Deborah MacNamara's Blog

Childhood is full of wounds. Not just the cuts, scrapes, and bruises of explorative play; kids’ feelings are routinely hurt, whether from rejection by others, to name calling or being excluded. They fear the dark, are nervous about going to school, or feel apprehensive about an upcoming test. Their world is full of big feelings that can overwhelm them. As parents, it can be confusing to know how best to support our child’s emotional needs. Some experts tout the benefits of letting your child fail, while other experts assert the need to protect them from getting hurt at all. As such, it can be a complicated dance to figure out how to help prepare our children to face hard things and be prepared for the adversities that lie ahead. How do we cultivate resiliency and resourcefulness in our children?

Resiliency isn’t a set of skills to be learned, a frame of mind, or affirmations to state, and it doesn’t come from a worksheet or trying to talk yourself into happy feelings. Just like the body knows how to heal a physical wound with support, emotional wounds can be faced too—and we, as parents, have a role in the healing.

The key to cultivating resiliency lies in understanding how our emotions work.

Stress is part of life, and as humans, we were built to face it. Adversity is not something we can avoid, but we can become better equipped to deal with it. Young children are developmentally vulnerable and are not able to deal with things on their own (yet), but as they mature, they should become increasingly able to face those hard things. This raises the question: How can we provide our kids with the support they need as they grow?

Facing futility and all the things that cannot change 

Futilities are everywhere for a young child: the games they can’t win, the minds they can’t change, or the attention from parents they must share with other siblings. Kids make mistakes, can’t always get what they want, and can’t avoid transitions. These may seem small to us in comparison to our grown-up challenges, but these are the developmentally appropriate challenges for a young child.

When kids are faced with things they cannot change, they often get frustrated. Frustration is the emotion that drives the engine of change—it can force someone to change their mind, result in a different verdict, or provide a respite from facing reality. But sometimes, even frustration can’t change things, and instead, the child is the one who needs to change. When the emotional system registers that the desired effect is not going to happen, and moves to let go of the demand, sadness and disappointment replace those frustrated and mad feelings.

Resilience comes from feeling the disappointments in life and knowing you can survive them.

This is how we can help our child to cultivate the resilience they will need on the road ahead. Confidence comes in knowing you can make it through adversity, not from avoiding it altogether. The key is not to be afraid to go on these emotional journeys with our kids and to invite the tears that are needed.

Invite tears and sadness 

While we know that sometimes we can’t always get what we want and that it’s okay to feel sad or disappointed, it is a whole other story to lead our children there. It means we will have to find room for their tears and upset and be patient as we witness the emotional fallout from the futilities we present (like no more screen time), and walk them from mad towards sad.

We need to avoid getting in the way of their sadness by distracting them, telling them to cheer up, or expecting them to just pick themselves up and move on. We don’t need to be their emotional cheerleader to avoid the sadness that is there, and we don’t want to prevent the let-down of big emotions that are uncomfortable. These emotions are going to be what carries them through the hard times in their life. Messages such as, “It’s hard; I am here; this isn’t what you wanted; I get that you are frustrated” can help the child face what cannot and will not change.

Our kids can’t get to their sadness if we are not supporting these emotions. If they are met with unkind words, shaming, or punishment, then a child’s mind can press down on these emotions and prevent them from being felt. If we can’t feel it, we can’t name it, nor can we understand our emotional world. We need to invite our child’s emotions in and experience their expression. The best way we can do this is by coming alongside their feelings.

Come alongside emotions

If we see emotions as things that need to be expressed, then we are better able to communicate to a child that they are safe to express themselves. Ensuring your child understands that whatever they are feeling, and however they express it, doesn’t result in you withdrawing and avoiding closeness with them is key. It doesn’t mean we agree with how they want to deal with their feelings, but it normalizes the feelings, acknowledging that it is hard to not get what we want and scary to face things that are new. Kids can’t face their emotions alone yet, which is why our relationship with them matters so much.

Sitting with an uncomfortable emotion is one of the hardest, and bravest, things we can do as humans.  

To come alongside a child’s emotions is to communicate validation that feelings exist, and must be expressed and felt. Finding our words for our feelings is important, and we can help that by offering names to match their emotions. This invitation for feeling is at the root of resiliency and the emotional journey that must be faced.

While we may look at the broken toy or hurt feelings as small things, they are big things to kids as they learn about their world. If we can help them face the little things that don’t work, and activate the feelings and sadness that may need to be felt, then we will have prepared them well for what lies ahead. The greatest gift to our kids is not the knowledge that things work out, but that when hard things happen, they will have the confidence to handle these things too.

