In the last 2 blog posts we have looked briefly at four of the most important dynamics in creating an environment in which nature will take care of our children’s developmental potential taken from the work of Dr Gordan Neufeld. I’m going to be running a trial parenting group lasting 6 weeks where we can explore and make sense of these dynamics in greater detail on a more personal level. If you’re interested in being a part of it then send me an email.
Now we will look at the next dynamic: Feelings.
Feelings are important because:
We need to feel to be fully human and humane
They foster recovery from stress and trauma
Set the stage for inner conflict and emotional maturation
Provide context for inner experience/reflection
Foster an adaptational process
Optimise functioning, emotional health and well-being
Provide feedback to the brain regarding working instincts and emotions
Drives maturity
We don’t learn to grow up, we feel to grow up - Gordan Neufeld
Feelings and emotions are words that can be often used interchangeably but there is an important distinction to be made. Our feelings are the conscious part that we get a sense of or that we can start to give words to. Our body is continuously sensing the world around us and these senses or sensations can stir up emotions in us. It’s this sensory system that gives feeling to make sense of our response as to whats happening in our world around us. For instance we have all experienced the emotion ‘fear’ and how I feel when I experience fear could be very different to how you feel.
It is almost like the feelings are like the mind reading emotional feedback coming from the brain and body. The brain can pay attention to this feedback to help aid survival. When we are connected to these feelings then it allows the emotions to move within us, it gives them space to operate in. Emotions are meant to be felt and expressed. This is because they are meant to move us in ways that would serve us e.g. It might help us to be cautious when facing what alarms us. When we talk about being balanced emotionally, it’s being connected to these feelings that plays a big part in that balancing.
These feelings are fleeting, they are fragile, they are vulnerable and very easy to inhibit. Because of this, as parents it is our responsibility to protect these feelings and, if lost, to recover them. More and more today our children are required to function in wounding environments outside of their main attachments like nursery and schools which in many ways treats feelings and emotions as more of a nuisance variable that get in the way of learning objectives.
If a child should experience feelings of frustration in class then it is going to impact on the learning goals of that session and we just want to move on from this feeling as quickly as possible to get on with learning. It’s then on us as parents to pick up the frustration when school is over and one of the reasons why we sometimes get that an explosion of all kinds of behaviour once the school day is over and our children are back to the safety of a caring attachment. This can actually work ok and even though schools could make more space for these feelings, the nature of having 30 children in a class makes this an impossible in many ways. As long as the child does have a place where we can find those feelings again once school is over. Because in a wounding environment the brain will automatically shut us off or tune us out of these vulnerable feelings because they overwhelm the system.
If the brain can’t interpret and we have some of these defences at work then we are going to end up with more of the emotion and less of the feeling and all of a sudden there are less words about what it is that is distressing them and there is a kind of disconnection. Here we might notice some children losing some feelings - ‘I don’t care’. Again, we can be grateful for these brain defences in situations, but if we want to find these ‘caring’ feelings back at some point and the danger is that they get lost more permanently and then they can be really difficult to find.
The other day our puppy escaped from the house and we had to chase after him and my daughter was alone by the front door for a few minutes. In this time she noticed a spider just hanging down not far from where she was and she got scared. Normally someone would be close to her and she would call us but in all the commotion we didn’t notice and she screamed and screamed and screamed. Her feelings of fear was overwhelming for her and it took a good 10 minutes for that fear to play out once I managed to get back, connect with her and sit with her whilst she experienced this fear. If I gave her a space to allow this fear to play out within her, to hold her whilst it does and give her the message that it will end and all will be ok then I’m doing my job as a parent. If there was no-one around to do that, it would of over-whelmed her completely and her brain would have come in and helped her out, which is a great thing but we don’t want it to get stuck. And to keep the connection to these feelings it requires a good working attachment in which the child trust and depends upon a caring adult.
So how do we become the answer to our child here? Well, it comes back to the attachment again:
We become the answer when we take care of our childs attachment to us and the attachment will take care of our child and within this attachment we protect, look after and get into relationship with our childs feelings.
If our attachment to them gives them a safe space to experience these feelings, to make sense of them, to hold them, to draw them out, to make room for them, to invite them into the relationship then they will do there job and help our children grow up.
Here are some things you can do with a child’s feelings within this attachment:
come alongside them
treasure them
listen to them
read them
find the right mix e.g. can you help her find her caring feelings when she is angry
protect them
answer them
support them
name them
And again in order to do this, you have to have a strong working attachment with the child otherwise they might just not be prepared to go there with you.