How to help our young children when something difficult happens
Content: This article alludes to several instances of possible difficult experiences for children and their parents. It's ok to choose not to read it if you are feeling vulnerable.
I came across a wonderful concept recently (thanks to colleagues on a facebook group for parents who are psychologists), that plants grown in greenhouses tend to be more tall and gangly than those grown outdoors, which tend to be shorter and have fatter stems, due to the way plants alter their growth patterns in response to things like wind, raindrops and being brushed by passing animals. The technical term for this is thigmomorphogenesis, and it’s a wonderful metaphor for resilience, and for the way in which our experience as young children influences how we grow. A plant that grows up buffeted by wind and rain grows stronger and more able to withstand stormy weather as it grows, while those grown in greenhouses are much more likely to be broken by storms when they are transferred outside.
As parents we want to protect our children from the struggles of the world for as long as possible. We try to keep them from experiencing suffering. But we know we can’t protect them completely, and indeed, nor would we want to. A child who grows up without the experience of frustration, disappointment, sadness and some degree of dysregulation is like a plant grown in a greenhouse, and is likely to struggle as they enter the outdoor weather of adolescence and adulthood. Indeed, from this perspective it's not our job as parents to keep our children completely regulated and in their “window of tolerance” all the time, but to help them move through their big feelings, experiencing the full range of emotions and having support to calm and soothe back into a place of equilibrium. Through these experiences children learn that feelings come and go, that they give us useful information, and that they can be managed – in short, learning how to “self soothe” and to seek and accept appropriate soothing from others. From this perspective, tantrums – the most obvious expression of “big feelings” for our young children - and our response to them, are immensely important in terms of what messages children hear about their feelings and how they can be responded to.
Let’s be clear, I’m not saying here that our children experiencing difficult things doesn’t matter and is always good for their resilience– the whole theme of this year’s Infant Mental Health Awareness week is about “Understanding Early Trauma”, and we know that early trauma can have lifelong impacts on development. However, trauma isn’t only about what happens, but also about how we are supported through it. As the Parent-Infant Foundation highlight in their video (Understanding Early Trauma), “a nurturing relationship can make a child more resilient to negative events”. Reducing the impact of trauma on early development is about both reducing sources of stress for families (at both systemic and individual levels) and increasing the provision of services (from universal all the way up to specialist) which support responsive and nurturing relationships.
The amount of distress and trauma a young child experiences is not only about the amount, intensity and persistence of stress, but also about the presence or absence of a responsive adult to help the child manage the stress. At times we can go through potentially traumatic experiences, where our lives or safety are threatened, and recover well from the experience. There are many stories of people who have survived catastrophic car accidents, for example, who recall the experience of the touch, presence and reassuring voice of rescue services or passers by and are able to move through the trauma of the experience relatively easily and leave it behind them. Conversely other times, seemingly small incidents can have a big impact on us and be difficult to let go of or move on from. A harsh comment by a friend, an uncaring interaction with a health professional, any times when we have felt unseen and unheard in our distress. So when difficult things happen, how we respond as parents really matters.
In my experience many parents understand this idea, but they still aren’t sure what to do when something difficult happens to their child. It can be easy to avoid bringing it up, to struggle with what to say, or to want to take away the difficulty altogether and go into practical or mental problem-solving mode. This blog will explore some general ideas. I’m focusing here on young children, but the ideas here can be applied to any age group (including other adults) as long as you take into account their stage of development.
I’m talking here about traumas and distress at the more minor end of the spectrum, such as brief unexpected separations, finding an injured bird or animal, having to have a medical procedure like a blood test, being knocked over by a big wave while paddling in the sea, or being hurt by another child at nursery. I want to clarify that I am not saying that these are comparable to the toxic stress and trauma which is he subject of IMHAW, but we know that difficult things can happen to us all. When traumas are more severe or ongoing, they are much more complex to respond to, although the principles here are still relevant.
