What if instead of thinking our goal was to calm our kids down when they get upset OUR GOAL was to ❤️ CALM OURSELVES DOWN and ALLOW THEM TO BE 😢 UPSET?
How does that make you feel?
It used to make me feel SUPER NERVOUS. 😬
I didn’t like the idea of someone hurting, sad, or upset. I thought my job was to fix it, calm them down, or come up with a solution.
BUT…what if that tantrum, upset, or meltdown was the thing that would cleanse them emotionally? Calm their nervous system down?
👉 What if we looked for big ugly messy feelings and encouraged them to be felt, just as much as we encouraged our children to feel the emotions of kind, calm, or considerate — because we knew the ugly emotions were the ticket to feeling the beautiful emotions?
What if we were happy and even a bit encouraged when our child went through this process of feeling a “negative emotion”?
What if we had been raised knowing this was THE WAY our children would grow up?
What if we believed in the importance of feeling upset, frustrated, or hurt, just as much as we believed in the importance of feeling calm, respectful, and loving?
❤️ What if we had years of watching other parents holding space for tantrums? And we saw that when children were allowed to have a tantrum and the adult came with empathy and compassion the child would come out the other side happy, centered, calm, and able to regulate their emotions?
What if I told you that’s what science-backed all of this up? That developmental psychologists, like Gordon Neufeld, are teaching that allowing our children to feel their emotions and take the emotional trip from ‘mad to sad’ 😡 → 😢 is what allows our children to emotionally mature.
I am on a mission to preserve and hold space for the sacred upset. To respect it, and see it as taking children one step closer to emotional maturity.
What if I said I help my clients get to that exact place, and once they are able to embody this and hold space for the upsets, tantrums, and melt-downs that they are amazed by the deep connection that it brings to their relationship with their child?
What if you tried it too? Gave yourself a week to experiment with it. 💃
Here’s the one catch. You’ve got to stay calm throughout or it will not work. You’ve got to allow it to take as much time as needed and be there with as much ❤️❤️ compassion and empathy as you can bring.
👉 This is where our work is…to stay emotionally mature and regulated throughout the experience.
