Tiny new person

[liv]

So my partners and metamour had a baby this week! It's very exciting, but also very weird because we are quarantined apart. I had been a bit nervous and a lot excited about forming a relationship with a child from birth (I suppose that was the case with my siblings, but the period when I was aged 2-6 doesn't count in quite the same way.) But now that's not really going to happen; I'm planning to carry on waving to her from 2m away, but babies don't bond to people who occasionally wave from 2m away.

There's no point being sad about no baby cuddles; I'm already properly sad about having to stay physically distanced from my actual partners and the middle two children whom I miss desperately. Family life during a a pandemic is weird, but that's hardly news.

I started spending extended time with her older siblings when they were 2 1/2 and 6 (now 8 and 11). The thing I found most difficult about interacting with younger children is how emotionally intense they are. Does anyone have any advice (from personal experience or theoretical knowledge) about how to cope when people you care about find every small setback or frustration devastatingly upsetting? It's something I want to do better this time. Note that I don't want advice on how to prevent small children from inconveniently expressing emotions around me, I just want to find better ways of handling my own feelings.

It's probably a skill worth learning in general, because with a terrifying global pandemic everybody is more emotionally on edge than usual. And of course it's something that all parents must manage somehow. I just... don't see it talked about a lot in eg parenting guides.

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

I find acknowledging 'they must be hungry' 'they sound frustrated' helps me to stay calm. Staying calm lessens the intensity, somehow.

It's a skill I've developed in ACT of 'That's an interesting thought, what is it doing there?' - a certain detachment that's useful, when the impulse to do something isn't necessarily helpful.

[rosefox]

ACT is magic.

[shewhostaples]

Yes - I try to see things from their point of view, and say in my head, "You're right - there are two many people in here and it's really quite warm and maybe you're hungry, and all those are reasonable things to be upset about."

(I don't have children - this is an approach that I try to take when I come across upset babies in public spaces.)

[liv]

That sounds like a good idea, thank you. I'm generally able to be calm or at least project calmness in the moment, but I'm scared that can tip over into seeming cold or uncaring. It's like, I want to maintain a strong connection to the child, but also I want to protect myself from being swamped by the misery, and if the self-protection instinct dominates, I could be doing more harm than if I visibly get upset.

[watersword]

Congratulations on the new person in your family!

[liv]

Thank you!

[princessofgeeks]

I'm glad you are in the same town as them and have all my fingers and toes crossed for when you can all be together again.

[liv]

Thank you for the kind wishes. In a lot of ways we have it less bad than many people suddenly cut off from their dear ones, but I still miss my people.

[rosefox]

Janet Lansbury talks a lot about this, if you're looking for a parenting guide/blogger to follow on the topic.

A thing that works for me is to separate the feeling from the urge to act on the feeling and then from the actual action, whether in me or in the child. So for a child that might look like:

- Something happened that I didn't like
- I feel MAD
- I want to show the world how mad I am
- I hit my parent

And in me it might look like:

- The baby is crying
- I feel anxious that something is wrong
- I want to make the crying stop so I don't feel so anxious
- I rush to offer a bottle

Or:

- My child is screaming about a dropped blueberry
- It's really stressing me out
- I want to make the screaming stop and express my stress
- I snap that no blueberry is worth this much agita, get a grip, kid

If that cycle can be interrupted at step one and the feeling can be identified as a feeling (so "I feel anxious about the baby crying" is actually the issue for me, not "the baby is crying"), then a calmer approach can be taken, starting with "Is there actually a problem here" and moving on to "How do I take a more considered action".

Improved paths made possible by this approach:

- Something happened that I didn't like
- I feel MAD
--- But I remember that sometimes the ways I express my anger can hurt people
--- I remember that my parents said to start by SAYING my feeling so they can help
--- I yell "I'M MAD"
--- My parents say "Wow, you sure are! Everyone feels mad sometimes, and you really didn't like that thing that happened. How can you express that safely? Do you want to go throw some stuffed animals?"
--- I throw stuffed animals and feel better

Or:

- The baby is crying
- I feel anxious that something is wrong
--- But I remember that my own feelings are all dialed up to 11 because being in charge of caring for a tiny baby is really super stressful for me
--- I remember that taking care of myself is the best way to take care of the baby, that ordinary crying isn't harmful or a sign that anything is badly wrong, and that staying calm and focusing on emotional connection is the best way to help both me and the baby feel better
--- I leave the baby in the crib for a minute, go put in ear plugs, and take a couple of calming breaths. I look at the food/sleep/diaper tracking app to see what the most likely cause of the distress is. Then I go back in and calmly, gently take care of the baby, talking to them about what I'm doing and letting myself feel the ways we're in relationship

Or:

- My child is screaming about a dropped blueberry
- it's really stressing me out
--- But I remember that my stress isn't my child's problem to deal with
--- I remember that staying calm, validating feelings, and establishing clear boundaries around behavior can de-escalate the situation and help us both feel better
--- I take a deep slow breath and say calmly "Wow, you're really upset about that blueberry. I do need you not to scream in the house. Once it falls on the floor it's not food anymore, but would you like me to get you some more blueberries?"
--- The child stops screaming and sniffles "no"
--- After further discussion, we hold a solemn blueberry funeral that's surprisingly meaningful for everyone

Is that useful?

