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.
She immediately got very upset and began crying and screaming at me. I moved closer to her and she began to scream at me to go away.
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!
After about 10 minutes, my husband came in and said, ‘how do you know you’re not hurting them or making things worse?’ I had to shout over their wailing that we were on the right track and even predicted that, at the end of all this, one sister would genuinely give the toy to the other.
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.
We often give in to her wants, even though we don’t think it’s a good idea, because she looks miserable when she’s not getting what she asks for. We get confused about the right thing to do.
Desperate, one day, to get my active and resistant 3-year-old dressed, I came up with this game.
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.
Recently in our family we’ve had a new baby. That’s brought all sorts of adjustments, of course, for my son. There are a few “playlistening” ideas that have been helpful, that others may find useful too: