If you’re a parent, you’ll know the feeling of almost turning into a monster.
When she started to cry, I found myself wanting to say, “Stop crying! Stop it! That’s silly! It doesn’t solve anything!”
I bit my tongue, while deep inside, wrestling.
Nursing a terrible allergy, I didn’t have the energy to blow up my five-year old’s unicorn swim float. She burst into tears. In a torrential gush of disappointment, she couldn’t stop.
I was vexed. Why couldn’t she play with something else?
If there’s one precious thing I’ve learnt recently- is that the faster we are to accept “negative” emotions as part of being human, the more willing we are to hold the discomfort in outbursts, and the quicker we are to step out of our situations to see things differently.
When we do, we become better emotional regulators, for ourselves and others. We become better friends, and parents.
Because good friends don’t force you to “snap out of it,” they don’t make you “stop it now.” True friends listen not for the purpose of crafting an answer, but for the sake of you finding words to give meaning to your experience. They listen as you figure it out- in ugly tears and horrid bawls. They listen because of you. For you.
So there I was, with my five-year old in a magnificent meltdown in a public place as I nursed an incorrigible allergy, with my chest about to burst from blowing into an uncooperative, oversized unicorn.
But as I stepped out of my feelings, as I saw her the way God did, I began to try. After nearly an hour of blowing, the float finally inflated.
Then minutes later, it poured.
I learnt something that day- that it is not so much the practicality of the solutions we give to our loved ones that matter to them, as much as the heart we put into being with them. What Sarah-Faith needed was not a lecture on why she “should” feel a certain way. She needed someone to journey with her, to help her figure this crisis out.
I learnt- that if we can be that kind of person to our friends, family, even ourselves, the world would be a better place. Would you be kinder to yourself today?