This article first appeared in EcoParent Magazine, Fall 2021.

Copyright —  Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet Counselling Center, she is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), Nourished: Connection, Food, and Caring for our Kids (and everyone else we love),  and a children’s picture book The Sorry Plane. For more information, please see www.macnamara.wpengine.com

Childhood is full of wounds. Not just the cuts, scrapes, and bruises of explorative play; kids’ feelings are routinely hurt, whether from rejection by others, to name calling or being excluded. They fear the dark, are nervous about going to school, or feel apprehensive about an upcoming test. Their world is full of big feelings that can overwhelm them. As parents, it can be confusing to know how best to support our child’s emotional needs. Some experts tout the benefits of letting your child fail, while other experts assert the need to protect them from getting hurt at all. As such, it can be a complicated dance to figure out how to help prepare our children to face hard things and be prepared for the adversities that lie ahead. How do we cultivate resiliency and resourcefulness in our children?

Resiliency isn’t a set of skills to be learned, a frame of mind, or affirmations to state, and it doesn’t come from a worksheet or trying to talk yourself into happy feelings. Just like the body knows how to heal a physical wound with support, emotional wounds can be faced too—and we, as parents, have a role in the healing.

The key to cultivating resiliency lies in understanding how our emotions work.

Stress is part of life, and as humans, we were built to face it. Adversity is not something we can avoid, but we can become better equipped to deal with it. Young children are developmentally vulnerable and are not able to deal with things on their own (yet), but as they mature, they should become increasingly able to face those hard things. This raises the question: How can we provide our kids with the support they need as they grow?

Facing futility and all the things that cannot change 

Futilities are everywhere for a young child: the games they can’t win, the minds they can’t change, or the attention from parents they must share with other siblings. Kids make mistakes, can’t always get what they want, and can’t avoid transitions. These may seem small to us in comparison to our grown-up challenges, but these are the developmentally appropriate challenges for a young child.

When kids are faced with things they cannot change, they often get frustrated. Frustration is the emotion that drives the engine of change—it can force someone to change their mind, result in a different verdict, or provide a respite from facing reality. But sometimes, even frustration can’t change things, and instead, the child is the one who needs to change. When the emotional system registers that the desired effect is not going to happen, and moves to let go of the demand, sadness and disappointment replace those frustrated and mad feelings.

Resilience comes from feeling the disappointments in life and knowing you can survive them.

This is how we can help our child to cultivate the resilience they will need on the road ahead. Confidence comes in knowing you can make it through adversity, not from avoiding it altogether. The key is not to be afraid to go on these emotional journeys with our kids and to invite the tears that are needed.

Invite tears and sadness 

While we know that sometimes we can’t always get what we want and that it’s okay to feel sad or disappointed, it is a whole other story to lead our children there. It means we will have to find room for their tears and upset and be patient as we witness the emotional fallout from the futilities we present (like no more screen time), and walk them from mad towards sad.

We need to avoid getting in the way of their sadness by distracting them, telling them to cheer up, or expecting them to just pick themselves up and move on. We don’t need to be their emotional cheerleader to avoid the sadness that is there, and we don’t want to prevent the let-down of big emotions that are uncomfortable. These emotions are going to be what carries them through the hard times in their life. Messages such as, “It’s hard; I am here; this isn’t what you wanted; I get that you are frustrated” can help the child face what cannot and will not change.

Our kids can’t get to their sadness if we are not supporting these emotions. If they are met with unkind words, shaming, or punishment, then a child’s mind can press down on these emotions and prevent them from being felt. If we can’t feel it, we can’t name it, nor can we understand our emotional world. We need to invite our child’s emotions in and experience their expression. The best way we can do this is by coming alongside their feelings.

Come alongside emotions

If we see emotions as things that need to be expressed, then we are better able to communicate to a child that they are safe to express themselves. Ensuring your child understands that whatever they are feeling, and however they express it, doesn’t result in you withdrawing and avoiding closeness with them is key. It doesn’t mean we agree with how they want to deal with their feelings, but it normalizes the feelings, acknowledging that it is hard to not get what we want and scary to face things that are new. Kids can’t face their emotions alone yet, which is why our relationship with them matters so much.

Sitting with an uncomfortable emotion is one of the hardest, and bravest, things we can do as humans.  

To come alongside a child’s emotions is to communicate validation that feelings exist, and must be expressed and felt. Finding our words for our feelings is important, and we can help that by offering names to match their emotions. This invitation for feeling is at the root of resiliency and the emotional journey that must be faced.

