Whenever possible follow my child’s lead
These six words form part of ’parenting in 25 words or less’ in the Circle of Security Parenting programme. They sound simple enough, but I was reminded of them again recently in a very powerful way.
As we emerge from Lockdown, many people are relieved, hoping for a ’return to normal.’ However I think there is also a lot of anxiety and trepidation about being amongst people again. This is certainly the case in my household. Whilst for many of us we didn’t like having to stay at home so much and not see our friends, it did somehow become familiar. Now there is an expectation to get up at a certain time, travel to school or work, interact with people all day in new ways because of the pandemic, and come home again. Exhausting stuff! Maybe at times overwhelming. It may seem like everyone is having a great time and enjoying their new found freedom. However, I don’t think this is the case! Let’s take the time to share something of how it really is for us and for us to listen to one another’s stories.
In my family, screens have become a much too familiar way of communicating during the past year! They were used for online school learning, talking to friends, playing on a games console, connecting with family, ordering our shopping, joining a support group…..the list seems endless! Whilst I don’t think screens are a bad thing, I have grown concerned about how much me, and my children, have come to rely on them. At a particularly low point during the last Lockdown, our daughter had taken to writing to us through the medium of email – absurd really, given we live under the same roof!! Emails became a way for her to vent; to express her anger, frustration with the situation, her dislike of us. It’s hard not to take things personally, especially when they are written in black and white!
And then something changed. And it began with my daughter. One day I found her in her room cutting up a cardboard box. She made a hole in the top of the box and wrote ‘Post box’ across the side. She placed it on the landing and said we were to look in it every day. We then started receiving handwritten letters with lovely messages on them: “I enjoyed helping you at breakfast time today,” “Thanks for helping me with my homework”. I made the effort to return her messages with things I appreciated about her, to thank her for her kind words, and to let her know how much I love her. It doesn’t sound much, but it totally transformed the way we related to each other.
It really struck me how these tangible moments of repair had started with my child taking the lead. At a festival several years ago, I remember being a part of a large gathering in which all the children were asked to stand up and shout the words: “WE ARE NOT THE PROBLEM, WE ARE PART OF THE SOLUTION!” Powerful stuff! I remember feeling really emotional hearing this. I think oftentimes children and young people are blamed, judged, perhaps seen as ‘the problem’. Hearing young voices shout these words really shifted my mindset. In the difficult days of this pandemic, when I have felt bombarded with my children’s complex emotions, it has sometimes been so easy to see them as the problem. I’d like to thank my daughter for taking the first step to find a new and creative way for us to be-with one another.
