This Monday morning my daughter woke up in a wild kind of mood. She started throwing the cushions off the sofa, pulling the magnetic letters off the fridge, and seemed much more manic than usual. She poured water on the floor, and orange juice down her top, both on purpose. She had a couple accidents as well, which was very unusual. What was the matter with her?

In the evening she tried to let off steam by throwing cushions at her dad, and laughing a lot. We had fun together, but by the end of the day she was both exhausted, and still finding it hard to relax, which made for a frustrating bedtime of endless stories!

After she eventually fell asleep, my husband and I reflected on what had happened. The day before we’d gone to a theme park, and it had been a very stimulating environment. We’d had fun going on the rides, and then there was a Halloween parade, with ghosts and witches walking through the park. They weren’t doing anything really scary, and were smiling and waving at the children, but I noticed my daughter look away. At the time I wasn’t sure if she was scared, or if it was all just a bit too much after a long day. But it was so unusual for her to have accidents, that I became sure some fear had been triggered.

We’d planned to go to local Halloween event in a nearby village, and now I was thinking, should I protect her by not taking her?

When she woke up the next day I decided to talk to her about the parade. I explained to her about Halloween, how the people were dressed up, and might look a bit scary, but they weren’t mean, and that she was always safe with us.

As I told her this she started to cry, and the more I explained that she was safe, the more she cried. After a couple minutes she was happy again, and said, ‘’I want to dress up too!’.

Sometimes crying can be an indication that something’s wrong in the present, that there’s something that we need to fix or change to make our children happy. But here I was simply giving her information, creating safety, by explaining Halloween, and as my daughter began to feel relieved, she let go of some of the earlier fear by crying. I listened to her feelings, and didn’t talk to much, just enough too reassure her that she was safe.

Releasing that fear, allowed her to get excited about Halloween. If I’d never provided the opportunity to hear her feelings, perhaps I’d have tried to ‘protect’ her, which wouldn’t have helped her build resilience or allow her to enjoy the festival. I’m still careful to stop her being exposed to the real scary stuff, but I can relax and not be too overprotective.

Our children’s off-track behavior can sometimes come out of the blue. We might not always know exactly what’s bothering them, but we can be sure that they aren’t simply behaving this way because they are ‘naughty’. It’s much more likely that they are trying to tell us about an emotional hurt. Parenting by Connection, offers a way to help our child to process their emotions, and when it works well, they don’t need to tell us with challenging (and irritating!) behaviour. We don’t need to talk a lot, or try to get our children to use words to describe their feelings, but sometimes verbal reassurance, and listening is exactly what they need.

Happy Halloween everybody!

Over and over again, I’m reminded that the best remedy to just about everything is simply acknowledging feelings. As parents, our first impulse is often to fix – clean up the spill, soothe the child, bandage the wound. But if instead, we simply Listen, situations actually resolve, and our children become smarter and more resilient. Let me explain.
This morning, just like every morning, my seven year old and I were riding our bikes to school. Only this morning, he scrubbed – big time. He was behind me, so I didn’t see what happened, but we were riding fast, and I heard the crash of his bike on the asphalt, and then the screams.
I’m on year 12 of parenting three boys, so I’m not shaken by these things, but I could tell he needed help. I parked my bike and got him and his bike out of the road. And then I sat on the curb, pulled him into my lap, and Listened.
He screamed…a lot. I was shocked that no one came out of any of the surrounding houses (but that’s a blog post for another day).
“It hurts! It HURTS! It’s feels cold. I’m bleeding!” he shouted with the intensity of someone who had lost a finger, not cut and bruised it. He was in pain. But he was also really scared.
I held him and he cried big tears. He hugged me tightly and buried his face in my neck. And every once in a while he would gather a big breath of air, shake a bit, and then go back to crying. I just held him close and Listened.
After about 15 minutes, his words changed.
“Get someone to pick us up!” he shouted, panicked. “Take me to the DOCTOR!”
And then he yelled at the top of his lungs, “I want to know what it is!!!”
I’ve noticed lately that he’s been really focused on “what (an injury) is”. From birth he’s been one of these kids who gets bumped or scraped and pops back into action pretty quickly. He’s never been one to dwell on a booboo. But over the last few weeks I’ve noticed a change. He gets hurt, and even more out of character for him, notices things about his body with concern, and REALLY wants to know “what it is” and “what it does”. Just last weekend my mom was driving him somewhere and she called me terrified that something was horribly wrong. She said he was complaining that his chest hurt, and she was obviously worried. And then he was worried. It’s true, it could have been his heart. But my guess was indigestion.
“What is it?” he pleaded with me to tell him over the phone.
I said I didn’t know, and then I remembered a family friend from childhood who, after losing an argument that the spoon he was holding was called a fork, proclaimed, “Well, you could call it a fork!” I suggested we could call the feeling he was having whatever we wanted – let’s say, “Fred,” and I let him know I’d be home soon to check him out.
My young son has experienced loss in his short life. The deaths of both his grandpa and great-grandma were blows to his world. And he knows that I’ve lost two very close friends to diseases, and that a friend of mine is currently battling lung cancer.
These things are scary for all of us. I could come up with some theory around this, but honestly it would only help to quench my own thirst to know how and why he functions the way he does. I won’t likely ever know why he’s been so scared lately, but I am grateful for the ability to recognize that he is obviously scared in a way he has never been scared before. And he’s trying desperately to bury the fear by pinning a name on it. Which is great, in that it soothes him and gets him through whatever the current struggle is, but the fear has just been sitting there, brewing under the surface, waiting for something to happen so that it could get the hell out of there.
And that’s what happened this morning when he crashed his bike. Eventually, he stopped screaming for me to take him to the doctor, and we walked our bikes a couple of blocks, and then hitched a ride home with a neighbor. I cleaned his cuts and scrapes and taped his little swollen finger to the strong one next to it, and we got in the car and headed for school. He bounced into the classroom no problem, and when he was dropped home at the end of the day, he hopped out of the car with a big grin on his face and announced that he had taken off the splint (half of a plastic spoon I found in the kitchen drawer – extra brownie points for resourcefulness, please;) and that it was still a little sore, but that he could almost bend it all the way now. He demonstrated, and then he ran off to play with his brother.
Interesting. This day could have gone many ways. Had I answered to his fears, and taken them on as my own, I could have easily spent my day going from doctor to x-ray tech to pharmacy… You know the drill. Instead, I offered myself to my son for an hour, supported him to heal, and even had time to write about it!

