Category Archives: Parenting

How to parent intense and sensitive children

Supporting girls becoming women

Parenting,

Supporting Girls Becoming Women (3)

What do you remember about becoming a teenager? Three things about my thirteenth birthday stick in my mind. The first is being thrilled to receive a pair of blue and yellow suede ‘disco skates’. The second is my grandmother sucking in her breath and telling me, “You’re a teenager now. There’s trouble ahead!” And the third is that right after that I lost control skating down a hill and badly skinned my knees and chin.

Secular Western society doesn’t do much to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. So when a friend recommended a group which supports girls as they move into puberty, Cordie and I went along and in June 2015 Cordie began ‘Girls Journeying Together‘.

Over the last year the girls have met up once a month to explore topics related to growing up. In world which puts a great deal of pressure on young women to look and behave in certain ways, I love the way Kim, who led the group, encouraged the girls to take regular quiet time to tune in with themselves, and to try always to be true to themselves.

While the girls met, we mums would chat over a walk or coffee, our conversation enriched by thought-provoking questions Kim gave us that complemented what she was exploring with the girls that month. In this way, the mothers were able to share our journeys as our little girls become women, which included reflecting on our own experiences of growing up. We found this process surprisingly healing, as we each let go of emotional baggage we’d unconsciously been carrying around since our own teens. I’m sure we all emerged better equipped to support our daughters and to enjoy our changing relationships with them.

We were also inspired by the positive experiences a few of the women had when they were our daughters’ age. Many of the mums recalled starting their periods as a time of secrecy and embarrassment, but hearing one woman talk of being taken out for a celebratory meal, and another being given a special gift to mark the occasion gave us all ideas for how we might do things differently with our own daughters.

An end-of-journey celebration

Last Saturday marked the end of the girls’ year together. To celebrate, Kim invited us mums to join our daughters for a ceremony and party. The girls were asked to prepare something which would show their friends a side of them they may not have seen – to talk about a hobby, for instance.  The mums, meanwhile, were asked to think about how our daughters have changed over the last year, and to be ready to hold a metaphorical mirror up to them, reflecting back how we see them.

Managing our overexcitabilities at an intense ceremony

Cordie and I relished the focus the final ceremony provided, but as we absorbed the intense emotional energy of the group, we also had to deal with our OEs.

The combination of my enthusiasm and my OEs means I worry about dominating groups. And while I’m worrying about whether if I’ve said too much (or too little), I waste energy monitoring myself, which leaves me less present to what’s going on around me. What I loved about the girls’ group celebration was that during Kim’s opening meditation she reminded each person in the group to be herself, “no need to be any different, however that is at this moment.  Not to have to perform or try to be anyway other than each of us are this evening.” With those beautiful words** I felt myself relax. I remembered that I was among loving friends and that it was the combining of our unique individual energies that made the space so special.  (Wouldn’t it be nice if we could see the whole world that way?)

Cordie also had a wobbly moment. For her presentation she chose to sing and play guitar. She sings beautifully, and even though nerves caused her voice to waver slightly, no one noticed and everyone obviously enjoyed her performance. But because she didn’t do her best, Cordie got very tense and upset, which took her attention away from the celebration. Fortunately Kim was on hand to provide loving reassurance (of the kind that we often hear more easily from a non-parent!) and Cordie recovered.

When it was my turn in the spotlight, during the ‘hold a mirror to your daughter’ ritual, I acknowledged not only Cordie’s courage in performing in front of the group but – even more important –  her growing willingness and ability to move through the intense negative feelings she sometimes feels. It’s not always easy, but when we’re stuck, simply setting an intention to change our negative thinking is an important step in setting ourselves free to be present to the joy that’s around us. Which in Cordie’s case included entertaining her friends with her singing and playing for most of the subsequent party. 🙂

 

Supporting Girls Becoming Women

** I wrote to Kim, asking her to remind me of the special words she used which so put me at my ease. Here’s part of her reply:

“Basically, as in girls’ group, I want everyone to feel ‘right’, however it is that they are feeling.  Too often we can make ourselves wrong, or think ourselves wrong, and that is one of the things that we seek to stop ourselves doing over the year in girls’ group – so that we can let ourselves relax and just be who we are, whoever that is today.”