1. Regulate yourself, and give yourself time and compassion (especially if it affects you too). Be authentic but don’t burden your child
You won’t be able to contain their difficult feelings if your own emotional cup is overflowing. Find sources of support yourself who you can talk to about how you are feeling, and give yourself time to process what happened. This is especially important if it is something that affects you deeply too, such bereavement or illness in the family, or if your child’s experience triggers something difficult about your own past. When you are feeling overwhelmed by your own emotions is not the best time for supporting your child with theirs.
It’s also OK to be authentic and acknowledge your own feelings to your child in clear, age appropriate ways; this can help to normalize feelings and model that they are safe to express their own feelings. Your child will sense if you are upset yourself, and denying it or “putting a brave face on it” can lead them to question their own responses. However, it is really important that your child doesn’t feel overwhelmed by your feelings as this will make them feel very unsafe, so try to wait until you are feeling relatively calm in the moment before you have these conversations. It’s also OK to be clear with your child about this and can help to ensure that they aren’t blaming themselves or misinterpreting the cause of your distress. Children tend to think in very egocentric ways and can easily think that they are responsible for our big feelings. Explaining that you are finding it hard to talk about right now because you are feeling upset, making explicit that you are not upset with or because of them, can be important. We want them to hear a message that feelings are normal, they can be very difficult, but they pass. Also try not to let your child take any responsibility for helping you with your feelings. We all want our children to develop into empathic individuals but it isn’t their job to look after us. If you need support yourself try to find a trusted and supportive adult, or use a helpline.
Sometimes your own feelings are likely to make it harder to hear all of your child’s muddled feelings (see 3). For example if you’ve gone through a complicated or difficult birth, it might be extra hard for you to hear your older child express any ambivalence about their new sibling. That might be worth thinking about so you are prepared to hear and accept if those feelings come up, or even help your child to express them if you think they need to. If this doesn’t feel possible for you to hear or think about with them, are there other adults who might be able to be their safe space for these tricky feelings?
2. Make sure they know that they are safe and that you are there for them
Try to give them the message that you’ve got this, and it will be ok, even if it doesn’t feel ok right now. This isn’t the same as saying that it doesn’t matter or that they don’t need to cry. It’s more about making sure that they know that you are there to hear them and help them with their feelings, at the same time as holding a wise position that that the feelings and distress will pass. This relates to the idea of "containment" which is when a parent holds and provides space for a child's feelings, helping to digest them and reflect them back to the child in a less overwhelming way, so the child learns that emotions can be experienced and managed. The experience of having a parent who provides this soothing experience (sometimes called "co-regulation) helps to build pathways in the brain so that after many repeated experiences over time the child is gradually able to do this more and more for themselves (sometimes called self-soothing).
3. Help them understand what happened in age appropriate ways
Give them appropriate words and a narrative to describe and understand what happened. Avoid euphemisms or any denial of the seriousness of what happened. It can be tempting to try to look on the bright side, or try to soften how we explain things, such as all the euphemisms we use for death. This leads either to children not being able to trust their feelings about things (“if it isn’t that serious, why do I feel so upset by it”), or feeling confused about reality (“if Muffin went to sleep, why can’t he wake up and play with me again?”)
Many children will naturally use their play to process and understand their experience and this is no different for difficult experiences. There is a wonderful episode of Bluey (called “Copycat”) which explores this. Sometimes they might want to reenact what happened, other times they might play it out with different (either happier or sadder) endings, or it might just come up in small moments or themes. If you notice it coming up in their play it can be an opportunity to tentatively respond and explore their experience with them. It’s always worth following their lead, and you don’t have to make the links with their experience explicit unless they do. Play, like tentative language (see 4) can allow them to take in what they find helpful and leave the rest. The same is true for storytelling – sometimes the power of a story is lost when we tell a child how it relates to their own experience.
