Simplicity Parenting (10 page)

“When your child seems to deserve affection least, that’s when they need it most.” I don’t know which wise soul said it first, but I applaud them. And the saying has great relevance to the question at hand: How can we make ourselves available to a child who’s in the midst of an emotional fever? It’s one thing to cuddle up with a child who has the flu. They’re certainly not at their best, and can be quite grumpy. They would rather hand you their used tissues and throw up in your lap than use the containers you’ve positioned all around them. But it’s quite another thing to maintain a loving presence with a child who is exploring their inner shadow as they push every one of your buttons as though you were the elevator panel in a skyscraper.

Their soul fever can easily prompt your own unless you take care of yourself, as you care for them. I counsel this to any parent whose child is having a difficult time, especially if those difficulties are being felt throughout the home. Take at least a few minutes a day (longer or more often is better, but everyone can spare three minutes) to picture your child’s absolute golden self, their “good side.” This will give you the balance you need to look beyond the worst of a soul fever. It will help you with the questions that could surface, such as “Is this really my child, or was he raised by wolves?” If we can manage to hold a picture of our child’s higher being in our hearts, then we won’t need to be the Dalai Lama to get through their tough times. But don’t fake it, or gloss over the exercise. Bring out the photo book. Just take a few minutes to look through, to see her leaning over the birthday cake with three candles on it, her ringlets shining in the light. Remember when they spent the entire week at the lake, playing in and out of water up to their dimpled knees? Remind yourself that the three-year-old still exists in the thirteen-year-old … the one who just told you that you could never, ever, possibly understand what it’s like to be her.

If you can’t put together enough lovely images to be your ballast in the storm, call their grandparents, godparents, or favorite aunt. Choose the ones who love your child to bits and tell them: “Look, this is your job as [fill in the familial relation]. Remind me of everything that is wonderful about Henry. And please … keep going until I say stop.” This will be so helpful to you, right when you need it most. Some parents who’ve tried this have become addicted to the endorphin rush that accompanies those sweet memories. How much you avail yourself of it
is your choice, but please don’t forget to do it when you need to most. Take care of yourself while caring for your out-of-sorts child.

Running Its Course

Physical Fever:
We don’t often know how long a virus is going to last, but we do know that there’s not much we can do to short-circuit it. We can’t force the pace of an illness, or control the duration. Once we’ve done what we can to make a child comfortable, we generally have to let them make their way through the biological process that’s already begun. We’ve acknowledged the illness, stopped our normal routines, and brought them close. We’ve simplified their environment, their activities, and their intake. We usually then find a balance between closeness and the space they need to rest undisturbed.

Soul Fever:
A soul fever, like a virus, has its own life span, its own duration. We simplify not to try to control, bypass, or stop our child’s emotional upheaval. Our efforts aren’t a bribe, an alternative to a hard-edged “shape up and get over it.” In acknowledging their discomfort and drawing close we are offering them support … through this, and by extension, through whatever they may need to face.

We figure out that an emotional tempest can’t be shortened usually with our toddler’s first tantrums. I knew this intellectually—honest, I did!—but I’ll never forget the day I really learned it. Our oldest daughter was three, and having an absolute showstopper of a tantrum lying in the middle of our living room floor. There was the requisite scream-crying, the pounding of the fists, but then, as I stood above her, aghast, she also reared up and gave her head a good thwack on the floor. I was frozen (when my wife tells this story, she inserts this bit here with a kind smile: “Kim, the child development expert, was frozen …”), when my wife walked in, picked up a pillow from the couch, calmly placed it under our daughter’s head, and wordlessly sat down and began knitting. Our little one quickly wore herself out crying and fell asleep right where she lay. Phew.

Nobody gets to skip the soul fevers and growing pains of life. In order to learn who they are, and what feels right to them, a child must grapple with these emotional upsets. It’s all part of self-regulation. One mom told me her daughter Amy was having difficulty fitting in at a new middle school. She said that when Amy talked, she was speaking in different voices and inflections, taking on the speech patterns of the kids
she was hanging out with. “I could tell when things eased for her; she wasn’t ‘trying on’ different people, she was coming back to herself, speaking with her own voice.”

Once we recognize the signs, and simplify accordingly, we can support a child as they make their way through an emotional process that—like a fever—has usually already begun. Your support doesn’t “fix” anything, it just provides a loving container for them to process the things that are bothering them. With warmth you can help keep their emotions, their sense of options, and their behavior pliable. The roots of hopelessness and helplessness need hardened soil; you maintain fertile emotional ground around your child with the compassion of your noticing and caring.

If we respond to our children’s soul fevers by simplifying, chances are we won’t get lost in the hyperparenting jungle. The emphasis is not on us, not on parental heroics or histrionics, not on micromanaging our children’s lives and every emotion. The emphasis is on creating a calming, supportive atmosphere so that they can get through what they need to get through. Simplifying is not about using guerrilla tactics to clear a path through life for our child. So often these tactics—the immediate urge to pick up the phone and harangue a teacher, or another child’s parent—is a response to the worst parental nightmare: Our child is in pain, and there’s nothing we can do. Simplifying is something we can do. By simplifying we take clear, consistent steps to provide our child what they need—time, ease, and compassion—to process what is bothering them.

A Slow, Strong Return

Physical Fever:
Don’t you love the little signs of recovery a child gives when they’ve turned the corner on an illness? One mother reports that her son is such a chatterbox that the worst part for her when he’s sick is the quiet. “I can’t count the number of times I’ve prayed for a moment or two of quiet when he’s well. Yet it’s the silence that kills me when he’s sick. I hate to see him lying there on the couch, not saying a word. I breathe a sigh of relief with the first ‘Hey Mom, guess what?’ Then I know he’s feeling better.”

