Stay Listening to a Tween to build Resiliency

My 12 year old daughter was upset about not being able to find her phone cord. She wanted to be able to plug it in so she could text her friend. She was stomping around, noisily announcing how upset she was that she couldn’t find it. She ended up sitting on the floor of the kitchen. As I was washing dishes, I was troubleshooting with her about where it could be. For every suggestion I gave, a loud complaint would erupt from her as to the error of my thinking and her frustration that I had thought about such a ridiculous idea.

 I began to open my mouth to tell her about the virtues of being organized and emptying bags as soon as she got home because I was sure that it was tucked into one of the many bags she stashed items in as she packed stuff up to leave the house. 

 I turned around from the dishes in order to give her this important lecture. She was lying on the floor. I opened my mouth to say something and then realized that maybe what she needed was just to be heard.  

So I walked quietly over to her, sat down on the floor next to her and put my hand on her back. I quieted my body and my mind so that I could settle into listening deeply to what was ailing her.

As she felt my hand on her back, she began to whimper and then let go into a full cry. She was lying on the floor with her eyes scrunched closed and crying loudly. 

A moment of irritation welled up in me at hearing the high-pitched sound of her crying and I really wanted to tell her to grow up and get over it and get off the floor! This was because I was being triggered by the loud sound, which always momentarily diminished my capacity to StayListen. 

To Anchor myself so I could be her Anchor, I took a deep breath and imagined that she was doing important releasing and healing and that if I could listen long enough that she would move through this moment, healing whatever was feeling challenging and then most likely, eventually, hopefully, get off the floor and get over it. ;)

She began to talk about how stupid her Math teacher was for giving so much math. And how stupid she felt that she didn’t know how to do it and that she didn’t want to do homework. I really wanted to tell her that it was not cool to say she hated her teacher, whom I thought was pretty fabulous.

But I resisted the urge to lecture her at that moment either to be kind as she talked about this other person or to be kind as she talked about herself. This was not the time for a lecture or a pep talk. Her thinking brain was offline. She was all yucky feelings and she needed the freedom to say whatever she needed in this phase of releasing. 

So I just held onto the belief that she in fact did not truly believe that about her teacher and was in fact resilient. This shift in me helped her to dive into the intensity of what she was feeling and to feel it all the way. It also allowed me to stay unattached to what she was saying.

Eventually, she let out several frustrated, full body yells and pounded the floor. She cried a bit more and then when her crying slowed down, I ventured gently into the yucky territory of her negative belief in herself by telling her that Ibelieved in her, that she could do her math work. I did this not as a pep talk, but as a way to see how bad she was still feeling.

She loudly disagreed with me and more crying ensued.

I listened for a minute and then she began to settle. Knowing I needed to get back to my other tasks, I tested out her ability to transition.

I asked if she was open to receiving help. Without any tone, she said yes, that she needed help figuring out which problems to do on the stack of sheets she had been given, which felt really overwhelming to her. 

I gently agreed to help her.

Still crying a bit, she got out her math sheets. We talked through the 6 problems she would choose to do at the request of her teacher and then sat down and began to do them. Without help from me, she did a whole page in 10 minutes. This was such a contrast to the day before when it took her so much longer to do just a few problems and felt terrible about it.

To my amazement, Bby the end of the 10 minutes she was singing as she worked. To test out the full resolve of her feelings, I tried something risky and asked her to check her work. She said ok and easily did that step, unheard of in her experience of math homework! But after that opportunity to fully release her feelings of inadequacy, she was able to access all of her capabilities and move through it and I got a reminder of just how resilient she is.

By the way, she didn’t even end up finding her cord, which we were eventually able to resolve easily. It never was about the cord. It was the feelings math work brought up in her which needed attention and the cord was the pre-text to get there. 

AND she happily connected with her Math teacher the following day, telling me what a great teacher she was.

I'm so glad I didn’t get caught up in arguing about the cord otherwise we would never have gotten to this very important opportunity for release and resiliency.