The Scary Things Kids Need to Tell Us

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2:04And not just know, but remind ourselves of every time our child is expressing a feeling of any kind. This is so key for a lot of reasons. Emotional health, our children learning to navigate their emotions and that their emotions are healthy and all acceptable, that obviously certain behaviors aren't. So we want to give children that message, of course. And also we want our children to be able to confide in us, right? As they grow, it's a crucial and sometimes kind of delicate thing between us and our children, that they feel safe to share anything with us, that they're feeling, that they're going through.

2:47Anyway, there's so many messages in this that are, again, key to everything. And yet, our biggest challenge. Very simple to fix, but very challenging. So here's the note that this parent sent to me. Dear Janet, I've read all your books, apart from Baby Person, but I'm looking forward to it. And loved listening to your podcasts since I came across them while looking for help with how to handle intense tantrums my first daughter was having at 11 months old. Your approach helped immensely and has shaped how I parent ever since. Thank you. That daughter is now five and a half years old, and I've been struggling with some behavior that feels quite alarming.

3:28For context, we also have a three and a half year old son and an eight month old daughter, and we have just moved to a new house, a three hour drive from our original home, which has been a huge change and I believe has triggered this behavior. My eldest daughter is incredibly intelligent and strong-willed. She's sensitive to the world around her and picks up on the slightest changes in mood, often noticing subtleties that others don't. This has always been coupled with intense outbursts and moments of overwhelm that can be quite violent at times. They've been getting less and less frequent as she gets older.

4:06She's a deep thinker and asks questions that are as beautiful as they are hard to answer at times. Not long after we told her we would be moving, she said to me one night when I was putting her to bed that she has been thinking about dying and she felt scared to talk about it. I responded by saying, everyone feels scared about dying sometimes and thinking about dying doesn't make anything happen. She went on to say she didn't want to be alive because she didn't want to die, and then that she didn't understand the point in being alive. I tried my best to respond objectively, like I do to any questions.

4:45I thanked her for telling me and said, I love knowing what you're thinking about, and sounds like you're thinking about some big things, and you're finding that a bit hard, and that I've noticed she often thinks about big things, and that is such a beautiful thing about her. This has happened a few more times since, and I have responded in similar ways. Tonight it happened again. She starts at her new school tomorrow. And the language was a bit more alarming, and I was in a bit of an overwhelmed state already after a stressful day. She said, I've been thinking about wanting to die. And I regretfully said, but then you would never see mom and dad ever again, and I would be so sad.

5:26She asked if I would cry all day, and I said I would cry every day for the rest of the of my life. At the time, I just wanted her to understand it was a big deal, I think. She seemed a little pleased with that response and said, okay, I won't die then, but I've been spiraling ever since. If I had to guess at what you would say, it would be that she has picked up on my discomfort and is exploring it through the repeated behavior. But given the language she's using, it's hard for me not to feel alarmed and wonder if I need to seek help with this issue. And so the cycle repeats. Any advice you have would be so appreciated.

6:04Thank you so much. Wow, this parent is so insightful and she even knows what I'm going to say. And that is one thing I'm going to say. Yes, when children pick up on our discomfort rather than our acceptance of something they're going through or something they're sharing, something they're expressing, then it is this thing they need to keep bringing up because they're not really getting a satisfactory answer to that. So that's something to know here. But I also want to point out that when this parent says in the beginning of this note that she came across my podcast while looking for help with how to handle intense tantrums her first daughter was having at 11 months old and that my approach helped her, this is really the exact same issue going on.

6:54So if she was able to take that advice to accept and allow the tantrum, to allow it to run its course so that her child could move through it more readily, then that's exactly what she needs to do here. But the thing is, as children grow, they have all this language and they have all this different imagery that they can bring up. It looks different, right? So it surprises us every time. And even if it didn't surprise us every time and look different, no matter how much we know that letting the feelings be is the best thing to do, it's not going to be our first impulse for most of us. It's definitely not mine.

7:33I've had to train myself to like, let that impulse come, that I want to fix it, that I want to push back on it in some way or resolve it in some way, talk my child out of it, explain it away without meaning to making it about me more than what my child is going through that I'm uncomfortable. I still have the urge to do all those things because I'm uncomfortable. I don't want my child to ever feel anything but great. That's how most loving parents, I would say, naturally feel. So that's why it's this constant challenge to allow the tantrum, to allow my baby to express something to me by crying.

8:16And I talk a lot about this in baby person and how we can get on this track right from the beginning, where of course, a lot of times they are communicating something that's easy to resolve. Other times they're communicating something that really just needs to be shared. That could be, I've had too much stimulation today. And of course, an answer to that would be to give them less, but we can't resolve that feeling and help them to stop feeling like that. Once they're needing to discharge that stimulation, they need to do it. They need to express it. It could be too many people were handling me or somebody got really close in my face or I heard a sound that scared me.

