my awesome kid teaching me to do the “inner work”
The other day my oldest son turned 12. What a journey he and I have had!
12 years old already
I woke up feeling so excited to tell him happy birthday and bake cakes with him. He always requests lemon cake for himself, and also a strawberry cake for his siblings. How generous of him, but I’m pretty sure in the hopes that he gets more of the lemon for himself. Wise man.
As we baked I ruffled his hair and he even let me give him a side hug. And then he went outside to play with his buddies.
As the day wore on I realized that along with feeling so much love for this guy, I also had a sense of sadness settling in my chest.
Instead of pushing the hard emotion down and continuing on with my to-do list for the day, I actually took a few minutes to see why I was feeling sad on this day of celebration.
For me it can be really tough to feel what we’ve been told are “negative emotions” because I spent so much time avoiding actually feeling them when I worked in a hospital and I felt surrounded by negative emotions daily.
Now I know that if I keep pushing these emotions away, I will eventually feel exhausted and overwhelmed.
It’s been an ongoing practice to learn to feel emotions like sadness and anger in my body and then let them go. But the healing during this process has allowed me to feel greater “positive emotions” like peace, certainty, joy, elation, and contentment.
So today, when I investigated this sinking, but also uplifting feeling, I learned that it was an interesting mix of sadness and gratitude. Luckily we are able to feel more than one emotion at once.
The sadness was there because I had such a difficult start with my oldest son. He was a very adorable yet challenging baby.
Even as a newborn he barely slept and seemed to be way more sensitive to stimulation than other babies I saw around me. He was the only baby to stay awake, at 5 weeks old, during the new-mom classes. All the other babies were happily nursing to sleep or just sleeping in their carriers and mine was wide awake and getting fussy. Every week!
As he got older he received labels such as “the most volatile kid I’ve had in 30 years running a daycare” and “defiant.” I preferred spirited and strong-willed, but OK. I got their point.
He had tantrums in public all.the.time.
At every transition he would have a melt-down. I felt like the only mom to have to carry her crying kid from the zoo or family event every single time.
I experienced deep shame at how my kid was “behaving.” I received implicit and explicit messages that he was a bad kid. I thought that how he behaved was a reflection on me and how I parented. That if I was a good-mom, then my kid would behave well…at least most of the time.
So, this must mean I’m a bad mom. I had thoughts like, “you are terrible at this! Why is your kid the only kid doing this?” These thoughts caused me a lot of suffering and frustration.
Because of these thoughts, I then felt super disconnected from my kid. I focused more on punishing him (because that's how I was parented) than on helping him regulate and connect with me and the people around him.
It makes me sad to think about these years of tears and not understanding the kid I was soooo blessed to have been given.
Gavin at 8 months
So, that’s the sadness I realized. But what about the feeling of gratitude?
I’m also feeling incredibly grateful that I finally learned to see the kid I have, understand how sweet and funny he is, despite his getting in trouble at school. We enjoy each other now that I’m able to maintain my own inner peace even during his hardest days.
I’m feeling grateful I learned that I am not able to control him, nor should that be my role.
I learned that I am his guide, his partner in developing the skills he needs to function in this world, not to punish him for not having these skills yet.
This kid challenged me to grow and discover huge life lessons I wish someone told me when I was 18:
The thoughts I have create the emotions I’m feeling; I am responsible for creating my emotions, not to blame my emotions on others
I am responsible for the thoughts I allow to stay in my brain, or let them go
I am responsible for creating the connection between me and my kids
As a kid the messages I received from adults were: “you are making me mad!” Or, “if you didn’t do this then I wouldn’t have to feel this way.”
So naturally I thought I was responsible for the way others felt. The adults told me that I made them angry or upset. Did I somehow miss this lesson in high school, that I am not responsible for the way others feel?
Because this is how I was raised, I thought that my kid was creating the deep anger I felt inside. I thought his behaviors were the reason I felt frustrated, irritable and confused.
Luckily, I found the works of people such as Eckhart Tolle (alongside Oprah, woot), Byron Katie and Haemin Sunim. They taught me how the mind works, about the ego, about watching my thoughts, and being responsible for how I am experiencing this life.
These were all tough lessons to learn, but what if I hadn’t? What if my son and I were still butting heads and I still cared what other people thought about his behavior?
I am beyond grateful that I learned, through reading and Coaching, how to understand my thoughts and emotions and how to bounce back from the stressors life throws at us.
These are the skills of emotional health, and learning them has been the greatest positive influence on me becoming a calm mom. And I think my kids will say that I laugh a lot more with them, too.
I might never have started down this path of self-development had I not been given this super cool kid who challenged all the adults in his life by showing his own big emotions. This is the work I was called to do, the “inner work” of figuring out how to experience the range of emotions in this one life.
So thanks buddy, for doing your own thing even when all the adults in your life were trying to squish you down. You are totally a beautiful powerhouse.
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