This past week I presented talks at the 蜜桃视频appPublic Library and 蜜桃视频appWaldorf School for parents interested in lessening their child鈥檚 stress and anxiety, paving the way for calmer, happier kids and expanding room for connection, creativity and relaxation.聽
It鈥檚 a topic about that I like to say I鈥檓 鈥渘ot-an-expert-expert.鈥�
Ironically (or perhaps as a way of reminding me why I鈥檓 doing this work in the first place), as I readied myself for a day of immersion in the topic, I found myself dealing with a pre-teen who was incapable to getting to school that morning.聽
The stress, the anxiety, the fear of not being enough or able to achieve at school at the things she鈥檚 expected to achieve, was all too much for her. Tears ensued. Frustration grew 鈥� including my own.聽
I had important work to do! I had to prepare a talk on childhood stress and anxiety!
The irony was not lost on me.聽
I don鈥檛 have a child psychology degree, but over the past 10 years I have taken in possibly hundreds of hours of lectures, courses and training sessions, read countless books and articles, and worked with many wonderful families 鈥� all in an effort to help myself and other parents make sense of relationships and children that often don鈥檛 readily make sense.
I鈥檓 also a mom to two children, vastly different from one another, and we鈥檝e navigated these tricky waters for years ourselves.
Today, parents are fortunate to have such an array of excellent resources.聽
When I was a kid, my mom had one book by Dr. Spock. Not a lot of diversity in opinion there.聽
I鈥檝e been able to draw from some of the best: Gabor Mat茅, Gordon Neufeld, Alfie Kohn, Jennifer Kolari, Shefali Tsabary and, of course, Kim John Payne who is responsible for Simplicity Parenting 鈥� the program I鈥檝e offered to parents for years. I鈥檝e padded all of this understanding around child development and behaviour (parent 鈥渂ehaviour,鈥� too!) with hard facts about neuroscience and brain development, hormones, attachment and addiction.聽
What I know best is that you can learn or teach yourself a lot of facts, but at the crux of it we are all just humans trying to do the best we can in any given moment.聽
And much like it鈥檚 important for an athlete to exercise their muscles and practice their skills and strategy, it鈥檚 equally important for parents to practice and exercise their ability to be present and compassionate to a child struggling with overwhelming emotion, anxiety and even despair.聽
And sometimes that鈥檚 easier said than done.聽
It only took about 30 seconds for me to step back from the picture of emotional turmoil and chaos with my child that morning to realize that if I had any hope of getting to my own to-do list, I was going to have to at least temporarily abandon my agenda completely. I needed to sink into the present moment, use the skills of connection I had been practicing, and really get into her world.聽
She was an hour and a half late for school that day, but she made it. We talked, we had tea, we worked on her language arts and I gave her the dictation exercise she would have received at school.聽
In the end, she calmed and was able to go to school for the rest of the day 鈥� despite still being concerned over a few things.聽 聽
Her anxiety wasn鈥檛 washed away, but she felt heard and understood and was able to shift toward what she was originally meant to do that day 鈥� on her own, with only a little bit of encouragement from mom.聽