8:57And yes, we can distract. It's very easy to do that with a baby. But none of that is going to help us in the long term as much as this lifelong path that we can get on right now at whatever age your child is right now to seeing the sharing of feelings as a positive thing overall. And yes, it's going to be gnarly sometimes, it's going to be scary for us. But the goal is to allow those feelings to land so that our child can move through them and not get stuck there. And again, this path is going to be clear for us forward. It's the same path all the way through to our children's adulthood when they have serious issues and scary, scary things that they're going through sometimes that we really want to stop.

9:46We don't want to let them go there, but we remind ourselves that they need to, whatever it is, they need to share it all the way. and when we're convinced that this is the right path, again, it's always going to be hard in the moment and we're not going to respond in the way that we want to respond, but we can course correct. And that's what I'm going to suggest to this parent, a way to course correct because she already knows the course. If she was handling her child's tantrums at 11 months old, she knows the path. She just needs to get back on it and understand that this is how it's looking with her five and a half year old who's dealing with all of this change.

10:30The baby being eight months old and more of a person. And now this is the second sibling that's kind of, you know, moving her aside a bit in the family. She's this incredibly sensitive, gifted girl in terms of picking up other people's feelings. So she's going to pick up, unfortunately, her mom's feelings, no matter what her mom says. She's going to pick up her mom thinking, hey, this is alarming. Like, don't say this stuff, right? But how do we talk ourselves out of that? We can't really talk ourselves out of that, but we can remind ourselves what these feelings mean and what these expressions mean and what they are and what our ideal role is in them.

11:11And the truth is all of these things that we've heard, right? Feelings come and go. Feelings are not facts. Being able to share feelings and have them be accepted clears something for our child, helps them to feel better. And this is true for us as adults too. Now, it would be entirely different if this parent was sensing that her daughter was actually depressed, that she was eating or sleeping differently, maybe withdrawing from activities. I didn't get that in this parent's note, but if this parent has the slightest doubt or any parent out there that their child may be depressed, then it's always a good idea to reach out to a mental health professional.

11:59Generally with children, it's even more true that feelings come and go a lot of times during the day, that there's a lot of flow in the feelings that children have, much more so than we might have as adults, that they're definitely not facts, that they're often very symbolic, as I'm seeing in this case. They represent other things. And children feel better when they clear the feelings. We know how that feels as adults, right? When we have a good cry or when we are able to share something really hard with someone and maybe they're not pleased about it, but they accept it. How we can exhale, how we can move on, how we can get stuck even in a grieving process that isn't healthy by distracting ourselves.

12:48You know, we used to hear, luckily people aren't saying this now anymore so much, but it used to be, oh, somebody died in the family. Keep busy. Don't think about it. Got to be active. Got to be busy. Basically, you got to avoid feeling this grief. And that is the exact opposite of what we need to pass through a healthy grieving process. So all of these changes that are going on, change is loss for young children. I mean, it is for us too. She's grieving these losses of the home she knew, of the family that she'd gotten used to. Now there's this eight-month-old. There could be grieving about that.

13:29She's about to start a new school. Whoa, that's uncomfortable, right? Even if we're the most confident child in the world and we're not so sensitive like this child is, that's a lot, right? If she was sailing through this, that would be shocking. But instead, the mother says, not long after we told her we would be moving, she said to me one night when I was putting her to bed that she has been thinking about dying and she felt scared to talk about it. Wow. So this is a very scary thing to hear, right? But this kind of fear is worth us walking through because what will help her and will help us really is to understand this more instead of, as we all want to do as parents, gently and lovingly closing the door on it.

14:18So I'm not saying, you know, this parent is doing anything wrong. She's doing things that are very normal that most of us end up doing or at least want to do. This parent responded by saying, everyone feels scared about dying sometimes and thinking about dying doesn't make anything happen. So the parent is responding saying, okay, it's normal to feel like that and it's not going to come true just because you're thinking about it. But ever so subtly and kindly and lovingly, this parent is closing the door and wanting to understand, whoa, this child says she feels scared to tell me this. What does dying feel like to you?

14:58What kinds of times do you feel like this? And what do you imagine? When we're able to walk through the fear, we want to know, right? We want to know what's going on. Children also, things aren't literal to them, the way they define things. They haven't experienced a lot of people or animals dying and knowing what that's even like. So what is this concept even for her? Of course, first we need to calm ourselves and know, wow, this is a golden opportunity my child is giving me, telling me something she feels scared to talk about, trusting me. Such good signs here for this parent's relationship with her child.

15:40And she can tweak this to help her with this heavy stuff too, and pave the way for all the future times that this parent will want to remember to let the feelings be, to open that door to understanding, rather than closing the door trying to resolve, well, you don't need to worry because this isn't really going to happen. Also to remind ourselves that kids do feel a lot of things, especially children like this, when they're making all these changes. And this parent realizes this is part of it, but she just didn't want it to show up like this, right? But she knows her daughter brings up deep topics.

