I have a daughter with extreme emotions…
She is strong but she is sensitive. Her emotions are bold and bright and always simmer close to the surface, ready to boil over at the slightest indiscretion. I have written about my daughter’s emotions in the past, but as i sit here once again penning my thoughts on this phenomenon which seems to occupy much of our day, I wonder if I do enough for my daughter.
I have previously written about the toll that extreme emotion can take on a child and how it seems an insurmountable challenge to bring back a bright, happy toddler once they have been gripped by such emotion. In that post I described sitting patiently with my daughter whilst she screamed seemingly endlessly before finally ridding herself of the emotion that was enveloping her.
Using RIE guiding principles such as acknowledging emotions and sportscasting we have supported her through countless emotional outbursts. But what I am now realising is that there is a difference between acknowledging emotions in order to make them stop and truly accepting them in order to find true connection; letting a child know they really are being heard and understood.
Play is such a wonderful thing. Play to a child is like work to an adult. It is serious, it is important and it is highly valued. As parents with ‘real’ jobs and ‘real’ responsibilities it can be easy to overlook just how significant play is to a child. While we go to sleep at night thinking about our busy day ahead, cooking, cleaning, getting to work, completing tasks, meeting deadlines, you can be sure that children have just as many thoughts: what am I going to build? Will I be able to master that skill? What am I going to do if somebody takes my toys? Where am I going to take my dolly for a walk in her pram? And the list goes on.
There is no shortage of research that supports the importance of play for children. It helps develop their learning, their creativity, their problem solving and their perseverance whilst at the same time providing them with a sense of accomplishment, joy and fun. I love watching my children play and noting the different angles at which they approach play objects and tasks. I can genuinely see learning taking place on a daily basis and I love that they are in charge of what they learn, when they learn it, and how they learn it. My second job (after being a mother) is a teacher and it has taken me some time to separate my role as a teacher from that as a mother but I have now become more accepting that my children at ages 1 and 2 years don’t need to be taught explicitly. They have an innate desire to seek out learning experiences and are learning the perfect amount for their individual age and stage. I simply try my best to offer experiences and opportunities for learning, through which I hope that they not only develop the aforementioned qualities but also a love of learning and an inquiring mind.
Having said all that, here are a few snapshots of what the girls got up to this week. We had fewer ‘new’ invitations this week as the girls were happily revisiting ones from last week such as the dirt pit as well as creating their own play experiences 🙂
This fabulous arrangement of plants in a garden outside the church we take the girls to for music, provided them with so much fun and excitement that they happily played for ages; exploring, chasing each other and using problem solving to work out how to get back to each other when they ended up split between the rows.
Who doesn’t love sidewalk chalks? It writes so easily, is vibrant and is so powdery and textural that children are drawn in by them. We love to play on our front footpath in the afternoon. The neighbours children often join us and the kids love meeting and greeting the neighbourhood walkers that stride past our house each afternoon. This week I brought out the sidewalk chalk for them to use to brighten up the footpath. Penny was so taken by them that she settled herself into a comfortable position on the footpath and proceded to draw, place the chalk sticks in and out of the tin, explore the powdery consistency by rubbing her drawings after she had drawn a line.
I came across this little table in a local op shop and immediately thought of the possibilities for the children and with its overly cheap price tag it didn’t take much to convince me to buy it. It was an instant hit and has been used regularly all week as a drawing table, a step to get up on the higher table, a platform to jump off and a table to eat from. I love seeing my daughters bonding, learning to share, cooperating and negotiating over this versatile table.
Despite being in the middle of winter here, we have been enjoying some unusually warm weather this week. Now, our car used to be my husband’s pride and joy but with the arrival of two children in quick succession not only has the car been relegated from the garage to the driveway to make way for a childrens play room, it has gone from having a weekly clean to a biannual clean!! This week it was bath time for the car and the kids had so much fun helping us do it that I think the poor old car might get some attention a little more often now. The girls love to be helpful and this gave them a fantastic outlet to play in water and bubbles whilst utilising a gross motor skill and feeling authentically useful. The only minor issue we encountered was that Lucy continually wanted to tip the water out to watch it run down the driveway. 🙂
This was one of the few invitations I set up this week. Not only was there limited time to set them up, I found that the girls seemed happy to find their own play ideas especially as the weather was so good and we could get outside. The girls really enjoyed this little pouring activity though. Lucy has just started asking to pour her own milk and drink from a cup without a sippy lid etc. so I wanted to tap into this interest and I thought this might help build her confidence in this area at the same time. She really enjoyed the funnels although it did take her a while to work out what they did. She would pour the water into it and then suddenly realise that it was coming out the bottom into nothing. We went through a few containers of water before she made the connection.