Isn’t that beautiful?

Resources

Website – Find out more about Girls Journeying Together at Rites for Girls

Podcast – Listen to Kim speak beautifully about the challenges girls face growing up and how we can support them in this podcast.

Book – The Emerging Woman: How to Celebrate Your Daughter Growing Up by Kim McCabe

Rites of passage (webpage) – a look at how puberty rites and coming of age ceremonies are celebrated around the world.

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What do you remember about becoming a teenager?

How are you supporting (or did you support) your child’s transition into and through puberty?

Do you know of any resources about supporting boys growing up?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below, or on the Laugh, Love, Learn FaceBook page.

If you’d like to receive my weekly posts about life in an overexcitable family direct to your inbox, just fill in your email address in the box below or top right.

How I Crashed and Burned Because I Didn’t Follow My Own Advice

Parenting,

IMG_1370as

This time last week we were excitedly packing our sunglasses and swimsuits, about to jet off for a fortnight in southern Spain. We know El Puerto de Santa María well. We spent a month here early last year, and my 12-year-old did a language course here in October.

Cordie was excited about learning more Spanish and we were all looking forward to relaxing in the sunshine and playing in the sea.

But then …

… the weather took a Freaky Friday turn. While England is basking in sunshine and temperatures in the high 20s (80F), here in Spain we’ve got cool grey skies, rain, and gale force winds, with no let-up forecast until the weekend we’re due to fly home.?

IMG 1387

… because of a lack of other students, Cordie was placed in a Spanish group well below her ability and was panic-stricken at the prospect of not learning anything during her 40 hours of classes.

… my 11-year-old son, who’s been complaining for months about being forced to come here {we are so evil}, bounces around the tiny apartment we’re renting, letting the entire block know how he feels about being here whenever we suggest he takes a break from his iPad (or – heavens above – come for a walk on the beach).

… and then there’s my dear husband, who’s using his precious holiday allowance away from a stressful work environment, and has spent the week mooching around without a clue what to do with himself.

In Top 3 Tips to Up Your Energy and Resilience Level, Simone de Hoogh writes:

“Emotional OE people have the tendency to put everyone else’s needs before their own, because it is so hard for us to relax when someone else is suffering. The more tired we are, the harder it is to distance ourselves from others’ feelings and to make the distinction between what we feel ourselves and what others are feeling.  So we feel the deep need to fix until we are finally free… “

Boy, did I do that last week!

I talked to the staff at the Spanish school so Cordie wouldn’t feel she’s wasting her time there. Thanks to homeschooling, I’ve never before needed to advocate for my bright, asynchronous daughter, but this week I got a glimpse of what other parents go through and – oh my goodness – how I sympathise! Meanwhile having emotional OE herself, Cordie was horrified at the thought of me upsetting anyone, so I had her stress to contend with on top of my own.

I spent hours alternately entertaining and calming my son, often long after I wanted to be asleep.

I mediated between stressed-out, stir-crazy  family members.

I listened to my husband and racked my brains for ways to help him enjoy himself.

As the only driver here, I chauffered everyone around (driving an unfamiliar car on the ‘wrong’ side of the road).

I helped Cordie with her Spanish homework (usually at 9.30pm, when she felt like doing it).

And as the only Spanish speaker, I did all the grocery shopping, restaurant ordering and negotiating with the apartment staff.

In short, I ran around trying to make everyone else happy.

Guess what? It left me a wreck.

As Simone says,

“But there is always someone in emotional need, whether it is a child, family member, or a pet. If we don’t prioritise ourselves, there will never be a time to recharge and we will end up eternally exhausted and we even might become depressed.”

Because I have emotional OE, my stress was of course compounded by making myself wrong for not appreciating my blessings. How could anyone complain about being on holiday with their healthy loved ones? (We all know how much that kind of thinking helps, right?)

I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that by Thursday I realised quite how low my resilience and energy levels had sunk.

I hate neglecting my family when I can see that they’re in need, but unless I meet my own physical, emotional and intellectual needs, I’m no good to anyone.

