My son, 5, and daughter, 7, were playing together and talking to each other when he raised his voice. Immediately after that, he starts to cry and yell about how his sister yelled at him, which wasn't true.
I calmly told him I do not tolerate lying, and that he was the one who raised his voice, not her.
He starts to flip the **** out, kicking, screaming, crying and yelling that I don't love him. He throws his phone to the ground (thankfully onto the mattress). I hold on to him as he struggles with his massive emotions. He rejects my touch.
He proceeds to go to a corner of the room covered by my wardrobe to hide and nurse his wounded feelings.
After a while of silence and sniffling, I decide to take the approach of sitting quietly nearby him, in the darkness, not touching or speaking, but just being with him.
Connection worked. He may have felt anger, hurt, and misunderstood, but he now he also felt loved and cared ablut. After a while, I reached out a hand, and he places his in mine. I tell him I love him, and I comb my hand through his hair. He says he wants to take a shower, and he does.
The takeaway here is that children - we all - need to be allowed to scream, shout, yell, cry, angry-hop and mad-dance, in a safe and controlled environment, where love and care and support are always at hand. I learned this from my hospital stays, because the nurses wouldn't - or couldn't, rather - take my pain away or deny me my emotions. So the best thing they could do was watch my emotions erupt and flow, however massive and messy or ugly they were (anger, grief, sadness, joy and elation which manifested as loud sobbing, throwing things, singing super loudly etc), while also making sure I was safe (sometimes they had to restrain me to the bed or the chair so I wouldn't hurt myself and inadvertently hurt someone else).
So go deal with your big hurts and big anger, so you can heal and provide that safe space for your children to work through theirs.
Light and peace be with you 🫰🏽
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