I simplified the invitation for Penny and found that she was initially more interested in the cups themselves and placing them on and off the tray. She had a few attempts at pouring the water into the cup but kept tipping the empty cup up and leaving the full one down. Lots of spilling but I loved watching her brain tick over as she tried to work why it wasn’t working.
So that was a snippet of our week. I hope you had a lovely week with your children and as always I would love to hear from you or answer any questions you may have.
Beyond the newborn stage, Lucy (2) has never been a great sleeper during the day. She gave up her 2nd day sleep well before the age of one and has been fighting her now one day sleep since about 18 months of age. When I do manage to get her to sleep, she sleeps like a log and it is not uncommon for her to have up to three hours of sleep. If her sleep gets cut short; however, Lucy wakes up like a bear with a sore head! Today was one of those days. We had been out to lunch with her cousins and so, after running around like crazy all afternoon, she fell asleep in the car on the way home. We transferred her successfully into her cot where she continued sleeping peacefully.
After about 45 minutes, something woke her up and she immediately started crying. Thus began an afternoon with a very upset toddler. We tried everything to calm her down. I held her for what seemed like an eternity to allow her time to cry and express some much needed emotion. I sat with her calmly as she would lash out between sobs. I gently asked her to tell me how I could help. It seemed she just could not get it together enough to let me know what was wrong. Fast forward over an hour and Lucy was still extremely fragile. If I said the wrong thing, went to the wrong room, gave her the wrong drink bottle, or tried to move away from where she was, she would lose it. It was getting late and approaching bath and dinner time. My anxiety levels were rising as I knew this was going to be a potentially difficult time for all of us. I knew, though, that I could not let this anxiety show. Lucy needed me to be a rock for her during this tough time. If I could not cope, how could I expect her to cope? I had to stay calm and unphased to show her that even when things hit rock bottom, I would be there for her and love her unconditionally.
Now, when things are going pear shaped with the kids, painting is not normally something I would recommend or indeed try myself but when I asked Lucy what she would like to do, she spotted a paint brush out of the corner of her eye and cried out ‘painting, *sob, sob’. Funnily enough, a friend of mine had sent me a message a week or so ago showing me this great idea for doing painting in the bath tub. So I decided that I would go with it and much to Lucy’s delight I said ‘Yes, lets do some painting’.
Well, you should have seen her little face light up. I think I even heard her exclaim ‘Yippee!’ We collected the paint brushes from the cupboard, found my stash of shaving cream, pulled out the old muffin tin from amongst the baking trays and located all my food colours hiding in the pantry. Lucy could hardly contain her excitement as I carefully filled each muffin hole with shaving foam and then dropped some food colour on top of each one. She called out the colours as I dropped each one in and then watched with amazement as I dropped a little bit of yellow onto the blue dye, making it turn green.
Gone were the dark clouds that had shadowed her afternoon, Lucy was now chomping at the bit to get into her bath. She climbed in with her paintbrush at the ready and engaged in some tongue-out design work all over the bath tub and surrounding tiles. At the end of it, it all easily washed down the drain and I was so surprised at what we had achieved.
In the face of what seemed to be a winless battle, I had held my nerve, stayed present with my little girl when she was in need of help and turned our evening from one of screaming and sobbing to one of joy and laughter. I am once again indebted to Janet Lansbury and RIE for teaching me that my children look to me for guidance in their times of trouble. Where, in the past I might have carried a screaming child into the bath for a quick bath and then straight to bed; tonight I feel I connected with my daughter at a deep level that only a parent can. Throughout her hours of feeling extreme forms of emotion, I showed her that my love for her is unconditional and that it is ok to feel sad, angry and frustrated at times.
When we finally carried Lucy to bed tonight, she was relaxed and happy and rolled over in her cot after our whisperings of ‘good night, We love you’ and we are now hopeful she will sleep peacefully until morning.
Yes, Kate from An Everyday Story, sometimes good things happen when you say ‘Yes!’