Tosha Schore is the mother of three boys, and the owner of Tosha Schore, Your Partner in Parenting. She is a Certified Parenting by Connection Instructor and Trainer who has empowered thousands of parents to conquer their parenting challenges, so that they experience less struggle, and more joy, play, laughter and ease in their families. Tosha is particularly interested in the issues of raising boys, sibling relationships, setting limits, and helping children work through fear. She lives in the United States, and supports parents all over the world through her online programs. You can learn more about Tosha and her parenting services at www.toshaschore.com.

One evening my daughter seemed full of manic energy, running around the house, everything was making her giggle. We played lots of games, she pulled pillows off our bed, and ran away. I grabbed the pillows back, and picked her up, pretending she was as a pillow, saying, ”I must put this pillow back on my bed.” She laughed and laughed.

I think she’s going to have a big cry soon, I told my husband, wanting him to know in an advance, as it can be a big shock, when suddenly fun and games turns into a big meltdown. Beneath the wild energy, I could sense some big emotions.

We started getting ready for bed, and my daughter suddenly said, ‘’I want to read sad stories!’’

It seemed such a funny thing to say, but I started looking for our ‘sad’ books, which are stories about seperation, usually involving a mummy animal who gets separated from her child, and then they are united at the end of the book.

In ‘‘Bedtime Billy Bear,’’ a mummy bear goes out for the evening while a babysitter looks after Billy. Billy can’t sleep well as he’s worried about his mum getting home in the dark.

We read this story a lot when she was going through some seperation anxiety after trying a new playgroup, and being babysat with my friend. She would ask to read the story over and over again, and each time the mummy bear came back, she would have a big cry.

Evenutally, we had read the book so many times that she just smiled at the end, as if whatever emotion the book evoked had been healed. When she’d let out all of her own emotion, we could talk about how I’d leave her, but I’d always come back, and she understood and felt confident about it.

We also have a book called ”Monkey Puzzle” by Julia Donaldson. This is about a monkey that gets lost in the woods, and a butterfly helps him to find his mum, but she keeps taking him to the wrong animal, a spider, frog, and an elephant. Eventually they find his mum and have a big hug. My daughter always burst into tears when they hug at the end.

We hadn’t read this one for a long time, as she said she didn’t want to read it. The moment at the end just seemed to sad for her, and I never suggested we read it. But tonight we couldn’t find ‘‘Bedtime Billy Bear.’’

‘‘How about Monkey Puzzle?’’ I asked my daughter.

‘No, that one is too sad,’’ she said.

‘’But remember at the end when the baby monkey finds the mummy monkey? It’s nice isn’t it?’’

‘‘Okay, I want it.’’ She said.

I started reading the book, and at the end when the mummy hugs the baby monkey she started crying. I gentle reassured her, that the monkey was safe and back with his mummy, which made her cry even more. It was as if the sense of safety of the reunion, allowed her to release her own fears about seperation.

Then she asked to read it again! We read Monkey Puzzle one more time, and then she said, ‘’I want to read a happy book now!’’

Afterwards she was really relaxed, and all of the mania of earlier had gone. She fell asleep really happy and contented.

Feelings can sometimes seem big and scary, and adults and children alike get stuck in patterns of running away from them. This evening was such a great example of what can happen when children have regular experiences of fully feeling their feelings, and releasing them, without adults trying to distract or stop them. She actually knew she wanted to let go of the upset, and that sad books would help.

We all want our children to be happy and sometimes that means being sad for a while. It’s not about forcing our children to face their feelings, when they aren’t ready to, but gently listening, so that they learn that feelings aren’t always so big and scary after all, that sadness, is just something like grey clouds, that pass by, revealing sunshine beyond them.