Why are small children so delightful, joy-filled, exciting, wonderful, loving, inspiring, exasperating, button-pushing, ego-challenging, mystifying and anxiety-provoking?
Three short words: feelings, feelings, feelings.
Parenting is so much about feelings: our own, our children's, and others (society, teachers, grandparents, parenting "experts") who may support or "judge" us.
One of the most difficult issues for new parents is the steep learning curve of becoming a parent to the individual child we have and, at the same time, learning the job of parenting and what it requires of us. On the job training at its most intense in my opinion. And just as we start feeling confident and like we are getting it right, welcome the next developmental stage!
The point about feelings is this is the way small children communicate with us most directly, often most clearly and how we often react to their intense expression of emotion, whether we are aware of it or not. Hopefully, we are able to respond compassionately and calmly most of the time.
Empathy is an important aspect of parenting effectively and communicating skillfully with our children. When we empathize, we are wondering about how our child is understanding something that is upsetting to him. We are using our feelings to understand those of our child. We are not imposing our logic as to why something should not be upsetting. While it may be true that a worm is not going to hurt our 2 year old, his fear is still real and consuming to him. Our empathy and calming words build a cognitive framework for our little one to respond to and interact with the world. We empathize through acknowledging feelings while teaching with our words at the same time. This is what John Gottman has termed emotional intelligence.
As adults we are able to use our brains and highly developed cognitive abilities to help our children process their intense feeling reactions and begin to use the intellectual part of their brain to process events. In fact, the cerebral cortex in children is not separated from the primitive emotion processing brain stem. This means that children become flooded with feelings and literally cannot think when they are upset. This is also true of adults, but at least we have the brain capacity to hold both emotions and thoughts, but small children do not! It is amazing that early childhood is not just one long meltdown :)
Our brains are being used by our children all of the time to create their understanding of a complex world. By putting words to our child's experience, she quite literally depends on your brain to help her make sense of the world and to grow.
One of my most important goals as a parent educator is not only to help parents develop a context for how to parent their own children, but to have a place to express, vent, sort through and hopefully laugh about the joys and terrors of parenting as a way to create a cohesive experience of self and family.
In our time together at preschool, it is focusing on our children that is important for parents, but also connecting with other parents and kids, watching and learning from how they interact with each other. Not comparing in a negative way (because every child is so different), but learning about who we are and who our child is through community interaction.
I guess it is like using the community "brain" as an extension of self that contributes to how parents (and parent educators:) continue to learn and to grow.
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