4. Allow them to feel anything they feel, and for those feelings to be muddled and confused
Help them to name their feelings. When children feel strong feelings, we have an opportunity to help them to develop a vocabulary to describe their emotional experience to others, which can be regulating in itself (Dan Siegel calls this “name it to tame it”), both in the moment and over time. We might not always get it right and that’s ok. If you talk to your child about feelings you can use really tentative language, so they can absorb what is meaningful to them. Phrases like “I wonder if”, “some children might feel…”, “daddy felt….” can give them an emotional vocabulary and narrative for what happened and allow them to leave what doesn’t fit. You might not always get a reaction to those sorts of discussions, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t processing what you are talking about.
Sometimes their feelings might be more difficult to hear. Perhaps you are struggling with your feelings too (See 1), or some of their feelings might be unpalatable. Perhaps they don’t fit with what you want them to feel. Maybe they aren’t bothered that the family pet died as it ate their favourite toy, or maybe they wish their new baby brother had never been born. Feelings are complicated and messy and sometimes inconvenient, and we don’t always feel everything the way we are “supposed to”. Often allowing children to express their more complicated, ambivalent feelings can be hugely healing and help them to move on from them. I’ve heard from many families where just allowing the older sibling to express their ambivalence about a new sibling and have their feelings heard and accepted can make a huge positive difference to their relationship with the sibling, for example.
This can feel really difficult for parents. Sometimes we might not have had our own messy feelings responded to in this way, and we might have our own strong feelings about the situation (in which case, see 1). At other times it might feel like validating the feeling is the same as condoning behaviour or that we can't validate the feeling because we have no choice about what happens. But it is possible to hold boundaries at the same time as validating feelings. For example, we can understand our child's distress about needing a medical procedure, while still asserting that they will need to have it (and working with them, as far as developmentally possible, to understand why). There's a lovely example in "How to Talk so Little Kids will Listen" by Faber and King (https://www.wob.com/en-gb/book… ) about giving the child what they want in a playful fantasy. "Wouldn't it be amazing if the medicine was so delicious it tasted like chocolate icecream?" Similarly we can understand their frustration at their sister for snatching their toy, while still asserting that "I can't let you hit".
5. Go at their pace and be ready to respond
It takes time for the body and mind to process difficult experiences - for everyone, but especially for young children. Some parents find it helpful to practice some of the phrases they might want to say, so they are ready when their child seems to be expressing something, other times it might feel right to gently and tentatively raise the subject yourself.
But also it might come up just in really small ways and then they might move on, it probably won’t be one big discussion, but just countless small interactions that help them work through things. Similarly, in play, it might be little moments where something they do seems to be alluding to what happened, rather than (necessarily) reenacting the whole story. If you are going to use play to help explore their inner world, again, I would be very tentative and mostly follow their lead.
Don’t be alarmed if they are still mentioning things for a while, or even if they don’t talk about it for a while and then suddenly mention something or it starts to come out in their play, or whatever. Even for non-traumatic events sometimes they can suddenly seem to be thinking about something that happened weeks ago. So give yourselves some time. Nothing I have suggested needs to be straight away.
Finally, if things don't go to plan, or you find yourself unable to respond in the optimum way in the moment, be kind to yourself and remember that it is what you do next that matters. Rupture is part of the fabric of human relationships, we don't always get it right, we miss each other's meaning, or get it but can't respond in the way we want to because we are overwhelmed ourselves. The main things if things go wrong is to repair. When you are calmer, tell your child you are sorry that you didn't respond how you wanted to. Let them know you want to hear how they are feeling and you're going to try to listen better next time. This process can even deepen your relationship, as your child really learns that you will always make amends when you've got it wrong, and that you are growing and learning too.
DISCLAIMER:
The contents of this blog is for information purposes only. I am a Clinical Psychologist, but I am not your Clinical Psychologist and I don't know your personal circumstances and needs. The content is not intended to replace professional services, including but not limited to, any medical, psychological or legal services. Any engagement with this blog does NOT constitute services, advice or consultation and therefore is not in any way considered a professional relationship. Please consult with a mental health services provider for support or consultation regarding the personal health and well-being of your children or yourself. Accessing such support is best done via your GP in the first instance.
