Tag Archives: parenting

Reality is Sooo Sane

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“I told him I knew he was frustrated because he didn’t win, but throwing his toys around will only break them and that would make him more unhappy. Quietening him down, I told him to take a few deep breaths so that we could get back into the game.” Words of wisdom from a young mother who has suffered anxiety most of her life, bringing sanity to the behaviour of her young Autistic son.

“Stop. I’m not helping you with your job application anymore if you continue to vent your frustration at me. I’m only trying to help but you do this every time you have to read and writing something. I too have things to do and don’t deserve to have someone angry with me when I am just making myself available to help. Come and get me when you feel you can stay calm. It might take time, but we can get it done.” A mother helping her teenage daughter who struggles with literacy.

Frustrated with the exhaustion of breastfeeding my only baby at 44 years of age, I finally accepted the reality that I was finished, that I just didn’t have the energy or support resources to maintain what the textbooks told me was good for my child. I had begun to turn to a glass of wine each night to keep me upright. That didn’t feel right. It was time to accept the physical reality of my situation, support myself instead of overloading me, and move on. No more breastfeeding, no more needing to prop myself up. Solid food only and move into the next phase. She turned out fine and I felt human again.

Reality is sane. Physical, emotional and cognitive limitations are sane. Live within them and we navigate life with greater ease. It’s our thinking disconnected from common sense that takes us into insanity.

Children need help (when their frustration with reality takes hold) to see that their frustrated behaviour will hurt. Destroying their toys or throwing themselves about doesn’t make their satisfaction with themselves or others better. Taking a few breaths and moving forward helps. Leading our children through the experience of  responding with common sense to reality supports the integrity of their inbuilt psychological health system.

Yelling and abusing the people who love and support us affect their level of comfort in being around us. In choosing abusive and disrespectful behaviour because of frustration, we impair the social connections that enable us to survive and flourish. An adolescent has the ability to know that their behaviour may hurt the love they value, and they have the ability to choose whether to engage in it or not. We can help them pause and choose, if we use language that separates their frustrated behaviour from who they are. “I really want to help you, but that behaviour is getting in the way. I want to spend time with you, but not if that behaviour erupts. I will assume that you know how else to respond but if you want to talk it through, just let me know.”

Adults have even greater cognitive capacity to bring better quality thinking grounded in reality to a situation. Instead of being caught up in some picture of what ‘should’ be happening, acceptance of what’s working for us or not is a pretty reliable gauge by which to decide whether to continue or to shift. If something isn’t working, step back, and choose what would work.

Help young children experience ways of soothing their frustration that don’t hurt. Ignite awareness of free will in adolescents and young people by using language that separates behaviour from them as people and affirms the ability to choose. As adults, get out of our heads and listen to the sanity and common sense in the reality around us. We all possess the capacities of awareness and free will. We can all choose something different even when caught up in strong feelings. It’s common sense. Everyone has the capacity to notice, to know what isn’t right for us, and to exercise free will. Those capacities are inbuilt into us and already operating. Begin by noticing when we are caught up in something. If it doesn’t make sense, stop. A saner response awaits.

The Fork in the Road

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As I near sixty, maintaining fitness and health is important. And as my daughter nears 16, developing a fitness and health habit will serve her well. So we both regularly ride our bikes around a lake nearby, the total journey being about 10 kilometres.

IMG_0680There is one point at which the path diverges, the path to the right taking a more meandering journey closer to the lake’s edge, whilst the one straight ahead melds through a grove of beautiful ghost gums. I always take the path to the right because I think that path is the longer route. Whilst my daughter believes the one straight ahead is the longest.

