My kids were so excited this morning to open the new soccer ball-shaped nightlight that we got at IKEA. Reading IKEA directions is not my favorite source of entertainment, but this was a nightlight-how hard could it be?
Not that hard, except it involved unscrewing screws with an old rusty screwdriver, with a 4 and 6 year old peering over my shoulder anxiously waiting for me to finish and turn on the light! As I worked on the screws at my kitchen counter, out of the corner of my eye I saw my 4 year old reach for a small screwdriver from the toolbox and, with a gleam in his eye, attempt to “fix” my (expensive) white countertop!
I quickly took it out of his hand and told him “no!” He is 4-years-old, he was experimenting with doing something that looked so cool, and had absolutely no desire to ruin my pristine 5000 shekel countertop! But I was triggered. I felt anger building up inside me, which was probably more of a result of my frustration with IKEA stuff in general, putting things together, reading directions, oh, and the fact that they needed to leave for school in 15 minutes! (Please don’t ask why I started doing this at that time, sometimes we have no rational explanations for our actions!) Did he need to be told he was wrong? Yes, so he would not do it again! Did he need to be reprimanded and screamed at out of anger and frustration? No! But I was angry…so what’s a mom to do? I did what I first learned from Dr. Haim Ginnot in a video, and subsequently read in his books. “I’m really angry!” I expressed in a calm firm voice. “I really don’t want my counter to get ruined and I’m angry that you might have ruined it forever! It is very expensive!” Did he understand exactly what I was talking about? Probably not. He heard I was angry, but I wasn’t blaming him or getting out of control. Dr. Dan Segal, in his book “Parenting from the Inside Out” explains how it is positive for parents to express their emotions in front of their children. This helps the child see the consistently in the parents’ nonverbal communication and their words, helps them realize that parents are people and have feelings, and, maybe most importantly, it helps them realize that it is okay to feel their feelings! We don’t want our children to suppress their emotions, and then have them come out in non-appropriate ways. By us expressing OUR emotions and not letting them take over our minds or bodies, we teach our children that it is normal and positive to have emotions, even negative emotions, and that we can feel them strongly as long as we do not use them to hurt others. And the amazing thing was, that after expressing my feeling in words, I felt much calmer. In many of his works, Dan Segal discusses how putting the feeling into words makes it more rational, and thus tempers the emotion so we won’t have to act on it. It is connecting the rational brain with the emotional brain; this is emotional intelligence! “Name it to tame it” is what Dr. Dan Segal calls this strategy. When we name the emotion, it brings our rational brain into our emotion, it connects left and right brain, it gets our prefrontal cortex involved in the activities of the emotional limbic system. When we put our emotion into words, it suddenly doesn’t feel so strong and urgent anymore. And, even better, our kids learn that it is ok to have emotions and they can also learn to control their feelings and “tame them.”
So what happened after I expressed my anger in words? I realized that I felt angry and I began thinking how stupid it was to get angry over this little thing. I then picked up and hugged my son, and reminded him not to use the screwdriver on the counter or any furniture. (Later he was playing “builder” and he remembered this rule!)
I felt loving and connected to him, and he did not feel at all slighted by me. I think expressing my feelings in words was the catalyst to lead to this happy ending and the lesson being properly taught.
I have used this strategy many times when I felt strong emotions, mostly anger, but also to describe when I was scared or worried, and each time, it helped dissipate the strong feeling and connected me more to my child. And I even use it for positive emotions, such as happiness, excitement, or love!
Rav Dessler, in Michtav MeEliyahu part 4, explains how in Judaism, we must always have a connection between sechel (the rational mind) and Lev (the emotionalmind). We can’t be purely rational creatures, because if we don’t attach emotion to what we are learning, it will never really become a part of us. On the other hand, we can’t just act and react on the basis of emotion alone; we need to bring intellect to emotion, or use our intellect to channel and distill our emotions so they are expressed in an appropriate time and place, and with appropriate intensity.By naming our emotions, bringing rational speech to our emotional reactions, we are doing exactly that! Rav Dessler brings the passuk from Yeshayahu that speaks about how in the end of days, the light of the moon (Levana) will be like the light of the sun (Chamah).The word Levana contains within it the word “Lev,” referring to the emotional mind.The word Chamah contains the word “Moach,” the rational brain.What is the ideal place for a person to reach? To get to the point where his sechel and lev are “married,” where the emotions and intellect act hand in hand. Where our emotions are not wild, out of control beasts, but are “tamed” by our working on ourselves and modeling this for our children.
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