So I went back and read my own words about the importance of raising our personal baseline and about how to stay sane as a mum to sensitive, spirited kids.

I listened to Self-Care for Parents as I meditated.

I didn’t beat myself up for not following my own advice; I reminded myself that mistakes are part of learning.

I told myself that I’m doing a good enough job of looking after myself.

And once I felt a bit better, I felt my creativity return and began to think of other ways to meet my needs – like planning a day out in Seville, and signing myself up for Spanish classes next week.

Who knows, maybe the sun will even come out? ☀️

A Surprisingly Powerful Tool To Raise Your Energy And Resilience

Parenting, ,

Self-Care for Parents

One of my favourite ways to boost my energy and resilience levels is to listen to guided visualisations or meditation recordings.

When I was working as a therapist I often made recordings for my clients. They found that by listening every day for three weeks or more they were able to make the changes they were looking for more easily, and that the changes were permanent.

I made the recordings short enough – around 6 minutes – so that even the busiest person could find time to slip on a pair of headphones, sit back and relax while allowing themselves to be guided towards their goals.

Today I thought I’d share one of my recordings with you. I made this to help me stay connected to what’s important to me as a parent.

Why should I listen to ‘Self-Care for Parents’?

Here’s how you might feel after listening:

  • more relaxed

  • able to focus more on positive behaviour than negative

  • knowing when to gently guide and when to give space

  • more in tune with what’s important to you (and less bothered about the opinions of those who don’t understand your family the way you do)

  • able to see the funny side of things more often

  • more playful

  • more creative and resourceful

* calmer

  • less likely to be triggered even in situations that used to overwhelm you

  • able to head off problems before they escalate

  • more in tune with what’s important to you

All these benefits will increase with regular listening (ideally every day for 3 weeks, then after that whenever you feel like it).

When to listen to ‘Self-Care for Parents’

The recording’s designed to be listened to while you’re relaxing with your eyes closed, so either sit or lie down in a safe, comfortable place where you’re unlikely to be disturbed. (Don’t listen while you’re driving or doing the ironing!)

Will I dance like a chicken after listening?

If anyone would like a transcript of the recording to see what they’re going to be listening to, please let me know. Don’t worry, I won’t make you dance like a chicken. 😉

How to download ‘Self-Care for Parents’

Press the big red button below to download the (6 min 54 sec, 6.6MB) recording onto your computer or device:

[easy_media_download url=”https://laughlovelearn.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Self-Care%20for%20Parents.mp3″ text=”Free Download” force_dl=”1″]

How to play ‘Self-Care for Parents’ (without downloading)

If you want to play the recording without downloading it press this button:

[easy_media_download url=”https://laughlovelearn.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/Self-Care%20for%20Parents.mp3″ text=”Play Recording”]

Technical issues?

Let me know, and I’ll try and help! I’ve never done this before so I’m on a learning curve. If the recording doesn’t automatically download, try using a different browser. You might have more success with Chrome or Firefox than Internet Explorer and Safari.

I’d love to hear how you get on

I’m committing to listening to the recording every day for 3 weeks, starting today. I’d love you to join me and share what changes you notice.

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Thank You

I’ve been blown away by the response to my last post, Why Our Intense Children Trigger Our Suppressed Pain, which was probably the most personal and scary thing I’ve ever written.

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Last, but more important than anything, a message to my mum: I love you so much. I appreciate every single one of your many, many little and big kindnesses over the years. I’m so lucky to have you in my life. Thank you for being you.

❤️

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Why our Intense Children Trigger our Suppressed Pain

Parenting

Why our Intense ChildrenTrigger OurSuppressed Pain (1)

I remember lying in the bath with my daughter when she was just a few weeks old, feeling simultaneously exhausted and utterly overwhelmed by the intensity of my love. Tears began to flow, and at some point I became aware that I was weeping for myself. For what I’d never had.

My mum got pregnant with me when she was eighteen. Unsupported by her own parents, she made an unsuitable marriage to my father and descended fast into post-natal depression. When I was two she couldn’t take it any more. One sunny afternoon she took two photographs of me on London’s Turnham Green – and then she left. I lived with relatives for a year.  My mum later  told me that she didn’t know what love was until my half-brother was born when I was five.