[green_knight]

I don't need this skill but I'm filing it away in case it ever becomes relevant. That sounds like awesome parenting.

[serriadh]

Naming the child's emotions also comes up in How to Talk So (Little) Kids Listen and Listen so Kids Talk books. The idea is that part/most of the overwhelming frustration is the child doesn't really understand the emotion coursing through them and so "overreacts". My son is only 20 months but I have found that a certain amount of 'oh gosh you ARE cross. You're cross because you wanted to go into the kitchen and we can't do that now. That must be very cross-making' short-circuits my own frustration and distress at him being distressed. (Because he's not sad because the world is ending, though you'd think it was from his reaction.)

[liv]

Wow, this is amazing, thank you so much. It's really actionable advice, and I love the specific examples which I can very much relate to, but also solemn blueberry funeral is very adorable. And thank you for the rec of someone to read who thinks about this stuff. But really, absolutely outstandingly helpful comment, I couldn't be more grateful.

[green_knight]

First, congratulations!

I find emotions easier to deal with when I remind myself that they are e-motions: things that I feel, very intensely at times, and let flow through me, rather than carrying them around for ages. Trying to suppress emotions (or just not feel them) frequently means they'll come back and bite me when I least need them; acknowledging that I *am* (scared, angry, devastated), feeling it intensely, and then moving on seems to work better.

I don't know how to _teach_ that to a kid, especially a small, non-verbal one, but not telling them their feelings don't matter seems to be a very important step.

[rosefox]

In my experience, you don't need to teach that to children; most of them quite naturally do the thing of having a brief, intense feeling and then being done and moving on. As you say, what adults generally need to do is not teach children not to do that. (Teaching appropriate expressions of feelings is a separate matter.)

[sfred]

Congratulations on the new family member! I'm sorry you don't get to cuddle them yet.

Like others have said, I find it useful to go through the though process (and often to say): "agh, there's a thing you want or need that you haven't got. That must be really difficult. I wonder whether it's a thing we can make happen or whether we just have to be with the feeling until it feels easier."

When they get a little bit older, it can be more like "It's really hard wanting to play with the shiny thing when you can't, isn't it?" or "It's really hard when $BelovedHuman leaves the room without you, isn't it?" or whatever.

Sometimes the naming makes it easier for me to manage my feelings that are prompted by their feelings.

[liv]

Thank you. I'm not much a baby person so I'm not as deprived of cuddles as some relatives. But pandemic is rubbish, basically.

It does seem that naming situations and feelings can be really helpful. And that's a fairly simple strategy which should not be too hard to implement; I can always stick to naming things to myself if a child doesn't like me verbalizing the description.

[marymac]

H is just turning one and has absolutely no middle gears, raging curiosity, a terrible case of FOMO and a burning desire to be naked, which makes life quite interesting. His greatest hit so far has been getting so angry that I wouldn't let him eat the clematis that he went purple and passed out.

We tend to cope with being in charge of a highly strung force of nature by lots of "I know, I know, [thing] is very [thing] but it's ok, it's ok" and cuddles as required (he's a snuggly baby, once he's upset he has to be on someone, other babies milage may vary).

Basically, acknowledge that he is really really mad/sad/overtired and doesn't know which end is up and thing that has caused this is a very unfortunate thing/but he's not allowed to do or have it anyway (raw potatoes usually), then comfort. We also use it on the teenager, with a 50/50 success vs pissing off rate.

[liv]

Wow, that is a lot of anger. I like this strategy of acknowledging emotions even if they're about a reality that you can't, or can't safely, change. And I can imagine that offering comfort is more effective if it's not negating the upsetness in the first place.

[aldabra]

Especially when they're tiny and pre-mobile, it is OK to put them down and absent yourself if you get overwhelmed. They're not going to damage themselves, and being yelled at can get overwhelming (especially at the 48-hour mark). You look after them better if you look after you too. Put your own oxygen mask on first.

Pick them up and remove them from stressful situations. (You will so miss the option to do this when they are 15.)

I think "it takes a village to raise a child" means "nobody has the stamina to do this on their own". Take turns. Even unsolvable tantrums are easier over four hours than twelve. Arrange it so that everyone gets enough sleep, and then everyone will be able to focus on the kid.

