Dear Nursery Families,
You Are Enough
What Children Say
I can’t reach my cup, my water bottle,
the snack up on the shelf. I can’t do
it. I won’t do it. I would never do it
in a million years. You need to help
me. Help me faster. Do it the way
I asked you to. I don’t like pizza or
watermelon. I don’t like anything I
liked before. I do not want it. I do
not need it. I will never move up off
this floor. Do not help me. Do not
hold me. Do not sit down beside my
bed. I’m not sleeping. I’m not tired.
I’m too scared to fall asleep. You must
hold me. You must rock me. Do not
leave me all alone. I am thirsty. I am
hungry. I am too tired to put my toys
away. Do not be angry. Do not start
singing. Where is the butterfly I drew?
I’m still hungry. I’m still playing. Will
you leave me? Will you stay?
~Kate Baer
As the world has largely shifted into a realty defined by sheltering in place, and as the likelihood that this may be a longer term situation than we dared predict has begun to crystalize, I’ve been seeing the energy and adrenaline that fueled the early days of building a new reality for ourselves and our children start to morph into a space that feels more palpably exhausted and worried. The early articles filled with lists of activities and online resources have started to transition into articles speculating on the potential long term impact. And parents have begun to ask bigger questions about the mark that this experience might leave on children.
Much of the difficulty in answering these questions lies in the significant uncertainty inherent in this situation, and that uncertainty is also a key feature in our own exhaustion. We are both grieving for our loss of stability and experiencing what psychologists refer to as “anticipatory grief,” mourning additional losses that we expect but can’t yet know. For parents, all of this is compounded by the apparent instability we may be observing in our children, leading us to worry about how this upheaval is impacting them.
My son, who is eight and has been handling much of the transition in apparent stride, had a complete meltdown this week over a drawing that was not turning out the way he wanted it to. After he’d angrily crumpled the paper and thrown it in the garbage, we sat down together and were quiet for a little bit. Then I told him a story about a time when my dad and I were in a car accident together when I was a kid. I explained that when it happened, I didn’t think that it had really scared me much, because we were both okay. Other drivers stopped quickly to help us. One mom even pulled over and insisted that we pile into her car with her children to keep warm while we waited for the police in the cold winter afternoon. Neither of us had so much as a bruise or a broken bone. Later that evening, though, I realized that I couldn’t find my glasses. At the time, I didn’t connect this to the car accident at all. I’d forgotten that I had even been wearing my glasses and assumed I must have misplaced them; but I was hysterically upset nonetheless. I explained to my son that looking back, I think I wasn’t really upset about my lost glasses. He nodded. I said that I think I was really upset about the car accident and my body needed to feel that and let that feeling out, so I got upset about my glasses instead. We talked about how much is happening in life that feels different and confusing right now. Sometimes it’s so confusing that it’s hard to really know what we are feeling, but our body still needs to get those feelings out. I wondered aloud if maybe that’s why he had felt so upset about his drawing. He nodded again and we sat for a few more minutes before deciding what we would do next. He went off to pick out a game for us to play together.
One of the most disconcerting aspects of parenting through traumatic events is the unpredictable nature of children’s reactions. Children, particularly young children, have big feelings, which they express in big ways, and their feelings often seem to swing radically from one extreme to another in a very short time span. Even more complicated is the fact that children often express their feelings in seemingly disconnected, behavioral ways. When they can’t pin point or understand their feelings, they act out or regress. We may note that these behaviors and regressions are “normal” and “to be expected.” But in fact, they are not only normal, they are necessary and adaptive. Children act out and regress in order to gain greater attention and proximity from us, and this is actually a good thing in destabilizing times, though it may not feel that way in the moment. Children are hardwired, in the deepest parts of their brain, to be experts at getting our attention and care when they feel unsafe, and we are hardwired in the deepest parts of our own brain to respond. The very strong impulse of their attachment instinct is ultimately what protects children most in scary and uncertain times.
It is awful to grapple with the fact that we can’t always protect our children from frightening events in the world, and it is easy in these moments, particularly when we are constantly flooded with advice about how we should be scheduling or enriching their time at home, to presume that their tantrums and regressions are indicators of our failure to adequately protect or support them. But this is not true. Their tantrums and regressive behaviors are necessary coping mechanisms. They are actually signals to us that our children are healthy and that they know intuitively how to get what they need to feel safe---how to bring us close and how to relocate the boundaries that connote security. Even more reassuring, they don’t actually need very much from us in order to feel this sense of safety. They just need to be able to check in, to make contact, and to feel our presence. They need us to let them know that we see them and we see their feelings, and that we love them through those feelings.
When experts advise that children need structure right now, they are not referring to complicated daily schedules or long lists of tasks. They are referring only to the touch points of routine that let children know you are still there to care for them and there is still some level of predictability in their day and in their relationships.
When my son was littler, we had an agreement that no matter how our evening went, I could never take away his bedtime song. We made this agreement because once I did take it away. We’d had a particularly rough evening with lots of resistance to the things he needed to do to get ready for bed, and he’d already burned through the time that would usually be spent reading books. When I pointed this out and said, out of my own exasperation, that we might not have time for the song if he didn’t brush his teeth, he collapsed in tears. A few minutes later, with the tears still glistening on his cheeks, he said, “Mommy, you can’t take away train song. It’s too special.” We decided together that this one part of our nightly ritual was inviolable.
What are the inviolable touch points in your day? The moments of connection that re-balance you and your child and allow you to move forward? These moments are the structure and routine children need to feel safe and secure, even if every other item on your list gets moved or changed or slips through the cracks, as we find our footing in this new reality. Secure relationships are the most powerful long term balm we have.
Though we don’t have research on the impact of the specific circumstances we are experiencing, we do have a lot of research that tells us of the deep and lasting power of our relationships with our children. We know, for example, that children who were relocated out of London during the Blitz experienced more negative psychological impact in the long term than children who remained with their families, even though the children who remained experienced more of the direct trauma of the bombings. As parents, we need to absorb the power of that fact. Experiencing bombings was less traumatic for children than being separated from their parents. It is not our ability to protect children from the world that offers them the best assurance of long term wellbeing, it is simply our presence with them that is most protective.
We don’t have to be perfect parents. Even under the best of circumstances that isn’t possible anyway. We just have to be present with our children. We have to love them. And we have to allow their feelings to bubble up and be given names.
Jonathan Silin writes:
"In the face of uncertainty, it is our willingness to approach the unimaginable and our commitment to bear witness that we can offer students of all ages. This is our most effective antidote to troubling histories and the difficult present. We cannot offer certainties nor can we promise to fix the world. But surely, surviving and bearing witness are reciprocal acts and we can say to our students, ‘Yes, this is how it is.’ And we can affirm: ‘Yes, we are here beside you. We can testify to your experience and to ours. Most importantly, we can teach you the skills and offer you the resources for telling your own stories...’ " (Early Childhood, Aging and the Lifecycle, p.111)
As this season reminds us to think about what is “enough,” we can take solace in knowing that time and again, across many profound human challenges, we have seen that a secure and loving relationship is truly enough for a child. Having someone to be a loving witness and to help children express their reality is enough. You are enough for your child.
Shabbat shalom,
Alicia