SAFETY AND FEARS, HAVING A PLAN

With the tragedy in Japan very much in the air and on people’s minds, the topic of safety started before we even hit our seats, while we were still getting coffee and goodies at the home of Alison and Tom (Dashiell’s parents). Whenever a local or global situation brings this topic up for people, Roleen says, there is so much conflicting information and advice. But Safety Preparedness is an important topic at the school. They have a plan. They know in which order the teachers leave and who does what.  It’s all worked out. You need to have a plan as well, as a family. Where would you meet up? Who would be your contact if you are separated and without cell phone contact?  Who picks up your child? This would be a good time to make sure you know who needs to be on your emergency form at school, who is allowed to pick up your child. Maybe at this point you could look to other parents you have gotten to know, and add them along with your other names. Your child will not be sent home with anyone who is not on the list. You will not show up and find your child has left with someone who’s not on your list. You will know with whom they left by the signature that’s on the sign out emergency form.  With this discussion, many aspects of safety came up. One mother discussed her panic at her son’s request to use the men’s room while they were out. How to handle it? She found herself having all those fears, and not knowing the best way to address them to her son. Roleen said it is always appropriate to open the door of the men’s or women’s rooms, and say “My son/daughter is coming in. I am making sure it’s safe. I will be standing at the door.” This provides the information for your child, as well as alerting anyone else that you are right there paying attention. It is also always fine to bring your child in to whichever bathroom you use. But in the event that they ask to use their own gender’s facilities, you’re fine, you can still protect them. As Roleen mentioned in an earlier Blog topic this week, Betsy Brown Braun’s website is a fantastic resource for many of these questions. She recently wrote about ways to discuss (or not to discuss) the situation in Japan with your kids. It might not come up for the NSW children unless they have an older sibling, in which case they may become aware. What they mostly want to know is are they safe? Will the tsunami come here and hurt them, or their families? They may ask questions in many different ways, but that is essentially what they are asking: Am I safe? So you reassure them. You are safe. That happened far, far, far away. It won’t happen to you, and we are here to protect you. It comes down to this: they will respond the way you are responding. They will get their cues from your reactions, so be very mindful of what’s going on with you—how are you feeling, what are you communicating? Be very careful about what you’re saying, how you’re describing things. You may be on the phone, thinking they aren’t listening. THEY ARE. Betsy Brown Braun says watch out not to whisper, or spell, or use other methods to try to communicate over your kids. They pick up on it and it can create anxiety. It is up to you as a family to say, “What is our plan?” Work it out so everyone knows it. This will help your own anxiety level as well. Often we feel the most nervous when we haven’t got a plan, we don’t know concretely what steps to follow. We haven’t empowered ourselves in controlling our own situation. This causes our own fear. As for the local plan, the city will most likely send a robocall to all home phones, letting you know the plan for the city—where you should go, how to proceed. You may need to walk a long way, be prepared—who is closest to the school? Who can get there?Another family planning method is the “Code Word”. There should be a safety word that your family decides upon. That way, if someone approaches your child and says they have been told to pick them up and take them to you, they can ask the person for the code word. You can decide as a family that if they don’t know the code word, you don’t leave with them. Now, the truth is for very young kids, the odds are that they still may forget to ask, or not understand. So it certainly is not a cure-all, but it is a tool to add to your arsenal.Roleen says, “The more I know about children, the more I understand how difficult it is to try and teach them something without context.  But we feel it’s our job.  So we talk about strangers and things that may not have any meaning for them and we create a lot of anxiety.  Reading Betsy’s book about these kinds of hot topics is a good idea.  It gives us time to process our own feelings behind the subject.” The school itself is probably far more prepared then your home. They have their systems worked out. Even when there are helicopters circling overhead, they take the children inside, or stay low when outdoors, not using the climbing structures. The teachers do not respond to their own curiosity by climbing up and seeing what’s happening.The school has 3 extra car seats, should your child need to leave with another adult but we all agreed that in case of an extreme emergency, car seats may not be what determines safety. This blog is a fantastic resource. Most of you don’t even know how much you can do with it. Check out all the things the Emergency Committee has put together for us by clicking on the information on the right of the page.  It’s good stuff! In any case, it is also important not to go overboard with your fears. Model safety, don’t instill your own fears.Michael spoke about how many people would inappropriately question him, in the park for example, since Imonie is a different race. People would assume he wasn’t there with a child, and accost him about it.  Remember that people are coming out of their own experiences, and there has been so much abuse, etc, in people’s pasts that there are a lot of reactive consequences to the “triggers”.  Being aware, not paranoid is the goal.

