3/5/21

 Passion

            Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it. If one offered for love all the wealth of one’s house, it would be utterly scorned.

Song of Solomon 8:6-7

            Tears are not a stranger at our house.  I live in a home of…big feelings.  Emotional reactions and responses that are so big that you would swear my children had just chugged diet cola and mentos before entering the room.  Sometimes there is a logical, traceable chain of thoughts and events that allow my wife and I to figure out what just happened, where we went wrong, and what to do better next time…for there will always be a next time.

            Other times there is no logical roadmap.  I know that I have said that everything has context.  Sometimes the context is simply that we have big feelings and they are going to come out some way or another.  One minute everything is fine and the next minute there are tears and yelling and sobbing and blindly dashing out of the room.

            Navigating my son’s passions is one of the greatest challenges of my parenting.  Part of the challenge is the unpredictability of what he will care about and be invested in.  Getting injured at Tae Kwon Do?  No biggie.  Having his little sister drop his 600 piece lego set that he spent hours building and having to start over?  Easy.  Watching a Christmas special on November 30^th instead of December 1^st?  Deal-Breaker.

            A couple of things that we have deciphered in the past decade and a half of dealing with big feelings:

·                            *  Big feelings are scary, even more so for the kids then for us.  They need to know that someone in the house is under control so remaining calm is paramount.  A parent yelling at a child to stop crying will only escalate the situation and make it even worse. 

·                             *  Identify triggers.  There are usually some specific situations or foods or sounds or people who will set off our kids.  Avoiding them will go a long way towards avoiding explosive feelings.  At the IDD center, a common trigger was schedule.  If we say we are doing something and have it written down, it gave a great sense of comfort.  If we break the schedule, everything became more tenuous.

·                                *  Safe spaces.  Having a comfortable, familiar room to de-escalate is incredibly helpful.  The emotions need to go somewhere and having a place that has familiar music and gentle lighting and loved items can be an incredibly useful tool in your parenting toolbox.

·                              *  Be vulnerable with your kids.  One of the most moving and impactful events for my son was when he saw me cry while preaching a sermon.  He didn’t know that dads cried.  When we cry in front of our kids or when we apologize to them for yelling, we take steps towards normalizing the big feelings and freeing them up from shame and anxiety.

Big feelings and passions are a part of our kids.  To try putting a cork on them is to invite an explosion somewhere down the line.  Help your kids recognize and use their big feelings, not fear them.

A moment to reflect:

What are the things that trigger your big feelings?