Tiny new person
Jun. 18th, 2020 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livSo 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.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-06-20 05:05 pm (UTC)I noticed that the older children developed the ability to remove themselves from too much stress before they learned how to just handle the situation emotionally. That was a big help. But before that, they would object very strongly to being picked up against their will, and sometimes I would do it anyway because leaving them in place was unsafe, but especially given I'm not their real parent I try to minimize overriding their consent like that.
I like the reminder that children are individuals and not a monolith based on age. I think going through a phase of not having much emotional regulation is probably fairly universal but I'm pretty sure that how they express dire misery and how best to respond is going to vary between different children. A for example can find eye contact unpleasant especially when he's already upset, but I figured out other ways to communicate that I was paying attention and taking him seriously, which helped equivalently.