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

[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.)

[green_knight]

Thanks, that is very helpful. (I have very little direct contact with small children; my goal is to be a good ally when I do encounter them.)

[liv]

Thank you! I have definitely heard good things about what is sometimes called 'feeling your feelings', and I think it's probably something I do when something is hard for just me as an individual. I can probably generalize the same sorts of techniques to handle the reflected emotions about someone else being upset.

I'm very much against telling (or showing) children their feelings don't matter. I don't find any comfort or use in the sort of parenting support wry humour in laughing about the triviality of the proximal cause of a child being upset. I know it's also not good to get caught up in the melodrama, but I think little children's emotions are real and it's respectful to take them seriously.