MELTDOWNS: THEIRS AND YOURS

One of the mothers described what her son is going through— daily meltdowns, where nothing seems to help him. He is set off by small daily activities, and whether she leaves him with his feelings, or tries to comfort him, nothing she is doing is helping. As Roleen says, you want to move in closer, quicker, try to anticipate when he may get set off, listen instead of fix. They don’t want you to fix it or teach, that doesn’t appease what’s happening. But if nothing seems to help, look to see what is going on in your home. What’s changed? In this case, the mother had recently gone back to work. Talk to your child, “I’ve noticed things are a little different around here, and I’m missing my time just with us.” Make a plan to sit down and read, for example, have time to connect with them.  Maybe they are having frustrations with their skill levels—they want to do things and can’t yet, for example. Bring them into conversations. It could be that they’re overhearing things that are agitating them. One parent brought up having been in a car accident. They were fine, but they didn’t make the connection that their child started getting really worried and upset. He realized that his daughter was worried about him, that the accident had had a much larger impact on her than it did on him. We think we can protect our kids from these things, but they are so astute, they pick it all up from us. We need to address it with them. Remember that at this developmental stage everything revolves around them. When you’re happy, it’s THEM that made you happy, if you’re sad, it’s because of THEM as well. If there’s a crisis, they think it’s their job to fix it. They aren’t able to articulate it as this stage, so you need to reflect it back: “I think you may be worried about such and such. It’s not your fault. You don’t need to worry. I am fine.”This also happens with death.  When there is any death, they may think that YOU are going to die.  Betsy Brown Braun’s book, JUST TELL ME WHAT TO SAY is very readable and gives you exact language to address all of these things. Take what it says, and make it your own, so it doesn’t feel like ‘lingo” to you, but is sincere. Again, as for meltdowns, remember they are working really hard at school, pulling it off. They are going to melt down with you. While the adrenalin is up and running is not the time to try to discuss it, but you MUST RE-VISIT the situation. “That was really tough yesterday, we didn’t have time to reconnect…”Remember that children this age may still lack impulse control. They may also lack the proper language, and will act things out physically. Remember that children are learning lots of things and are taking in new information all the time.  Example:  When they don’t have the words yet, they talk with their bodies by grabbing, hitting, maybe even biting.  You give them the words to communicate. The next stage is that they can use their words but they’re still using their bodies to grab and hit, etc.  You reaffirm that they can’t hit but they can use their words.  The next stage is that they use their words without hitting but they’re yelling! You then model a softer voice tone for them.  With practice and support, they will finally know to use the words to get their needs met with a tone that is socially acceptable.  It doesn’t happen over night.  It takes patience and practice.  Then they get to a point where they can use their words with self-control in a voice. But in terms of out-of-control behaviors, you need to decide what’s right for your family. How are you going to address behaviors? What are the consequences?