While we may look at the broken toy or hurt feelings as small things, they are big things to kids as they learn about their world. If we can help them face the little things that don’t work, and activate the feelings and sadness that may need to be felt, then we will have prepared them well for what lies ahead. The greatest gift to our kids is not the knowledge that things work out, but that when hard things happen, they will have the confidence to handle these things too.

This article first appeared in EcoParent Magazine, Fall 2021.

Copyright —  Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the Director of Kid’s Best Bet Counselling Center, she is on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), Nourished: Connection, Food, and Caring for our Kids (and everyone else we love),  and a children’s picture book The Sorry Plane. For more information, please see www.macnamara.wpengine.com

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Humans are some of the most complex emotional creatures on earth. From our teenagers who roll their eyes in disdain to our toddlers who cry in frustration – raising kids has few emotional dull moments. What are we supposed to do with their emotions? Why are they so emotional in the first place?

Developmental science continues to unearth the pieces of the emotional puzzle, shedding light on why our kids are so emotional and how we are meant to help them. According to leading neuroscientist, V.S. Ramachandran, emotional development in humans is as sophisticated as the development of logical reasoning. There are a number of key principles that are not well understood when it comes to emotion with the top five listed here.

Emotions and feelings are not the same thing.

We often use the word emotion and feeling interchangeably but they refer to different things. Emotions are the raw impulses, chemical reactions, and action potential that is created when we become activated by something in our environment. The brain has a complex emotional system to deal with arousal which spurs our bodies into action.

Feelings on the other hand are the names and words we give to describe our emotion arousal. A feeling is the subjective appraisal we make for what has happened in our body that has stirred us up. The capacity to name our emotional state and give it a feeling name is something unique to humans and allows us to communicate with others and get our needs met. In short, emotions are the raw underpinnings that stir us up and feelings are how we use language to share this state with others.

Emotions are part of the unconsciousness.

Freud argued for the existence of an emotional unconscious and saw it as instrumental in influencing human behaviour. He eventually abandoned trying to prove it’s existence given his lack of tools and technology to study the brain. I believe Freud would have devoured the neuroscientific evidence today that highlights how we are not always aware of what emotions have stirred us up.

Humans possess an emotional unconscious that we are not always able to access and for good reason. Emotion has work to do. Emotions are what drive us forward to solve problems and effect change when needed. Awareness is a luxury in an emotional system that was designed to work at getting our needs met. A child who cries is not always aware of what is not working for them. This doesn’t stop their emotional system from creating signs of distress so as to bring caretakers near who can help them.  In short, emotions are not problems – they are trying to solve them.

Emotions are not always expressed in the situations they were created in.

Emotions can come out of our kids in the strangest of places and at the most inopportune times. Emotions can be displaced such as when our kids explode in frustration after school or when they become agitated before bed time. This is not a mistake but part of a sophisticated design to ensure emotions come out when it is safe for them to do so. It is often better for a child’s emotional system to press down on strong emotions at school as it isn’t always wise to express how you feel among peers.

Doorways to emotional expression can happen at any time or place, with big reactions coming out in the face of small upsets. Emotional displacement can be confusing for adults as they are left to piece together why their child has come undone. The emotional system is like a pressure cooker in many ways. When things get pent up too much or when there is an opportunity provided to open up, the lid can come off.

Emotions need to be expressed.

Emotions are energizing and are meant to fuel us in moving towards getting our needs met. They can be expressed in a number of ways in order to discharge emotional energy. Emotions are expressed when kids play, move, scream, dance, or use their words. While they don’t always have control over how emotions are expressed because of immaturity, kids are moved to ‘get it out.’

Adults seem to hold onto the idea that if they give a child some room to express their emotions then that child might never stop expressing. The idea that expression leads to bigger emotional problems is faulty and fails to understand how emotion seeks expression in the first place. It is by helping a child ‘get it out,’ and dissipating the emotional energy that is trapped inside them, that we help them come to rest again.  The biggest problems are not created by expressing emotions but in the absence of this.

Emotions can go missing.

We seem to operate under the false assumption that we are always capable of feeling our emotions in a vulnerable way. This is not true and unsupported by science. For example, children can get hurt yet appear unaffected. They can lack tears when faced with things that should upset them. Teens (and adults) can lack shame in the face of things they should be embarrassed by. The emotional system can  press down on strong emotions when needed, and this is not part of conscious awareness. This is not a sign of a faulty system but one that is working hard to prevent vulnerable feelings from coming to the surface. The brain has its own reasons for numbing out emotions, but over the long term this poses challenges for healthy development. When hearts have become hardened, the goal is to render them soft again.

