is then to tantrum and go on the attack and destroy things, people are much less inclined to offer help. As an example, I shared that I made a mistake on every single one of my sewing projects this year. If I had blamed my sewing sisters like JB blamed me for their drips, they would never have had the opportunity to point out a possible fix that made the projects better than the original plan. I don’t know how much that sank in but I made a suggestion for them to fix their project and they started to sing “I wonder, what if, let’s try” so thanks to Sesame Street for that assist.
Life with Smol Acrobat
That clean up song is like mind control. I was amazed how well it worked on JB in daycare but I assumed the environment, being surrounded by other little kids doing the cleaning too, had more to do with it than the song itself. They’ve only experienced it at home obviously and it still works! Not as well, they need a lot of direction, but it works.
*****
They’ve finally come around on scrambled eggs! A staple in our household they’ve always refused but they have come around!
Fun new thing: if they’re in the mood and you kneel down, and say hug? Smol will run to you fast as they can and throw themselves into your arms.
Their other new thing: playing trust falls with me even if I am nowhere near them. They think the scramble to catch them is HIGH-larious. They think it’s even funnier when they crash and fall to the ground.
*****
They’re a pretty self contained little soul right now but these songs make them boogie a little (which is a lot for them):
Pupdate
Poor Sera experienced an overdose of Smol affection this month and she did not like it. They’ve been wanting to hug, kiss, and nibble on her the way they do to me. I don’t like the nibbles either! I also don’t know why they think it’s so funny, but both my children enjoy/enjoyed biting on me and it’s weird.
Sera is a big target for Smol’s affection because they really like animals and especially their own doggy so we’ve had to be extra vigilant in intervening when they get TOO “loving”.
Sera’s benefiting from Smol’s picky eating, in the meantime. We don’t share people food but fruit doesn’t count and when Smol pulls that really annoying “chew it up and spit it out” thing with their (dog safe) fruit, Sera gets the chunks. She’s very pleased with that.
Precious Moments
JB: If you do rock paper scissors with three people and one does rock and one does paper and one does scissors, does that mean it’s a tie?
…. That’s a good question.
PIC: where’s JB?
Smol points at JB.
Where’s Daddy?
Smol points at PiC.
Where’s Mommy?
Smol pats PiC’s arm.
Where’s JB?
JB walking past a test kit I’d used: can I take a COVID test?
Do you feel sick?
No
Were you around someone who was?
No.
Then why test?
It’s here, why not?
I’m not empathetic with small kids/big drama either!! My SIL does something I appreciate. She doesn’t get into the emotion but will pause, look at them, and say “I see you’re upset/frustrated. I hear you.” and then might distract/help solve depending on the situation. It seems like that acknowledgment satisfies them.
Parenting is a lot of chances to beat yourself up!
What did Sera do when it was too much? Did she hide from Smol?
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I need to practice that and see if it helps. 🤞🤞
Parenting is so complicated! So many chances to relive your own traumas and try to not replicate them 😬
She just walks away when she’s over it. Sometimes she walks away QUICKLY. They started chasing after lately, thinking it’s a game, but we always tell them to stop and intervene physically and pet Sera to apologize.
I think it’s ok to not make a big deal out of small owies. Kids look to adults to see how they should be responding to things that hurt a little or are a little scary etc.
We tended to model our excellent daycare teachers. Very matter-of-fact about things– ask if the kid is ok, clean up the problem, ask if they want a bandaid (daycare) or a kiss to make it better (home). Then off to play, because often a bandaid or a kiss is all that is needed with little kids. (I still ask DH for a kiss sometimes when I get a papercut. It helps. But my kids are old enough that they now refuse, though DC2 still wants bandaids sometimes.)
I hate dramatics too. A common phrase in our house is, “Do you need attention, because there are much better ways of getting our attention.” I think the trick is to not let it emotionally get to you. Though when it does, we do send the kids to their room, not as punishment but because we need a break from them. Then when people have calmed down we can have a rational discussion about whatever it was. Mostly though we can just get mildly amused– we’re adults, they’re kids. It’ll be ok.
A lot of time though little kids just need a hug and to be reminded that we love them no matter what. (And ~7 year olds are jerks. Even the formerly sweetest kids. They grow out of it.)
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I thought it was ok too but they just set up a howl to rattle the rafters and boy does it set off something non-neutral in me.
I need to find my neutral place and find a way not to be emotionally affected by the dramatics.
I appreciate your experiences!
I tend to have a lot of patience with Upset Kid mode, which sometimes works to defuse the upset and sometimes doesn’t. I think sometimes my kid is so awash in her emotions that she doesn’t know the path out, if that makes much sense. This is my philosophy, which may be just useful to me, but it might also be useful to you–
Growing up, I learned to distance myself from how I was feeling and to silence my own discomforts/unhappiness. As an adult, that baseline approach led me into some negative situations that I let get pretty bad because I didn’t let myself feel things. Or did feel pretty unhappy, but I didn’t want to have speak/act/etc. and delayed dealing with the situation for much longer than was good for me.
I want my kid to recognize when she’s unhappy about something, and I want her to think that her being unhappy about a situation matters. I want her to look at it as a sign that tells her that she needs to deal with a problem, ask for help, or get the heck out. Right now, every problem she has seems small to an adult, because she’s a kid– she doesn’t and shouldn’t have adult-sized problems. So in my mind, her problems are training-wheel problems where she’s going to learn. What I do is influenced by what I want her to learn. So that she has better tools when she’s a teenager and an adult than I did.
I tend to come from a belief that it’s usually pretty reasonable for her to be unhappy about whatever she’s upset about, but that she’s still learning what to do when she’s feeling those emotions. I do a TON of acknowledge/redirect, which doesn’t result in instant change, but I see incremental changes over longer periods of time– months, years. So, for example A POKY THING IN MY SHOE!!!!! gets a calm: “yes, that’s uncomfortable, we can fix it. But I can’t help you fix it if you’re yelling and kicking. You have to calm down in order to get it fixed.” Which can still just result in more yelling and kicking, but it’s shorter than it used to be. She’s also finally getting to where sometimes (not all times) she doesn’t lose her calm immediately. So I take those as a sign of progress, and keep going with the taking it seriously and calmly and keeping going. Same with her other issues, whatever they are.
Which isn’t to say that I wouldn’t like for her to stop freaking out entirely… but she’s freaking out less. And working on patience.
Thank you for sharing. I think we have similar philosophies. I’m just really struggling to get back to practicing what I believe consistently. It feels much harder at this age than it did a few years ago. Coincidence or pandemic? I don’t know. But I appreciate your perspective, it helps me keep my head on a little straighter.
Wow, I feel like you really hit so many nails on the head with this one <3
Not that it's easy to consistently practice. Two techniques I know of but am still learning to remember to use are 1) envisioning myself in a golden impenetrable bubble
(actually I used to imagine myself being observed by someone else, and activating my superhero parent mode, ha) and 2)pressing gently somewhere on myself with my hand to remind myself I'm a separate person and don't need to take on their emotions
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I’m going to borrow both!!