Supporting children emotionally. Part 1.

Recently one of my daughter’s friends died. He was twelve years old. He was knocked down by a car while crossing the street. I had known for a long while of the special way in which my daughter liked this boy. From the minute she told me the news I began to think about what she would need to emotionally support her through this, I felt that this was a unique situation and that I had to think well and do the right things. That was not easy for me.

One of the things I have learned ,especially from my children is that adults don’t always truly know what emotions a young person is going through. I believe that as we grow older and accumulate more experiences we do forget how things felt for us when we were their age. In addition, because of the way the adults around us at the time reacted to our need as a young person to release our own emotions, we grow up not really clear about how to heal emotionally. As a result we misidentify and label young people’s reaction to emotional hurt as misbehaviour, indiscipline, rudeness, defiance, oppositional behaviour, and all sorts of other names, even attention disorder deficit and hyperactivity. In fact we are doing exactly what was done to us at that age. The labels may be different now but the practice is the same. Whereas in fact what we are seeing is the frustration that results from the child not being given the right space and opportunity and certainly not the guidance to work through a hurt.

I have learned how important it is to pay attention to the tone of voice and the facial expression (especially the rolling of the eyes) that is their way of signaling that we the adults are not really understanding how they are experiencing a situation at the moment. They are very good at letting us know that we are really responding to a situation with our own perspective which has nothing to do with them at the moment, if we would only pay attention and listen well.

For the next few days I committed myself to keeping my mind open and being available to her however she may need me. And more importantly, not to let my own feelings of how it should be interfere with her process of grieving.

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