After that, I think you get a long way with friendliness and eye contact, and children are really really individual in how they respond to things, from birth. You have to learn from the kid you've got.

[marymac]

You have to learn from the kid you've got.

This, this, this. Child was an incredibly chilled out baby, H is not. His dad still isn't sure what hit him.

We have survived so far 😁

[lilacsigil]

Congratulations!

I'm not a parent but I am an aunt and the two things that I had to learn were:

1. sometimes only the parent will do (and sometimes only a specific parent) and that's nothing to do with me, it's just developmental. And you can still help the parents by staying present and being calm and making sure the child is warm/fed/safe until parent is available.

2. a crying baby is really emotionally distressing, especially if you're not the person there all the time and aware of what different cries mean! I had to remind myself a lot that this was the baby's only way of communicating, not the immediate PANIC STATIONS that the crying baby invoked in me!

That said, I never did get to like the baby stage particularly, they were much more interesting from the age of 1!

[mrissa]

Seriously sometimes only the parent will do. Seriously. Seriously.

Although...as a godmother sometimes I am also indispensable. Less often than their parents! But sometimes only Auntie Mrissa would do. (This is still true, but they express it differently as teenagers. It's all part of learning that people are not fungible, which is a great lesson.)

[karen2205]

When they're small enough to find every small setback or frustration devastingly upsetting, they're usually still small enough that you can comfort them successfully with touch / words / distraction etc. [vs. say an older child having problems at school that you can't fix with a cuddle]. The intense emotional states of the really little ones are usually very short lived. So I'm not usually too bothered by them - it's not that the intense emotion isn't real, but I know I can help them through it and that they're usually OK with their emotions being all over the place (without the meta stuff an older child or adult would have around it)

Babies who are crying continuously are another question - IME harder than the slightly older child who is frustrated because they can't reach something etc. Babies cries are designed to be horrible listening to motivate us into caring for them. Best I have come up with so far is a list of potentially comforting stuff to try to alternate between - milk (if easily available), clean nappy, keeping more upright vs a cradle hold (might help if the baby has reflux), change of clothes / looking for eg. threads that have got twisted into a painful position, going for a walk in the pram / sling, going for a drive, having a bath, distract with a toy - the likelihood is that at some point you'll find something that either soothes the baby to sleep or entertains them enough that they stop crying.

[liv]

Yeah, this is a good point. Tiny babies screaming need a fix as soon as possible, and the fix is likely to be something obvious like food or physical comfort or even just attention. Toddlers having meltdowns often don't need to be fixed, and it can be negative not to give them space to experience and express their feelings or to develop independent problem solving skills. I think there's some notion that if you build up lots of experience when they're tiny that real problems will get solved as quickly as the adult is able, there's a strong relationship of trust in place when they're a bit older. And I don't have all of that because I'm not in fact a parent, not a reliable person who will always be there whenever I'm needed, but that doesn't mean I'm completely useless.

[luscious_purple]

Congratulations and mazel tov!

[liv]

Thank you! I love your celebration icon.

[silveradept]

Congratulations to the new child.

A lot of the early years, based on my escorting adjacent to direct parenting is recognizing that smalls have limited methods of expressing themselves. Part of the reason baby signs are so popular here in the States is that the connection between gesture and action happens before words and actions, and a small that can express their needs is a small that can get those needs met sooner.

Which sometimes means having to put names to feelings and working with a small to build resilience where possible. And sometimes that means having smaller forms of those emotions around smalls and explaining to them how to cope or mitigate them. In my part, it means that if someone is having a feeling in the library space, it means acknowledging the feeling, and not shaming anyone for having it or for having a child that has feelings.

And, if need be, absenting myself so that I can have the intense version of the feeling and then come back with the less intense version.

[liv]

I rather love the idea of congratulating the actual baby on being born. Most people seem to congratulate the relatives.

Your librarian experience is really helpful here, because of course you're not an automatic source of comfort just by existing near the upset small person. It's really helpful to think of the distress as partly resulting from communication gaps. And even with spoken language children's understanding is often way ahead of their expression so it can be worth explaining or providing names for feelings.

[antisoppist]

As others have said, it took me a while to get from a) fix the upsetting thing and make it stop to b) it is OK to be upset about things and there are options other than fix the thing or make the child pretend to not have feelings. And I was belatedly working this out for myself at the time so not doing what my parents did was a good start (my mother banned balloons for all of us for ever because I cried over a burst balloon when I was two - this does not build resilience or the ability to cope with setbacks or to allow yourself to have feelings about things!)