Slowly we reintroduce easy, solid foods as well as activity into our child’s schedule. They might go back to school for a half day; they may get to play outside, or reconnect with a friend. You’re careful to ease them back into regular life, especially if they’ve been sick for more than
a couple of days. You may notice a change in them; they’ve grown up just a bit. Most of all, there will be a closeness between you. You’ve traveled this land of illness together and made it back to everyday life. You return with greater strength, and usually with at least one or two tales to add to the family storybook. While unpleasant for them, and at least inconvenient for you, this illness has brought you closer. You’ve made it through.

Soul Fever:
We sure do know it when the emotional storm has passed, the fever broken. Our child, in his or her ease and brightness, is back. Even more noticeably than after a physical bug, children emerge from a soul fever stronger, with greater resiliency. Their feelings of overwhelm have receded and they’re ready to dive back into the flow of life again. If we pay attention to our instincts, we monitor their reentry, especially if they’re recovering from the effects of “too much.” Can we ease them back into their previous schedule, or is a more permanent simplification in order? Are they doing too much?

You’ll notice a change in your child with each passing emotional storm. They will take something from the experience; hopefully a sense of their own strength; certainly a sense that “things get better.” Even if their unease remains nameless, unacknowledged by them, they’ll know that you cared enough to support them through it. You didn’t walk each step with them, but you eased their way. These experiences, never convenient or fun, bring us closer. “Take the day off work?! You’ve got to be kidding!” Quite often I hear that response to the suggestions I’ve described to you. It usually happens just after I’ve been told about a kid who’s acting out in some way, clearly overwhelmed by something—or too many things—going on in his or her life. When I suggest that a little time off, spent together, could be helpful, the idea is sometimes met with amazement. “A day off? Why?! This is an absolutely crazy time for me!” Most parents are relieved and enthusiastic about the notion of trying a little period of connection and caretaking with their out-of-sorts child. But some find the idea vague and amorphous; they would much rather I handed them a phone number, or told them of this or that expensive purchase or expert who will “set things right.” The more adamantly a parent tries to convince me that a break would be impossible, the more certain I become that both parent and child need to take a step out of their everyday lives, toward each other.

Our child’s fevers—physical or emotional—can be downright inconvenient. Yet their well-being is going to cost us, and them, a lot
more in the future if we ignore it now. What will we “save” in terms of heartache? What are the financial savings of occasionally scheduling a day or two’s camping trip, or quiet weekend together—convenient or not—compared with the cost of long-term professional counseling? My fellow Australian and dear friend Steve Biddulph (author of
Raising Boys)
doesn’t equivocate. He says, “If either parent spends more than ten hours a day at work, including travel, then their child will suffer. Fifteen hours a day almost guarantees damage. Emotional problems, addictions, suicidality, depression, poor school performance all are increased by parental absence through the workplace demands made on us. Children are especially vulnerable to the absence of the same-sex parent as themselves. Boys to dads, and girls to mums, although the opposite-sex parent is obviously also important. To have emotionally healthy children in today’s America means making strong choices in the face of the consumerist economy.”

By carving time out of our busy schedules we place an emphasis on connection. When we simplify our child’s daily life and their environment, we support them, making room for contemplation, restoration. We also provide a counter to hopelessness and helplessness. A child can always refuse the support, though, and continue to grapple with issues, sometimes in increasingly self-destructive ways.

What do you do then? You continue to offer support, and alternatives, and with your love you counter despair. Just as most kids come through the average mix of childhood illnesses and scrapes, most kids manage their emotional upheavals and move on from them, stronger and more self-reliant as a result. Even when the going gets really tough—imagine an act of vandalism, or an eating disorder—the consistency of your love and support is the best you can offer. I’ve sat with parents who find themselves in extreme situations with their kids: in hospital waiting rooms, police stations, truly at a loss. I think then about love’s constancy; about how we carry this parental love resolutely, wherever it leads us.

In other words, we’re in it—loving and caring—for the duration. From her first high fever as a baby, when motionless, you held her upright all night, so she could breathe. On through the physical and emotional fevers of childhood and adolescence. The steps are fairly simple. The instincts kick in as you notice, stop the ordinary routines, and draw them close. You don’t “make them better” when they’re sick, yet your care and support allows them the ease to fight off whatever nasty virus they’re grappling with. When they’re overwhelmed by the pressures and
pace of daily life, or when their “fever” is emotional, you can offer the same pattern of care to support them. Above all, you notice. And simplify. You draw them near, while affording them the time and space to work through their own issues.

In our sped-up world, this is as close to a panacea as we can offer our little ones: a step back, a bit of time and leisure to rejuvenate. Simplification, in a small dose. A detangler of emotional knots, it’s an effective tool to remember and use in the swirl and bustle of daily life.

There are no great stunts, really. With care, and a bit of luck, there needn’t be. The cape around your shoulders—the heroism of parenting—is well earned and deserved. But the cape is not for flying, or special effects. It is a symbol of heroic consistency. Heroic. Consistent. Simple. Lifelong. Love.

Imagine how secure your child will feel knowing that …

• when something is really “up,” when they don’t feel right, you will notice and respond.
  

• when they are overwhelmed—physically or emotionally—normal routines will be suspended.
  

• when their well-being is threatened, they will be brought close, be watched, and be cared for.
  

• when they are not well, they will be afforded the time and ease to recover their equilibrium.
  

• your love will accommodate, and look beyond, their less-than-best selves.
  

• they are deeply known and instinctively cared for.
  

THREE
•
Environment

If a child has been able in his play to give up his whole living being to the world around him, he will be able, in the serious tasks of later life, to devote himself with confidence to the service of the world
.