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Welcome to familywisdom.com, a website dedicated to informing and inspiring couples and families. Each week you will find a new article, story or essay about parenting, marriage or life. Suggestions for articles and questions to Ellen Terich are welcome. You can contact her at e.terich1@verizon.net |
LESSON FROM SEAN: LEARNING ABOUT FEELINGS 2003-10-06 Now that my 2 1/2 year old grandson Sean has been talking more, he has begun to express his feelings in words. A few days ago, for example, when he wanted to wear a favorite knit hat outside and his mommy told him it was too hot to wear a hat, instead of crying he looked down and said "Sean sad." Sean's mother has been teaching him the language of feelings and that is his first step in knowing how to manage them. For now, he is only able to put a label on his emotions. As he gets older his parents will help him learn when to express them and when not to express them, how to keep them from controlling him, and how to manage them as he moves through life. In fact, helping children understand and cope with their feelings is one of the most important tasks of parents. Understanding, verbalizing and managing feelings is also one of the great advances of human beings. One could even say it enables us to form civilized societies. If we can talk about our fears with each other, we can band together for safety and reassurance. If we can express our sadness, others will come to offer comfort. If we are able to tell others we are angry, we may be able to negotiate and find solutions rather than just striking out in violence. Yet we look around and see adults in society who have not learned how to deal with feelings: the motorist who hurts someone in a fit of road rage; the husband who beats his wife; the wife who has an affair to soothe her hurt; the athlete who throws a punch at a rival; the laid off employee who sinks into despair; the parent who overprotects or abuses a child. All of these are examples of adults who did not know what to do with their feelings. When my parents and their parents were children, a sophisticated understanding of feelings wasn't nearly as important as it is today. That's because in my parents' and grandparents' generations, duty and obligation provided the rules by which one lived - and those rules included keeping your feelings under control. If you were angry, you bit your tongue and took a long walk. If you were sad you cried discreetly. If you were afraid to do something you either made polite excuses or you bit the bullet and did it. Today, we have gotten much more sophisticated about feelings and much less concerned with duty and obligation. This is both good and bad. Psychologists learned that a certain number of people who remained unaware of their feelings developed psychological symptoms. One of the keys to eliminating the symptoms was to help the patient acknowledge long buried feelings. However, some people got carried away. For example, in the sixties and seventies, feelings were seen by some as justification for one's behavior. Hippies and flower children said "if it feels good, do it." Married men and women who became attracted to someone else pursued affairs. Others practiced "open marriage." Psychologists even encouraged people not to censor their anger and to express it openly. It was thought by some that not expressing anger was dangerous (a danger that was vastly overblown). The early psychological exploration of feelings had one big problem: it was one-sided. People focused on their own feelings and often forgot about the feelings of others. "If it feels good do it" is a crazy slogan because it doesn't add "if it doesn't hurt anyone else." Expressing uncensored anger can be very painful to others, whether or not it helps you. And risking the destruction of your family merely because you feel an attraction to someone seems ill advised to say the least. Along with helping our children understand feelings, then, and to prevent problems like the depression, abuse, infidelity, and the myriad types of rage cited in newspapers daily, parents must teach children to acknowledge and understand the feelings of others. This is called empathy and is taught by example as well as an ongoing conversation between parent and child. Parents who show compassion to their young children will teach it to them at an unconscious level. As small children imitate the adults in their lives, they will begin to give the empathy that they get. Sean is already doing this. When his baby sister cries, he dances and sings to cheer her up. If she starts to laugh he smiles and says "Happy baby." Sean has learned that when Grace is happy, he's happy too. He has also learned to show compassion for his mother. When she was tearful a few weeks ago, he brought her a Kleenex, then went to his daddy and said sadly "Mommy not happy." As Sean gets older, however, emotions of anger or fear may overtake his tendency to care about the feelings of others, and he may occasionally misbehave. It will be up to his parents to talk to him and remind him that his actions have an impact on others. As Sean grows, he may be given many such reminders, but his parents are up to the task. They want their son not only to understand and manage his own feelings, but also to recognize and respect the feelings of others. That's what the duty and obligation of our parents' generation was based on, after all - respecting others so that the world would remain civilized. |