WHO RUNS THE SHOW, AND BEING WHO YOU ARE

And here the discussion opened up into what emerged as a theme for this Coffee. As Roleen said, “ I am not a fan of children running the show.” You can address your child’s needs and still be firm, have consequences. The whole family has a right to live happily together.  If you do lose your patience, admit it, and move toward re-visiting your actions and make some repairs where needed.  “That was crazy-making, I lost my cool. I said_____ I should have said____. “  Stop wallowing in feeling guilty about your actions.  Just deal with it and move on.  Hopefully, you will have learned from the experience to know what to do next time.Recognizing your actions and making some repairs (meaning having some conversation about it) is apology ENOUGH. You don’t want to get into apologizing to your kid for everything. Some children will keep demanding everyone apologize to them. You don’t want to get into this. It’s not the point. Yes, you may owe them an apology sometimes, and they may owe you one sometimes. We BOTH owe each other an apology. Then move on—get to the heart of the matter.  When we were young, our parents often never apologized for anything, that was the culture. Now we’ve gone in the opposite direction and say “I’m sorry” for everything!  If you say “I’m sorry” it should be linked to a conversation which has you modeling respect and empathy.  It’s not about TEACHING these things. We are always thinking we need to teach. But we need to be WHO WE ARE. You can’t pretend you don’t have feelings. And yes, you can’t trample on everyone around you either. You need to self-regulate as well, and model that self-regulation. There are going to be times each of us goes over the top, and we need to find ways we can calm ourselves.Yelling may seem better than spanking, but in some ways it’s the same. As one mother put it, “In either case, you still never get to the place of talking about what’s going on. The Yeller may feel relieved, having gotten it out, but if you are yelling at your kids you don’t get a chance to address their part of it. And for that matter, Passive-Aggression is the same. In that case, you aren’t talking about it either. It’s still trying to gain “respect” through POWER. It’s a one-way relationship. And sometimes we don’t know how to be respectful of our kids without feeling like we’re “losing our own power”.You can be who you are, but you must re-play it later. And what happens to us, is that when it’s a bad scene we don’t want to re-visit it, it’s too painful. We don’t want to bring things up when everything’s swell, but that’s the time to do it. Just not before bedtime. Try not to stir up these feelings before bed. But you can bring up what happened in a quiet moment, or at dinner, in the car ride. You can talk about the day before bed, it’s a great connecting time, but you may want to avoid things that will make them upset. If you have a sensitive child, you can’t train them to “buck-up” by not respecting their sensitivities. And if you are a screamer, that is terrifying for a sensitive kid. TAKING CARE OF YOURSELVES IS THE KEY TO TAKING CARE OF YOUR FAMILY But you do get upset. You’re tired, you’re overwhelmed, and what we are seeing is that you are not necessarily taking care of YOURSELVES. You need to take care of yourself as an individual, you need to take care of yourselves as a couple, or you are not going to do this parenting thing well. Every year, Roleen says, she sees couple split up. It’s really rough. It used to be that parents would tell Roleen they would only come to fundraisers if it was a family thing. That they wouldn’t come if they needed to go out at night and leave the kids. “That’s when I realized I NEEDED to have the fundraisers be just for the adults. That people have a right to get out and have a night out with only grown-ups. “You have a right to schedule time that is just for you, for pleasure. “ My mother”, Roleen shared, “ was one of 17 kids and grew up on a farm. She had only a high school education. My father didn’t even have that. But they were sophisticated people. My mother was a stay at home mom who understood that she needed time that was just for her. So Wednesdays and Sundays were her days off. She’d play poker. She’s bowl. She wouldn’t cook. It was set up. It was on the calendar. We knew it was coming. We’d go out to dinner, we’d play Canasta. These were great memories. You need to figure out WHO YOU ARE as a family, as individuals. And it’s important for your marriage.”We also tend to focus on what we’re doing badly. It’s just as important to focus on what you’re doing well, validate how well you’re doing as a family, as individuals. Family meetings are often focused on what we need to “fix”. Sometimes you can just celebrate how well you’re all doing.If you don’t have family dinners, that’s not a problem, but you need a time to come together.  Roleen shared, for example that she never cooked, so they ate out a lot. That’s what they did as a family and that worked for them.  They made time together in the evenings before bedtime. Find out what your own family culture is. We get so hung up on what other people tell us we should be doing. You want to empower your own culture. Maybe it’s not traditional, but it’s who you are,Date nights SHOULD NOT JUST BE MOVIE NIGHTS. Date nights should be talking, being together, communicating, not just sitting next to each other watching a movie. DO that but have together time, too.  The marriage part is really important. You need downtime alone together, and you need downtime separately, too. Celebrate your individuality as well as who you are as a couple, as a family. That’s the beauty of the children at school. Each one is so unique. But it is also about “Who are we together?” We come to these Coffees to see how alike we all are. And it’s important to recognize that your mentors have the same fears and insecurities as you do. We all have the “I should haves” and the “I wish I hads”.  Here we all talked about ourselves, and shared our own particular brands of crazy. We talked about what happens when we feel defensive about our life choices—work, staying at home, our career paths.  When you feel defensive about what you are doing, you are not empowering the beauty of your own choices. If you feel attacked, realize that people may very well be talking about themselves, not you. Recognizing that, you can come from a place of understanding.What can we do with these feelings? What do we do with our comparisons, and our insecurities? Learn from your children—they have huge feelings, and then they move on. They are more present, they move through the difficult things. Learn from them. Learn Mindfulness. You can be disappointed, you can move through it.