On Sunday we went riding and as usual, she was ahead of me. As she hit the ‘fork’ I wondered what she would do knowing that I prefer us to the take the path to the right. She sailed straight on. My immediate thought was, “Rascal, she knows the path to the right is longer, she is so lazy!” And then this thought entered my mind. ‘No she’s not, she simply believes that the path to the left is equally as long and is living out of that belief .’ Bam! I could see what I was being shown. She was innocently living out what she believed to be true, no extraneous thinking in there at all. (Thank goodness she was doing that and not getting caught up in anxious thinking about what I believed!)

I saw the truth of what I heard. There was no malice in her taking her path, just alignment with her thinking. If there was anything other than that, I would have seen a different behaviour from her. Instead I saw a healthy young woman on a bike, her long tanned muscular legs effortlessly pedal her away as she enjoyed her surroundings. She was living in the flow of her beliefs – as I am when I take the path to the right.

We are all doing this. Living out the thinking we believe to be true. We are all unconsciously living out our thinking. We only wake out of that dream when the thinking we are living from doesn’t serve us. Who knows whether our beliefs are true. What is true, is that our beliefs enable us to navigate life effortlessly … until they no long do.

On the one hand it can be helpful to see that we are all living out of a set of made up beliefs. The deeper ‘gem’ in this anecdote however was the moment when a fresh thought came to me about what was really going on when my daughter stayed true to her ‘path’. Hold our thinking about others (and life) lightly and we maintain a connection to a deeper source of thought that in the moment supports us to transcend our beliefs and avoid some of the problems that occur when we hold tightly on to them. At the core of all conflict is at least one belief that we assume to be true and a disregard for the wisdom that surfaces to save us  – because I know it does.

Monsters Under the Bed

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Monsters don’t just live under the bed. When our children are scared of the ‘monster under the bed’, parents know three things, (a) there is no monster under the bed, (b) our child is feeling insecure, and (c) we need to help. If no monster exists then how do parents and carers respond to a fantasy? And should our response be any different whether the monsters truly exist or not?

Michael Neill, in his webinar series, ‘A Whole New Way of Thinking About Parenting‘ opens with a recount of his daughter’s young life. He tells of how she used to experience episodes of anger and violence, often lasting for hours. He and his wife sought the services of the country’s top professionals and followed their advice, only to be left with a feeling that the recommended solution wasn’t quite right. So they sat and reflected, seeing something for themselves which they acted on. Michael sat with is daughter while she destroyed her room (and him). Several outbursts later, the ‘problem’ disappeared. They did not ascertain the ’cause’ of their daughter’s distress and whilst they did seek external help, in the end it was acting on what felt true for them (staying with her) that turned the behaviour around.

In my own younger years, I developed a psychosomatic ‘disorder’ which lasted about 3 weeks. My parents paid extra attention to my welfare and sought the help of our family GP. Nothing in particular was or could be done (it was a fantasy after all), but several hand holding trips to the GP bundled with a small additional dose of attention and miraculously my condition disappeared. At the time, my condition felt real and I could not stop what was occurring. But stop it did. Was the attention and boost to my feelings of security all that I needed for my mind and emotions to stabilise again?

In my own daughter’s young life, there was one occasion in which I was hospitalised overnight. Whilst I ensured everything was in place for her to feel secure whilst I was away, I learned later of some very bizarre behaviour and I briefly considered seeking professional help.  She couldn’t articulate why she did it but she knew she did it when I was in hospital. I didn’t do anything about the behaviour but I listened to thoughts that  surfaced within me about what I needed to do to ensure she felt secure again. The behaviour never resurfaced. I also learned that bizarre behaviour amongst children is quite common.

IMG_0645When it comes to young children, I’m not sure we can ever really ascertain the ‘trigger’ for the shift in their thinking that creates their insecurity, or really whether it makes any difference. What we can do however is to quieten down in our own minds, do whatever we can to reestablish a secure feeling and listen to what surfaces within ourselves that feels like the right thing to do. Maybe holding them in our hearts, trusting what comes to us in our quieter moments and following through is all that is needed. Maybe the solution to all monsters, imagined or real, is love and the wisdom that comes from it.