I was calm and felt an internal peace I have not had in a while. I knew I was there for her and that it was not my responsibility to “make her” feel better, that she just needed to to feel her pain, confusion and anger.
Listening Tools have been so helpful for us.
My 12-year-old daughter was mad and sad about feeling ugly and fat this morning and focusing on her “flabby” tummy.
The truth is that his mother really sticks to buying organic food most of the time and wouldn’t buy these gummie gushers; we are a little more lenient in letting my daughter explore some different foods once in a while.
After I had my daughter I didn’t know whether I wanted to have a second child. I didn’t really understand the benefits of having a sibling.
I didn’t really realize what I was doing, but I could feel that Anna was not listening to me. Tension was building up in the car. When we arrived at home the first thing she did was to shout angrily at her little sister without any reason!
As soon as another child would begin playing with a toy, he would come over and either hit the child or grab the toy away.
I have never been able to put into words how I feel. It seemed inconceivable how I could express so much love. Afterward, I felt like a great mother.
I really blew it. I said, “What are you DOING?! You wrecked it! I can’t believe you did that!” I was yelling on and on. (It’s so awful when you make such a big obvious mistake.) Anyhow, my son put his head in the sofa pillow and cried. So I went over to him. He kept turning away from me. I apologized. I said I’d made a mistake.
Desperate, one day, to get my active and resistant 3-year-old dressed, I came up with this game.
Feeling terrified and completely overtaken by an even bigger need to speak out, I raised my hand and suggested we partner up and each take five minutes to talk about and acknowledge how WE were feeling.
Immediately after that, he said his first sentence!
Whatever I said, the answer was “NO!” He was really out of kilter.
He was doing his thing, but he was thinking about me, too.
Our children need us to be open to the intensity and the power of the feelings they are having. They need us to fully hear how hard it is.