Carl Jung said that one of the most fascinating things to make sense of was the human psyche. I couldn’t agree with him more. The mysteries of the mind beginning with the complexity of the emotional system are what make humans unique. Emotional immaturity poses some challenges when raising kids as they will likely be stirred up often. Their emotional reactions can stir us up too. The goal in raising kids is not to join them in their emotional immaturity and to bear in mind that growth takes time and patience.

Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), is on faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a counselling and family resource center. For more information please see www.macnamara.wpengine.com and www.neufeldinstitute.org.

Originally printed in the Summer 2018 Edition of EcoParent Magazine – www.ecoparent.ca

The Emotional Roots of Anxiety: Healing Through Connection

From waves of panic to uneasy feelings that rise up from the gut, anxiety is a universal human experience. It comes as no surprise then, that anxiety continues to be one of the most commonly diagnosed mental health issues in children and adults today, with the World Health Organization naming it as one of the leading concerns among children ages 4 to 17 worldwide.

What is anxiety? It is usually accompanied by symptoms such as agitation, incessant worrying, trouble focusing, panic, feeling full of fear, nightmares, and clinging behaviour. My 5-year old daughter once asked, “Mommy, why does it feel like my tummy is making butter?” That churning feeling that comes with anxiety, along with many other physical and emotional symptoms, alerts us to the fact that we are stirred up. Despite reassurance from others that there is nothing to worry about, anxiety can sink its teeth in deep and hold on.

When the mind and body are in turmoil, anxiety will follow wherever you go – from your bed to the dinner table, and to school. The problem is that its symptoms tell us very little about what is at the root of the feelings. Parents often turn to their kids for answers asking, “What is the matter?” When they are met with blank stares, puzzling explanations, or protestations of, “I don’t know!” it can elevate a parent’s anxiety as well.

The problem with anxiety is we cannot make headway unless we can make sense of it at its root level, as asserted by Gordon Neufeld, an internationally respected developmental and attachment-based psychologist. There is an epicentre to anxiety, but we often dance around its symptoms instead of reaching into its core, where the real problem lies.

Perceiving past the symptoms

The key to understanding anxiety is to name the emotion that drives it: alarm. When a threat is detected by the brain’s surveillance system, it responds by releasing a cascade of chemicals that literally changes our physiology and enables us to quickly respond. When separation has opened up, the brain will respond with increased alarm, frustration, and pursuit in order to close the distance.

To do this, we need to first identify the most fundamental need of all humans. The one non-negotiable thing that all children and adults require for healthy emotional growth and well-being is attachment. As an interdependent species, we were designed to hunger for contact and closeness from each other, and it is through attachment that we are able to raise children, to care for each other, and create a civil society.

The purpose of attachment is to ensure that children depend on their adults to guide and protect them and that we, in turn, provide these things. When children lean into you for caretaking, they are willing to follow, listen, attend, orient to, and obey. The deeper a child’s attachment roots, the greater their capacity to reach their potential as a social, separate, and adaptive being.

If relational attachment is the greatest of all human needs, then what is the most impactful and alarming of all experiences? The answer is separation—to find yourself apart from your attachments, which pushes the brain’s alarm system into full tilt as it tries to close the void that has opened up. You can witness a young child’s desperate pursuit to get back into attachment when you tell them it’s time for bed and they begin clamouring for one more drink of water, a snack, a trip to the bathroom, another story, or plead, as one clever boy told his father, “Please come back—the spiders keep throwing me out of bed.” Separation is provocative because attachment is key to our survival.

What sets off alarm bells?

There are many sources of separation that children can experience, from the obvious ones like moving houses, starting school, parents divorcing, or the loss of a loved one. But there are other surprising sources such as healthy growth, which pushes the preschooler to explore and use their imagination, the middle-schooler to try new things, and the teenager to figure out who they are and what they want to do with their life. At every age there are different developmental issues to face, each bringing an element of existential alarm with it. As Gordon Neufeld states, we don’t teach 3-year-olds about monsters which they then become afraid of, it is their fear that creates the monsters in the first place.

Other sources of separation for kids include discipline that uses what a child cares about against them, euphemized as “consequences”, “tough love”, or “time-outs”. These techniques use separation to alarm a child so that they will behave better but they backfire as they render an adult an adversary and, with this, reduce a child’s desire to please or work towards meeting their adult’s expectations. Relationship is the vehicle for getting a child to drive in a different direction, but separation discipline throws this off course and leaves relational insecurity in its wake.

Separation alarm is also created when our children fuse with friends to the exclusion of their adults. Referred to as “peer orientation”, this gives rise to children with alarm problems because their peers are largely immature and impulsive, sometimes hurtful, substitutes. One day your child belongs in the group, the next day they don’t, and the fickle friendships and wounding ways of kids especially hurt those who are more dependent on their same-age friends than their adults. Friends are important, but children weren’t meant to be the answer to each other’s fundamental attachment needs.

