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It had been a long night, and I was so close to being on the other side of it. Then halfway through the last verse of the last bedtime song, you lifted your head up. “Wawa?” you asked. I took a cursory glance around the room, knowing I wasn’t going to see a sippy cup. “There’s no water up here. You’re fine.” “Wawa?” “Honey, no.” “Wawa!” More insistent this time. And my anger flashed to the surface, fast and red and hot and fiery. A quick intake of breath. My body stiffened, my teeth clenched. And of course you felt it. Despite my quickly stifling it, you felt it as clearly as I did and you melted into me. Your tiny body shook with sobs because the person you love most in the world, the person who you depend on for everything you need, turned momentarily monstrous because you wanted water. Because you were thirsty before going to bed and you have no autonomy with which to resolve your problems.

Imagine living life with that kind of lack of control. We talk a lot about how hard it is to be a mom, and with good reason — this gig is anything but easy. But the second week of April is “The Week of the Young Child,” and in its honor I’d like to acknowledge how hard it is to be a small child.

As a therapist, I often try to imagine what life is like for young children. If I want to find a solution to difficult behavior, I first have to try to understand it. And each time I put myself in the shoes of a young child I come to the same conclusion: Not a single one of us adults could cope with the things they have to cope with.

For starters, think about being told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it — endlessly. Eat this thing that you’ve never seen before. Don’t make a rude face (what does rude mean?). It’s time to go somewhere you don’t want to go, and hurry, hurry, hurry to meet an arbitrary timeline that means nothing to you.

Imagine failing as much as a young child does. Not being able to make your hands move the right way to cut the paper, stumbling as you run across the lawn, spilling the milk you so desperately wanted to pour (and here I am, exasperated with him again).

Another bedtime example:

“Dad, tell me how the guy got up there.” “He climbed.” “NO, tell me how he got up there?” Over and over again, our son becomes more and more frustrated until I realize he meant to say, “ASK me how he got up there?”

One wrong word changing the whole sentence and causing all that frustration. Imagine constantly failing to effectively communicate with the people in your life. Day after day, struggling to find the right word, saying one thing when you mean another, mispronouncing words so much that nobody knows what you’re saying. And then having people get frustrated with YOU, lose patience with YOU.

One of my favorite books to read with the kids is “Everywhere Babies.” The last page reads, “Everyday everywhere babies are loved. For trying so hard, for traveling so far, for being so wonderful, just as they are.” I tear up almost every time I read it because it’s so true. In spite of it all, they try and they try and they try again. They greet their days with smiles, enthusiasm, and excitement. They forgive our mistakes, our flashes of fiery, unfair anger. They meet our impatience with patience (at least sometimes), they laugh and live and love with reckless abandon.

So when they push us to the edge of our limits, let’s try to remember that we’re doing the same thing to them.

Happy “Week of the Young Child”!

 

43 COMMENTS

  1. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.. After a long day at work, i too sometimes get impatient if my one year old doesnt sleep after rocking or trying for an hour, or my 4 year old, gets up after the bed time story asking for more water.. But after a moment, it dawns on me that i am the one they are dependent on.. They ask because they want to share a little more of my time.. And, my heart swells with gratitude for giving me these little angels.. Just want them to know that they can always depend on me..

  2. This is well meant but seriously silly… “Not one of us could cope with the things they have to cope with” huh? We all did … It was called childhood… What is true – is no child could cope with what we as adults have to cope with, nor should they… They are children and their lives should be filled with love and fun AND boundaries… When I was told no more water before bed I still loved my mother… But I also learned expectations, and how to follow the rules… Empathy is one thing but never telling your child no is incredibly dangerous… That’s how you raise entitled monsters. Parents need to raise confident happy littles and that comes with teaching boundaries and rules…

    • And the fact that you would get angry at your child for spilling milk or wanting water is probably something you need to work out with your own therapist

      • Umm…Jen. Do you have children? It would be an extraordinary saint of a mom who never got angry at their child for spilling milk or wanting water…

        • Haha! Yes I have wonderful children… And I teach them to handle their emotions… It’s not hard to handle the little things when you’re focused on the big blessings of your life… Water or milk spills.. Def not something we would ever get angry about and I’m concerned that the crack therapist who wrote this article wouldn’t realize how silly that is.

          • Also, probably goes without saying but Anger is a choice… You can choose not to be angry, it’s a useless emotion in that it doesn’t help any situation… However gratitude which is also a choice is incredibly powerful – the choice is ultimately yours- you could be angry with your child for spilling milk or be grateful that you have said child and milk. And any therapist would recognize that and have some self control.

          • Wow, @Jen. Yes, you may well point out that anger is a choice. If you have never been sufficiently tired, stressed or worried (or all three at the same time) to make a bad choice, though, you really do have something to be grateful for.

  3. Motherhood is demanding. I do not believe that one size fits all…every child has his/her own character and ways of expressing feelings. I think mom might just need to trust their gutt.

  4. I appreciate this & think empathy is key to really meeting a young child where he/she is at. However, I want to add that if we apply our life experience as adults to a young child & assume because we see it a certain way, they must feel what we would, we are basically taking things out of context. Young children have never experienced the freedom that we as adults have, nor are they developmentally ready. the repetition, clear instructions, and boundaries placed by adults are essential & so while it may be a challenge to be a child and not have the ability to control circumstances, that’s all they’ve known it doesn’t have to be as tragic as what this article is suggesting.

  5. Wow, thank you for sharing your views. Sometimes it helps to remind us, we aren’t always making the right choices or most patient ones either. But our common goal is to raise responsible, respectful & independent adults.

  6. I got sad when I read the last of Cory’s reply: “Our responsibilities as parents is to teach our children the way the world works – not to pander to their every demand”.

    For me this is completely wrong, and seems to be a very general point of view among people in the Western culture. It’s the easy way out trying to force a child to live and coexist with you in your grown-up world, and I bet it makes it easier for you to abandon your responsibilies as a parent and do important grown-up things. You can work non stop and do self-realization through sports and other hobbies and when you go to sleep every night you can tell your child and yourself that it is okay because, “THAT is how the world works”, at least for you as an adult. This point of view seems so cold and unforgiving to me, I believe that we should strive towards meeting our children eye to eye and see them as equals but that doesn’t mean we have to make them into tiny adults that needs to be compatible with all our adult needs, they are children after all, and children have needs not demands (you must be thinking of terrorist).

    Now I must look mighty pretentious to you and I’m not saying that I have perfected the way to parent because I haven’t, and I am definitely not a perfect parent, I make mistakes all the time and sometimes I hate myself for it. When I make mistakes and get angry with my child I try to remember to meet him eye to eye and most importantly I try not to force some notion that he has to know better upon him.

    It is okay to be a child and have needs and emotional outbursts, we just have to show our children that there is room for that in this grown-up world we live in.

  7. I appreciate this article, and wish I hadn’t read the comments. Wow! How can a few of you be so good at giving grace to your children (“oh I’d never be angry over spilled milk”), yet so sucky at giving grace to fellow parents?

    • You may have grace for upsetting your child over your own anger issues if that is what you would like to receive on the internet. Or you could decide for yourself not to be a ‘sucky’ parent.

  8. The person that wrote this article is a therapist. I think what the comments suggested was ‘why would a therapist get so angry over such trivial things?’ It doesn’t really make sense. Her child was afraid of her for getting angry. Of course the child would react that way to something so trivial. Anger should never have been apart of the equation. A therapist should recognize that as her fault and not write this terrible article as an excuse for her actions.

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