A Thousand Thoughts

One morning each week, I take my younger child to the loveliest nature play community for young kids and parents, down by our local creek. It’s a forest school and the reason it works as well as it does for my family is that the parents are part of it with their kids the whole time. The way it works means that there are activities to do if you want to, but you can also just play however you like. Most of the time, this means my little one just wants to play with me. 

The other day, my daughter and I were playing alone (together) while most of the group had gone for a walk. There was another mum with her two kids also playing alone (together) nearby. We were the only ones who had stayed back. One of the kids was really upset, really frustrated, in the kind of way that you know isn’t going to blow over in a second or two. I saw this mum meet her child with patience, strength, and co-regulation. She tended to her and let the feelings rage while also managing her younger one. She didn’t need me. But did she know that I was full of love and not judgement, from my spot a few metres away? Did she know that if she wanted help or things felt too out of hand, she could trust me to meet her with that same kindness she was showing her kids? Did she know she didn’t have to waste any emotional energy on protecting herself from what that other mother might be thinking?

Maybe she doesn’t worry about things like that. Maybe she’s way stronger than I was, and I hope to goodness she is. But in case she wasn’t, I took a risk. While her darling child was screaming and thrashing, I quietly moved close enough to say, ‘Hi, I’m here, and I’m here to support you however you might need, if you need it. This is all very familiar – I get it’. And then I backed right off.

It’s possible that that felt like an intrusion, but I think probably not. I went back to playing with my child, who commented to me ‘that girl’s having a really hard time’. She got that right. The other mum negotiated upset after upset for both of her kids over the course of the next half hour or so. She loved, cuddled, fed, and played with them. She didn’t reach out to me, and I didn’t expect her to. She was fully focused on her kids who fully needed her. Before we left that day, I again went up just close enough to say, ‘You’re doing a wonderful job. You’re having a really rough morning, and you’re doing a wonderful job’. I don’t know for sure how that landed, though she told me it meant a lot.

How much less broken might my heart have been if a few more people had said this to me in my first few years of parenting? Had said, I’m here to support you, and held back their advice. Had offered quick encouragement, to counteract all the ‘I’m glad that’s not MY child’ thick in the air. Oh, the public meltdown is one of the loneliest places on earth.

There was one time years back – just one – that an older woman approached me, my husband and our utterly distraught child while we waited and comforted without shame or rebuke. She said something like this to me, and I’ve never forgotten that. Her eyes just said she got it. They said, keep going, you’re getting it right. 

While writing some of this, my own small child was taken hostage by her huge emotions and her very busy brain that resists slowing down at night. It’s loud and I’m triggered by sound, and it’s a conscious and deliberate effort to be her calm in the swirling storm of childhood.

If you’re holding steady while your child is not – you’re doing a wonderful job.