Fragment #1: Child stomping away...

And how I reconnect

Yesterday evening it happened again - more often these months that my 9 yo is turning into a pre-teen.

Under after-dinner conversation who is cleaning up what in the kitchen, when her older sibling was saying “I’m happy to do anything if it is not washing dishes”, she got up suddenly, ran up the stairs and closed herself in in the bathroom.

My man’s try to connect with her failed as she did not open the door to him and communicating through a closed door is as hard as it gets.

Some minutes later I gave it a try and these are my tried-and-tested ways of reconnecting with a child overwhelmed with emotion. Beware that there are no “magic words” or tricks, but essentially, it is about inner attitude.

• When I go upstairs, I am open to any outcome. In this case, my goal is not to get her back down to help in the kitchen. If there is a “goal” at all, it is about reconnecting and making sure she can feel herself again and is able to put words on her emotions.

• When walking up the stairs, I let go of all ideas of “right” and “wrong” and “fair” (seeing that her older sibling and my man are downstairs doing the kitchen stuff alone). I just see that there is a human being overwhelmed with emotions who needs someone to be with her with an open heart. And actually just thinking of her opens my heart <3

• When doing the last step, I remember that I am my child’s only and best advocate who is seeing the beautiful and true in her (even if she cannot see it herself at this moment). I remember that if I don’t love her unconditionally in any state she is in, nobody will, least she herself.

• When approaching the bathroom door I remember that emotions are just energy in motion and often the only thing needed is space, and me holding this space so the emotions can express themselves and be seen and heard so they are free to vanish. Remembering this I am not scared of anything which might erupt from her - I am like a tree firmly rooted in the ground and her emotional storm will not break me; I can bend with it and let it blow through me.

I then knocked on the bathroom door and told her it was me when she asked who it was.

I waited the few moments she took to open the door, just breathing in and out and feeling my love for her.

I then just looked at her, again with no expectations or blame or question in my face. And then just opened my arms to welcome her with her heavy heart.

She ran into my arms and held me very tightly and we did not speak.

When we disentangled, I sat down to be on one level with her and made a guess whether she was angry or sad about something and whether she wanted to share what had triggered her, making her running up here alone instead of having a jolly time in the kitchen with the three of us, which I know she loves, being part of the “herd”.

I now don’t even remember what the reason for her upset was exactly, mainly it was a misunderstanding of the one sentence about dishwashing her sibling had said which for her had come over as dividing tasks unfairly.

But then she just burst out that she feels how tired she is and all the cleaning up feels too much for her.

I reassured her that the kitchen was already half done and if she preferred, she could go to bed straightaway and I would then ask her for her support in preparing breakfast the next morning - or she could still sort away the cutlery if she wished to still contribute tonight.

She took some moments to feel into these alternatives and decided for the latter and we descended the stairs hand-in-hand to rejoin the others.

And that was it. No blame, no shame, no fight.

I am so thankful that I learned this in the books from Adele Faber/Elaine Mazlish, who famously always said (I am paraphrasing here from how I remember it from the last 18 years when I read their books over and over again): “Your child’s emotions are as real as the sofa standing in your living room. You cannot just ignore it (then you’ll run against it and hurt yourself) or “talk it away” (same result - your toe will hurt) or tell it it should not be there (same result…). Emotions are as real as physical objects, and need to be addressed, otherwise it will hurt.”

This is the basic book I love so very much, based on the workshops the authors followed with child psychologist Haim Ginott. Later on, they published further very practical books like “how to talk so teens will listen and how to listen so teens will talk” or “Siblings without rivalry”

Also the old adage from the hundreds of attachment parenting books I’ve read so far comes up in these moments: “only a need fulfilled is a need discarded”. Here my daughter needed a space with unconditional love to feel that she was just tired after all and therefore overreacted to something perfectly innocuous. And it helped her make a conscious decision about how her evening should go instead of getting stuck in blame towards her sibling, giving her back agency.

Did I already mention I love being with my kids?