How Can We Connect With Our Children? Listen and Notice, Accept and Empower

When Zen Parenting Radio hosts Cathy and Todd Adams scheduled Monday's talk about raising confident kids, they had no way of knowing how hungry Elmhurst residents might be for advice on how to talk to their children. Parents who are grieving, and frightened for their own children after hearing a young boy took his own life last weekend, are trying to understand something that defies understanding. How could someone so young feel so hopeless?

Parents commented on Elmhurst Patch: 

• "As the mother of a 15 year old daughter, I now know I need to have a conversation with her."
• "I have 4 daughters, two of this age, and I feel a strong need to understand this better so that I can help protect my children."
• "My daughter attempted in December and I caught her in time to save her...all I can say is this is horribly scary and happening at an alarming rate."

Cathy and Todd's presentation was not designed to address suicide specifically, although Cathy, a licensed clinical social worker, said she has worked with a number of suicidal children.

"I don't know anything about this boy," she said to a group of parents gathered at The Dailey Method Monday. "His parents may have done the best they could. They may have said every day, 'How can I help you?' But whatever was going on inside him, he couldn't say it. He felt so disconnected or so far gone that he didn't have that avenue."

Sometimes, it's shame that can cause a child to want to commit suicide. The critical difference between guilt and shame is guilt is feeling bad about a choice that was made. 

"Shame is, I feel bad about who I am," Cathy said. "Kids that feel disconnected from you or the world feel shame. They feel that nobody sees them. They feel they can't reach anyone, they can't reach themselves. They believe that if they really said what they were really feeling, they would not be loved or heard."

Boys can have a harder time than girls coming to parents if they feel vulnerable or scared. They've learned not to feel emotions from an early age, Cathy said. 

"They're supposed to be tough," she said. "Any emotion can get internalized. Sadness and embarrassment can become anger. They tend to be more violent, act out more. Boys pretend. They can be social enough, have a good time, but they keep a mask on."

Connecting Over and Over Again

The way parents connect with their children changes throughout their various stages of development.  The methods that worked when a child is in elementary school will not work when that child is in high school. Parents can become almost child-like in their relationship with their kids and become easily offended by them as they get older. But it's parents' responsibility to find a way to connect, Todd said.

"When my kids turn 13, 14, I'm going to be much less cool (to them)," Todd said. "It's easier to say, 'I can't connect with you.' But you decided to have these kids. It's your job to figure out how to connect with them over and over again."

Growing up, children have to deal with feelings of isolation, bullying, cliques, issues of self confidence, peer pressure, media images that create unreal expectations. 

"We can't change the outside world. That is not in your circle of influence," Cathy said. "But where we have the biggest influence is helping them deal with these situations. What we have influence over is how we support our kids, listen to our kids, role model for our kids and help them handle the outside world."

One of the greatest things parents can do to connect with their children is to listen without judgment. But if a parent has unresolved issues in his own life, this can be difficult.

"Everything that happens to your child will be filtered through your eyes and your experience with it," Cathy said. "If you have not resolved things within you, you will experience their issues in a heightened way."

For example, if a child comes home and says he is being bullied, and the parent was also bullied as a child, "You're going to freak," Cathy said, not because of what happened to the child, but because the parent relates it back to their own childhood experiences.

"They need you to be above it, to be the foundation and roots of learning and experience," Todd said.

And here is why:

"If your kids know that you worry more about their stuff than they do, they won't come to you," Cathy said. "If you're too into it, not grounded, not above it, you are no longer part of their support network. You are the person they're trying to keep things from."

A Team Approach

Sometimes children have difficulty coming to parents with problems even in the best relationships. That's why parenting takes a team approach, Cathy said.

"In our family, if you feel like you can't come to me for whatever reason, here's who you can talk to: your cousin who's 17, your aunt, your grandmother," she said. "Here are all these people who love you and want to talk to you. I don't need to know every little thing that goes on. We are not our children's friends, we are their parents. Help them find that support."

Sometimes, kids can't verbalize what they want to say.

"But they can write it," Cathy said. "I will write back. They don't want to see the disappointment in my face."

If You're Already Doing These Things, Do Them More

Cathy and Todd  provided myriad tips for connecting with children.

• Put the iPhone down, turn off the computer, reach them at their level and be with them. It's getting harder and harder to turn out the noise, these days.
• Don't automatically try to solve their problems for them. They most likely just want to be heard. Ask them if they would like advice.
• Chances are, the child might be embarrassed to come to a parent, and might take days to do so. The response should never be, "Why did you wait so long to tell me?" or "How could this happen?" Children will get defensive and lose that sense of trust needed to confide the problem.
• Spend some alone time with your child. This becomes even more important if there are several children in the family. Having a conversation without anyone else around re-establishes the relationship and helps kids open up.
• Accept who they are and empower them to be just that. Don't put your expectations on them. "If you've already made the decision on what they should be, you're not allowing them to hear themselves," Cathy said. "If you wish you had played piano (as a kid), take lessons yourself." 
• There is nothing wrong with encouraging a child to experience such things as music or sports, but give them plenty of choices.

"The bottom line is, how does your kid feel as a human being, about who they are?" Cathy said. "Are they doing things for you? To please you? That will come back to bite you. Let your kids do what they love, be who they are, and they will love themselves and love what they do."

This will have a ripple effect, she said.

"When you help your kid handle something, it will have an effect in your own family, in them, in the people they associate with, in the classroom, with the teacher," she said. "Everything you do at home changes the world a little bit."