Communicating Effectively & Working Through Difficult Emotions
Image via Quino Al
There are very few things that one does that consistently offer up in combination so many moments of doubt and uncertainty as parenting does. Children used to be hands, and now their mouths is what they say, and I can say that the calloused hands of my grandmothers and grandfathers testify to this fact; I asked one of them about what it was like growing up and she told me, without a hint of sadness, that she was promoted to the fourth grade, but had to quit school in order to go to work as a dishwasher to help the family. These were simply the choices that one made and all I will ever know about them, and all my children will ever know about them, are the secondhand accounts passed down by people, fewer and fewer of whom have actually been there.
Maybe children are only mouths now, which I would like to believe is a positive development rather than the pejorative it is meant to be, though comfort, ease, and progress rarely fit together nicely. What I do believe is true about children, then and now, is that the wishes that spring forth from their mouths are too quickly and too often silenced.
But I digress. The point I’m trying to make is not specifically about children but an issue with communication in general. It’s just that the inevitable breakdown of communication is most clearly seen in the relationship between adults and children, but really the issue is ubiquitous.
We are fearful of things we do not understand and do not want to know because they threaten our identity.
Language is difficult because it functions by way of impressions and constantly shifting meanings. It is an inexact articulation of one’s feelings that makes great demands of us. It is a system of symbols meant to be reordered and re-used for many purposes from moment to moment. Sometimes this all occurs in the same moment–people have these scripts in their head that co-mingle without coexisting, hence the conflict, which seems to evoke one of two reactions–fear or anger. We are fearful of things we do not understand and do not want to know because they threaten our identity. Very often anger serves as a rallying cry in defense of the identity we so badly want to preserve. We think we are angry when we don’t get what we want, but it’s more than that. Anger is connected to our identity, much of which we can recognize by answering the question, what do we want? It seems like wanting is the most basic element of a person’s identity. You’re born, and you’re given a name, a place to stay, and parents to provide for you, which compromises an identity, or a role maybe, but it’s not your identity, and your feelings aren’t either. Your identity doesn’t come in until you make decisions about what it is you want in life.
The unwillingness to tolerate anger is what clears the way for harm to be done in relationships, not the presence of it.
Therefore, to deny one’s wants is to deny one’s identity, and one of the many things that children seem to know better than adults, is the rage that accompanies this refusal of one’s right to exist. For anyone to be shocked by the anger of a child’s response to this, says a lot about how out of touch we can be with the reality of others. The unwillingness to tolerate anger is what clears the way for harm to be done in relationships, not the presence of it. Which is how you arrive at a place where you offer one-sided ultimatums as solutions, where you secure hollow victories that lead to bitterness and resentment instead of communication and understanding. It is better to extend a hand to embrace than a boot to lick, but people don’t even realize it as they’re doing it.
Yesterday I watched my daughter become more and more angry as she struggled and failed to find a shirt she wanted to wear. Her style is ever-changing and sometimes nothing she chooses can satisfy her current sensibilities. I watched her rummage through her drawers in vain and when I offered to help her she turned to me and screamed “No!”
She was feeling angry, and most importantly, beneath her anger, she was feeling painfully insecure. In her mind, my offer to help must have felt like someone shining a light on her insecurity, so she lashed out in order to protect herself. Why would she let anyone see her in such a vulnerable state?
Okay, I can follow that, and I can understand that she couldn’t find the words to say and how getting into her bed and throwing the blankets over her head seemed like the best thing for her at that moment, but I still had a decision to make for myself. In that moment I had to decide how I would communicate, if I would meet her anger and frustration with my own. If I would demand that she respect me, which has nothing to do with actually being respected and everything to do with being feared. If I would ignore the feelings of my four year old just so I could feel a little more comfortable myself.
I sat quietly next to her and waited for what couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, though discomfort does turn any amount of time into an eternity. But after a few seconds had passed in silence, she poked her head out from underneath the blankets, looked me square in the eyes, and started talking to me. She talked about how she was feeling angry, and how she was learning in school that she should take deep breaths to calm down when she feels angry.
“Have you tried it?” I asked.
“This is my first time trying.” Then she took a deep breath and another after that. Then we took one together, and she was quickly able to calm down.
The rest of the evening was easy. There was laughter and there was bickering over little things, and none of it came at the cost of hurting anyone else’s feelings.