The Importance of a Response Framework...

Noah came running over to me crying. I immediately felt annoyed by his crying and demanding body language, and wanted to ignore him. But instead I somewhat dryly started to using empathetic phrases and observation statements. I continued to stayed empathically withdrawn but was able to help him calm down and work through his emotions. This repeated for about twenty minutes until he felt some resolution. The problem was he wanted a toy someone else had.

There are some days (and weeks) when I am not on my “A” game. Life is hard and I am emotionally drained. It is during those times I need to fall back on my practiced empathy. You might think that is not really empathy. It’s not. It is not emotionally connected with warmth, or love, or true understanding, but it is responding to other’s emotions and problems with kindness. That kindness needs practice to become our default setting when we are not feeling truly empathic. That means we will need to acknowledge our feelings, and mentally prepare phrases and actions for those moments with our children when we are not emotionally available to them.  Without this framework raw emotion is more likely to come through: our bitterness, tiredness, anger, disappointment, and so much more. If we, as adults, are struggling with these emotions there is no way a child is going to be able to handle them, especially if it is directed at them.

So my point is practice your empathic responses. Have them ready to be used when you are drained and in a rotten mood. Not only will it help your child but it will help you from feeling worse.