But otherwise I treated mine as people with their own opinions about things from the start and they all needed different parenting because they are all different people. Number 2 was 2 before I realised he was an extrovert and was not actually enjoying the quiet days at home I'd factored in to recover from having gone to playgroup the day before. But I did work it out because I wasn't automatically assuming what he wanted was what I would want or his older sibling would have wanted. Not that you can always have life the way you want it but people of any age are more amenable to having things not the way they want them if their wants are listened to even if they can't have them and they do get them met some of the time. Not babies though. Babies cannot be reasoned with.

[liv]

Thank you, it's good to be reminded that it is sometimes ok to be upset about things. I might not find it easy to be around someone in intense distress, but it's a normal part of life and you have to build resilience and cope by starting out having very little.

And I am appreciating all the people reminding me that children are individuals and not just representatives of their age band. I like the thought that responding to some reasonable wants makes it easier when the child can't, for a good reason, have exactly what they want.

[kaberett]

The keyword I would be searching on is "regulation": emotional regulation, self-regulation. Those are cognitive skills that children need to learn, which is massively helped by having the adults present model it.

[liv]

I think I'm fairly well up on the concept of emotional regulation. The starting point for my question is that it is indeed a skill that young children haven't learned yet, and you don't go around resenting them for it any more than for needing adult help with cleaning and waste elimination. For me the issue is that I've spent many years learning that if an acquaintance has a massive emotional outburst every time something doesn't go their way, they're probably not a safe person to be around. But for children, it's completely normal to have intense emotional responses to any real or perceived setbacks, and you have to keep building a connection with them anyway.

[ayebydan]

If appropriate I'd like to congratulate you on the addition to your family :)

[liv]

Aw, thank you. I think congrats are ok, in the sense of celebrating a good thing that happened in my life :-)

[siderea]

Congratulations!

Does anyone have any advice (from personal experience or theoretical knowledge) about how to cope when people you care about find every small setback or frustration devastatingly upsetting? It's something I want to do better this time.

Is the problem that when the little ones get very upset, you feel intensely that you should do something to remedy their distress? That is, it is difficult for you to be around distressed children (or people generally)?

[liv]

The second half but not the first. It is difficult for me to be around distressed people (occasionally is fine, I can attend a funeral without falling apart, but when it's multiple times a day every day it's really wearing), but that's not a consequence of feeling I should do something to help. I know that there are times when you should in fact do something to help a distressed child and there are other times when you should back off. I can do either of those, I don't always judge completely right but the compulsion to find a remedy isn't the thing that makes intense distress difficult for me. In fact, if the child is crying because they want something, and I can provide it, and then they calm down, that's generally a happy experience as far as I'm concerned.

It's that if someone is screaming and completely out of control, my very strong instinct is to withdraw emotionally. I don't at all want to be in connection with a person who's massively upset, and I know that being present and keeping a strong connection is really important for children, but I find I'm constantly fighting my self-protection instincts. And I find that if I make myself stay present, I end up returning mentally to the situation a great deal, worrying about what I did to cause the distress, worrying that in general I'm not handling the relationship well and that's why they get so upset by minor difficulties, even worrying that being part of the child's life at all is harming them.

[sorcyress]

(Haven't read comments, apologies if restating a bunch of things)

One of the most important parts for me has been to remind myself that I have better/more brain development than them, and that this problem really is a Big Deal to them. Be calm, be patient, DON'T ESCALATE, but also don't try to minimize for them. A lot of "therapist-talk" --"that must be really frustrating" "wanna talk about it?" "I'm sorry it's feeling so rough".

Also for the younger ages (like...0-4) a _lot_ of distraction. "hm, this isn't working for you but did you see that I have a book here? or I'm making a funny face? or maybe it's time to go for a walk outside?"

Alsoalso, to a certain extent, not unduly fussing over bumps and bonks --this is especially for body/pain/surprise stuff. A lot of times when toddlers fall down or bump into stuff, they're not actually too badly hurt, they're just surprised and the adult did a panicked reaction and so this is a Very Bad Thing, Let's Cry A Lot. My mom used to go "safe!" when kids fell down, I prefer a chipper and amused "bonk!", either way the point is to make it into a fun game, and not a distressing surprise. (Warning: Some kids will then fall down on purpose repeatedly because "bonk" is very funny, ask me how I know!)

Disclaimer for above paragraph: The funny/light reaction can be the first one, but you should absolutely still pay attention and if it doesn't shock the kid out of being upset, the child could absolutely be for-real hurt and you should intervene as necessary.

~Sor

(Credentials: No kids of my own, but I started regularly babysitting at about age ten (20 years ago) and have done significant amounts of substitute teaching (most of a year with 7-year-olds), a year of nannying a 1.5-2.5 year old, and am now a high school teacher.)