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

[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.