The adults’ way of responding is VERY important…from the Newspapers, translated…
“Doctor, my child doesn’t tell me anything that’s happened in school!” “I noted that he’s upset, but I’d asked him, he just, shuts down.” This is, the problems that a lot of parents are faced with regularly.
Every parent worries, and are nervous: why won’t my child tell me, when something is wrong with her/him? “Why, what do I do? Doctor, can you ask her/him for me please”. Why do children behave this way? One is from “modeling behavior”, one from the “wounded behavior”. So what is the “modeling behavior”?
In traditional societies or cultures, we “believe” that children are fragile, can’t be hurt, so the parents, or adults would try to hide their own “negative emotions” from them, including sorrows, anger, disappointments, upset, anger, etc., etc., etc., because the adults hoped: “To not let our emotions get to our own young”, and that “Children may not be able to withstand our emotions at the extent that they come at.”
So, the adults showed that when you’re upset, when the child asked once, or twice, “What’s wrong, mom?” the adult replies, “It’s fine, mom’s okay, go do your homework!”, the adults wanted the child to get away from them, or used “I’m fine”, to make the child’s feel more at ease.
But, this method of replies, the children learned and felt, “I can’t say or ask when someone’s upset, even, ‘I can’t feel sad’.”, after several times, the child stops asking. A lot of people may have similar experiences, wait until the child becomes an adult, seeing a friend who’s upset and fallen silent, and everybody treated her/him using an avoidance “genteel” to respond.
The parents used the measures of “not telling” to “protect” the children, the children slowly, learned to “not tell”, to “protect” their own families too. And, as they get older, they may keep everything to themselves, to “not trouble others”.
There was a mother, who was about to tear up, with her child’s responses being “frozen”, silent, the mother kicked the child out of the therapy right then and there, because she wanted “the child to see me as strong, I can’t cry in front of him!”
Back then, I’d told the child to stay, I’d told him, “you mom’s sad, she’s very worried, not knowing what to do? Crying and feeling bad isn’t awful, let’s think up of a solution with your mom!”, before the child exited my office, he’d hugged his mother, patted her back, said, “Good mom, it’s okay now.”
Later on, I’d asked the mom, how would you want your young to react when he’s upset or sad later on in life? The mother told me, “I’d wanted him to tell me, so I can help him out.” “So, DO be a model of that for him! It’s okay to cry when you’re sad or upset, you two can get through the hard times together!”, I’d told her.
All the children learned how to respond to the parents’, as well as all the other adults’ emotional responses growing up. And perhaps, with us, we should start realizing and become more aware of our own “negative emotions”! So the children will learn, “It’s only naturally, to tell what’s upsetting, making us sad, and making us angry out!”
So, why did I emphasize the “bad” in “bad” moods? Because there’s NO good or bad in emotions, everybody has the natural responses of happy, bliss, anger, upset, they’re all, natural ways of how we respond to the outside world.
So, you see now, how important it is, to NOT keep your negative emotions away from the children, after all, adults ARE humans too, and as humans, we’re, bound to experience our emotional ups and down, because that is just how life goes, so the next time you, parents feel upset or want to cry, don’t tell your kids to go out of the room, let them see you cry and get upset about things, so they’ll know, that it’s okay, that it’s only natural, that mommy and daddy are both, humans too!