As I held my newborn baby in my arms in the bath that day, letting the tears flow down my cheeks, I resolved that my daughter would always know the strength of my unconditional love for her.

newborn bath

Over the years I’ve now been working with people with overexcitabiities I’ve had the privilege of meeting lots of parents of intense and sensitive children.  Their children’s overexcitabilities all look quite different, but every single mother has told me she only discovered she had OEs herself as part of the process of trying to understand her child.

That was my experience, too. I went to a workshop about OE’s to find out what was going on with my son. Little did I suspect that within a few hours I’d be crying tears for myself, for the very first time feeling accepted and understood for who I really am.

Over the weeks following the workshop I got to thinking about how my own mother’s sensitivities, like the way she has to rush through the Ikea marketplace because she can’t bear the smell of the candles. And I thought about how her mother, my grandmother, used to complain constantly about her ‘nerves’ and was once addicted to tranquilisers.

Our children’s sensitive, hyper-reactive nervous systems are a product of their genes. Genes our ancestors carried down the generations, way further back than we can remember.

What this means is that most of us were raised by sensitive, intense parents struggling with their own OEs and without anyone helping them with the daunting task of bringing up a family of spirited children.

How did they manage? Our parents did the best they could with what they had. They taught us to suppress our strong emotions because they thought that would serve us best in the world – and to keep them sane enough to raise us. 😉

Many of us, especially if we were girls, grew up suppressing our anger, our anxieties and our idiosyncracies. Some of us learned to act like completely different people from who we were inside.

And then we had our own children. We felt that unconditional love and we resolved to do things differently. But when we resolve not to repeat the patterns of our own childhood we’re up against a couple of obstacles:

(i) Evolution. Like it or not, we’re programmed to repeat what our parents did. As far as our neurological programming’s concerned, it worked. We survived our childhoods and lived long enough to have kids of our own. Evolution doesn’t favour change.

(ii) We lack role models. The more challenging our own childhood, the less of an unconscious example we have of how to raise kids the way we want to. (And of course we also have a dearth of conscious role models showing us how to parent our non-average children.)

To overcome these obstacles and forge our own path as parents requires a huge amount of energy, time and practice.

We’ll make mistakes – they’re an inevitable part of learning. We need to take care of ourselves so that we have the energy to make the changes we want, and we must be gentle with ourselves when we stumble.

When our children get angry and upset, when they never stop talking or shouting, when they lash out and throw things, our OEs are triggered. We get angry and upset. We might even throw things too.

We’re shocked by the intensity of the emotions our children arouse in us – emotions we were told not to feel, were never allowed to express, and so never learned to manage.

But it’s not too late, for us or our children. Our kids need us to be their place of safety. They need us to be in charge of our emotions so that we can help them deal with theirs.

So let’s be kind to ourselves. Let’s meet our practical, emotional and intellectual needs. Let’s forgive ourselves for our mistakes. Let’s surround ourselves with people who understand what we’re going through. And let’s remind ourselves that what we’re doing is good enough.

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Discover your unique overexcitabilities profile by taking my free online quiz.

If you’d like support dealing with OEs in yourself or your child, book a free chat with me.

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How were strong emotions dealt with when you were growing up?

What have you discovered about yourself since having children?

Why Raising Our Personal Baseline is the Key to Parenting Our Intense and Sensitive Children

Parenting,

Why Raising Our Personal Baseline is the Key to Parenting Our Intense and Sensitive Children

Have you ever resolved to make a change in the way you parent?

Perhaps you want to stay calmer when your child has a meltdown, or allow more time for everyone to get ready for school?

Maybe you want to be a better listener when your son tells you about his latest project, or be more understanding when your daughter refuses to join in the swimming class you’ve just driven 30 minutes to get to?

The life cycle of a parenting goal

Whatever your goal, if you’re anything like me, you wake up in the morning feeling inspired, energised and eager to roll out the new you.

Everything goes well for the first few hours of the day (or the first few minutes).