Separation alarm can also be attributed to physical separation like the loss of a parent to a new job, travel, injury, sickness, or the introduction of a new partner. Even success can create alarming feelings as the child lives in fear that they could lose the advances they have gained. Sensitive children who feel they are too much for their parents to handle are often full of anxiety because exasperated adults convey they don’t know how to take care of them, leading to insecurity.

Separation alarm has the power to drive temporary anxiety symptoms to more chronic levels that can pervade all areas of life. The fall-out from chronic anxiety may lead to additional behavioural problems such as anger, agitation, feeling overwhelmed, disconnection, and depression, which can be misinterpreted, or overreacted to, by adults. While the symptoms of anxiety and sources of separation for kids become better understood, concurrent research suggests that if separation is the problem, then surely connection will be the cure.

Bridging the void

What if we stopped for a moment and considered whether anxiety was, in fact, exactly what the brain wanted and intended? What if we looked at the emotion of alarm as having a very important job to do by noisily alerting parents that something isn’t right in a child’s world? And what if the brain is actually working well when it is alarmed and the problem is not the alarm, per se, but rather how long and how hard the brain has to work to gain our attention by way of anxiety symptoms, which serve to draw people close to increase connection and close painful separation voids?

There are many things adults can do to increase connection and reduce alarm, but the guiding objective should be to bring a child to emotional rest. This can be facilitated by coming alongside and conveying a desire to be with them, to show care and read their needs, and take the lead in fulfilling them wherever possible. For example, if they are anxious at night-time, being generous with contact and closeness will help them rest better. When a child closes their eyes at night, they are separated from you. Bridging this divide can involve telling them about the plans for the following day, staying with them until they fall asleep, or tying invisible strings around your beds to hold you together; if only in your child’s imagination. Making room for their alarm and letting them know it’s your job to worry about their sleep—not theirs—can go a long way in helping your child see you as in-charge, and able and willing to care for them.

If a child is anxious, it is also important to shield them from further causes of frustration wherever possible—from relationships that don’t work well to avoiding introduction of new sources of separation. When a child is alarmed, it is a time to prune out unnecessary separations and focus on tethering them to the adults in their life. This can be achieved by orienting them to the invisible matrix of adults that will care for them. For example, telling a child, “When I take you to school, your teacher will take over for me. They are in charge, I trust them to care for you, and they know how to reach me if you need me. I will look forward to picking you up, too,” helps to assure them that they are safe and loved, can feel connected to the adult who will take your place in your absence, and that you are never far away for long.

If separation discipline is being used in the home, it is also necessary to move away from time-outs and punitive consequences to more attachment and developmentally-friendly discipline, such as collecting a child before directing. This involves getting into their space in a friendly way, interacting with them in a positive manner, engaging in conversation, or paying attention to what they are focusing on, until you can feel the child warm up, start to listen, and want to follow. Using structure and routine to help them navigate their day also helps them feel safe. Kids who are anxious love ritual because it’s predictable, thus, providing security.

Letting out

Tears are the antithesis to alarm because they serve to drain the system and allow rest by neutralizing the chemicals associated with it. One of the most important ways we can bring our children to emotional rest is to facilitate tears when they are up against things that frustrate them. From the small things to the big upsets in their life, if an adult is willing to come alongside a child and make room for some tears, this can temporarily reduce restlessness, fear, and agitation.

To help a child to their tears, we need to meet them with empathy and warmth. Focus sincerely on what is upsetting them, despite how small or insignificant it may seem to us. Sometimes a parent may become upset by what they hear from a child, but it is best not to show these emotions and to find another adult to debrief with. Every child needs to feel confident that they are not too much for their adult to handle, that their feelings aren’t too big or scary to express, and that there is no situation that they won’t receive support with.

When a child is anxious, what we cannot lose sight of is how separation instigates the alarm behind it and that relationship is the vehicle through which healing occurs. When a child can safely feel their fear in a vulnerable way, they will be on the road to making sense of the emotions associated with alarm. When they can see and name what it is that stirs them up, and can freely express their emotions, they will be brought to emotional rest and find the courage to face the hard things. This process of holding onto and guiding them through alarming feelings and times will help them reaffirm the faith they have in their caregivers to love and take care of them exactly as they are.

Dr. Deborah MacNamara is the author of Rest, Play, Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (or anyone who acts like one), on Faculty at the Neufeld Institute, and Director of Kid’s Best Bet, a counselling and resource centre for families.