16:19And that's a really deep one. What is life? What is dying? I mean, I have questions about that all the time. And the thing is, when we want our child to not worry about it, That actually makes them more worried because what they feel is, oh, this isn't open for discussion, yet I'm still having this feeling. So now if I was a little bit worried, I'm even more worried because this isn't a safe topic for my mom. Obviously, that's not how this parent wants to be. And she can, again, change this right away when she understands what's going on here and that this isn't some literal thing. And even if it was to that point, sharing it is the miracle, right?

17:01Sharing it is the cure. Sharing it and having it accepted and understood. And I want to know more. And you can always tell me. I mean, I love that this parent said, thank you for telling me. And I love knowing what you're thinking about. If she could leave that door open right there, instead of saying, sounds like you're thinking about big things and you're finding that hard. and I've noticed you often think about big things and that's a beautiful thing about you. So we're kind of analyzing it and putting a bow around it instead of just allowing for that silence, allowing for that acknowledgement.

17:39Thank you for telling me. I love knowing what you're thinking about. What does that feel like? When does it come up for you? What's scary about it? Questions instead of answers. When my kids were little, we used to love taking short family vacations together. I mean, I wouldn't call traveling with three kids relaxing, but those trips, memories, the laughs, the time together, I wouldn't trade those bonding experiences for anything. Great Wolf Lodge is built around that kind of family time. At Great Wolf Lodge, the adventure is all under one roof, a massive indoor water park with a wave pool, a lazy river, water slides.

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20:14The reason this is so challenging is because it's like we have to let go of that sense of feeling and control of something, which is hard for a lot of us. And most of us weren't brought up just to listen and not try to fix it or resolve it or distract from it in any way. Just listen to that pain. It's much harder than trying to do something about it, right? But the thing is, it's just like if we kept trying to put a lid on those tantrums or the crying, it just keeps coming up or it goes underground and then it comes out in other ways, behaviors. It's never a cure. It's never a real fix. All it does is keep it simmering, never getting a chance to fully release.

20:57So really all this parent has to do is open up more, just listen, be a listening place, do less and trust that it's safe for her daughter to go here too, especially because she's sharing it. And that's exactly what we want to encourage. So this parent said it happened a few more times since, and she's responded in similar ways. And then this day when the mom was in a bit of an overwhelmed state already after a stressful day, she said, I've been thinking about wanting to die. And this parent says, I regretfully said, but then you would never see mom and dad ever again. And I would be so sad. That's where this parent kind of expressed her truth.

21:40I feel that this is too uncomfortable for me. And she was saying that in other ways by just kind of very gently avoiding it. But now she's really saying it. I can't handle this. And I love the honesty in that, that the parent admitted that I don't want to think about this happening because this would make me so sad. And then the daughter asked if the mom would cry all day. And the mom said, I would cry every day for the rest of my life, right? As all of us would if something happened to our children. At the time, I just wanted her to understand it was a big deal, I think. She seemed a little pleased with that response and said, okay, I won't die then, but I've been spiraling ever since.

22:26So I think the daughter seemed a little pleased then maybe because there was something satisfying in the mother showing her cards there, like, look, I can't handle this. And that gave this little girl a certain validation to her feeling. However, it may come up again for this family, or some version of this may come up, because grieving changes like these is a process. And the more we can welcome the process and open up to it as our child's very influential leader, the sooner and more healthily it will pass. This parent said, given the language he's using, it's hard for me not to feel alarmed and wonder if I need to seek help with this issue.

23:13And so the cycle repeats. So I just want to say this is one of the harder things that children share, right? On a scale of one to 10, this is like a nine or a 10, right up there with, I want to kill you, or I want to kill my sibling, or I hate you, or all of these other momentary feelings that children share that they don't mean literally most of the time. Yes, it is alarming. It is is the most challenging. This is a number 10 on the scale. But if this parent can open up to this, then really most of the rest of it will be easy. She's already so far in her whole understanding of her child and understanding of the sensitivity.

23:57I mean, that's the gift of these children is also the challenge of these children. We have to be so clear in our feelings. And then, you know, when the parent did come clean, that was more satisfying to her daughter because she knew that in all these other responses she was getting, she had to keep fishing for it though, fishing for it, fishing for it. But it would be even better if this could just be about her and what she's going through. And that this mom and any mom going through this or any dad or caregiver or grandparent or whatever with a child, we could trust that this is a good thing.

24:36That these feelings are coming out into the open. It's a positive thing. So remind yourself, feelings aren't facts. Feelings come and go. When feelings, no matter how they look or sound or are expressed, are allowed to land with us, our child feels better. This is our biggest challenge as parents in my experience. However, we can do this. Thank you all so much for listening and I really hope this helps. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressive save over$900 on average. Pop over to Progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by.

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