The kids join you in bed for five minutes of snuggles before you all get up. Teeth-cleaning becomes a fun game everyone enjoys. You don’t rush your son as he selects a T-shirt that feels just right against his skin. You skilfully defuse an argument about who gets to feed the guinea pig his celery stick before anyone ends up in tears.

And then …

You realise you forgot to charge your phone the night before. You spend an unplanned-for 10 minutes scraping ice off the car windscreen which makes you late for your doctor’s appointment. The washing machine refuses to drain (with your daughter’s football kit trapped inside). Your youngest has a meltdown because he forgot to bring his blue bunny on the journey to the supermarket. And you get home to discover the hall full of feathers leading to a decapitated pigeon in the sitting room. (Maybe only cat owners will understand this last one.)

Ten minutes of vacuuming feathers and scrubbing blood off the skirting board later (all the while fending off one child’s questions about bird anatomy while reassuring the other that you’re sure the pigeon didn’t suffer), you think about cooking dinner.

By this point you are most definitely not the parent you dreamed of being during those first, promising moments of the day.

Life happens. Our delightfully intense children behave in their wonderful, full-on ways from the moment they bounce out of bed in the morning until the second they fall asleep at night. And we react to all this through the kaleidoscope of our own overexcitabilities.

How I gave up trying to be the perfect parent

I used to fantasise about having a pause button for my life. When I felt myself getting overwhelmed I would press pause and instantly create an hour’s peace, in which I could recharge and become the perfect parent I dreamed of being.

Over the years I’ve realised that it’s not only the pause button that doesn’t  exist – neither does the perfect parent.

What I can do is ensure that I’m as good a parent as I can be at any point in my life (and that’s good enough).

How do I make sure I’m as good a parent as I can be? By building up what Simone de Hoogh* calls my ‘baseline’.

What is our personal ‘baseline’?

How high or low our baseline is depends on the combination of our energy level and the strength of our resilience.

Energy

The amount of physical and emotional energy we have is the difference between feeling like we’re sinking or swimming in our lives.

Sometimes we have barely enough energy to keep our heads above water.

Other times we bob along, happily on top of things.

At times we might even have an abundance of energy, with enough spare to try new things. These are the times when we’re able to take steps towards our parenting goals and help our children deal with challenges.

Resilience

Our resilience, meanwhile, affects how we react to the little (and big) problems life throws at us. If our resilience is low, we’re easily upset when things go wrong. Even small annoyances can escalate and ruin everyone’s day.

But when our resilience is high, we can use problems to help us move towards our goals. When we know what we don’t want, we know better what we do want. This is what psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski had in mind when he referred to using our OEs as energy for self-directed emotional growth. (I talked a bit about Dabrowski’s theory in this post.)

What drains our personal energy?

Our personal baseline is usually highest when we wake up in the morning.

Then, throughout the day, the energy element of our baseline takes a hit each time one of these kind of things happens:

  • we behave differently from how we feel
  • we hold back from expressing ourselves
  • we don’t respect our limits (e.g. we say no when we mean yes, or we don’t do what we promised)
  • we resist physical urges, like eating, drinking, or needing to go to the loo (bathroom 😉 )

We can’t avoid these hits completely – certainly not while we live in families!

But raising our baseline can help in two ways.

How raising our energy helps

(1) The higher our baseline is, the more hits we can take before we crash.

(Psychologists call this point when we run out of will-power ‘ego depletion’, but that doesn’t sound quite dramatic enough to me.)

(2) When our baseline is high, we make better choices and can plan ahead.

So the big question is, how do we raise our baseline?

What can we do to top up our energy levels and boost our resilience?

I’ll be looking at this question over the next few weeks, starting with a guest post over at Motherhood The Real Deal –  5 Keys to Staying Sane as a Mum to Sensitive and Spirited Kids.

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What changes would you make if you had abundant energy?

How do you take care of yourself when your reserves are running low?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments, or on the Laugh, Love, Learn Facebook page.

An OE Family on Holiday

I’m just back from a week’s skiing in Italy with my lovely family. You can read about some of our  quirky experiences  in this light-hearted post next week – 10 Things That Happen to OE Families on Vacation (that probably don’t happen to other families).

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