Then & Now - Dealing with Big Feelings Through Play

THE SCENARIO: My 12 yo got a yellow card during a soccer scrimmage - he accidentally stepped on a kid's foot, the kid's shoe laces got caught up in his cleats, and then the kid fell. After returning home, my son couldn't let it go. He felt that he didn't do anything wrong and that the call was not just/fair.

Then (pre-peaceful parenting): I would have explained to my son that even accidents sometimes get yellow cards and that they are just a warning and not a big deal. I would have told him that this was a learning experience and that he needed to just accept that this is part of the game.

This explanation would have led to some resistance from my (strong-willed) son - he would have insisted that it wasn't fair because the ref didn't call when other kids stepped on people's feet. He would have insisted that the ref was a bad ref and missed a lot of calls.

I would have then tried to get him to see things from the ref's point of view, and I would have tried to get him to see his part in the scenario (he did step on the kid's foot after all! It was an accident, but he did do it).

This would have gone back and forth for a bit, with him justifying his view that the ref was wrong, and me trying to reason with him.

We would have both become more and more insistent, and the result would likely have been an argument or my son withdrawing and shutting down. That disconnect would have led to more episodes of him 'acting out' (most likely a lot of backtalk) over the next day or two.

Now (what did happen 3 years into our peaceful parenting journey): I listened and empathized for quite some time, but my son was really internalizing things, so I felt it went deeper than this yellow card.

I felt it has its origins in how we raised him the first 9 years of his life. He had such a strong sense of fairness and hates to feel blamed and hates to be wrong.

I didn't really feel like I got anywhere with the empathy and listening, but I tried to move on to problem solving together anyway, and I hit a brick wall.

I ended up seeking advice from fellow peaceful parents and got some really great advice that I put in play the next day.

I first journaled about my own guilt for how I parented my son the first nine years of his life, as that was preventing me from being fully present with my son when I listened to him the previous night (my mind wandered to "My poor boy! This is my fault for all the times we were so hard on him.") Journalling allowed me to offload my own feelings so I could be fully present with my boy when I helped him.

Next, I followed some other great advice - I got out a bunch of LEGO mini-figures and had my son show me what happened in the scrimmage.

Then I asked him to show me what he wished had happened.

He was skeptical and had them do the same thing.

Then he did it again and changed what the ref did.

I encouraged him to investigate other possibilities, but he didn't venture far.

So, I took the liberty of doing some scenarios that ventured into the absurd, and that brought about some giggles.

Then my son joined in the absurd scenarios, and we both laughed about it.

He was much more relaxed about the situation after that - joking and lighthearted.

And we remained connected, which makes my heart happy :)

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2023 Reflection…

There is a two-fold reflection here…

First, there is the guilt and shame I felt for the way I parented my son when he was younger as well as old feelings that came up for me when reminded of being in similar situations as my son when I was a child.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but all of those feelings were interfering with my ability to be present with my son when I offered him love and support initially.

This underscores why it is so important that we parents heal from our own hurts - both childhood hurts and hurts we feel from our own mistakes.

In allowing myself to feel those really hard feelings and then let them go and forgive myself, I was then able to be fully present to my son and help him with his own big feelings.

It would have been more effective had my journal been a prayer journal at the time. I could have poured all of this out to our dear Lord and laid it at the foot of the Cross. I could have relied on His grace to forgive myself. I would have come to a place of peace faster.

The second part of the reflection examines how effective play is for helping our children with their big feelings. We can especially help them offload if that play leads to big laughs, which is why I tend to venture into the absurd with the wish granting in fantasy portion of play.

Expressing the anger in a safe place allows the anger to be offloaded, thus preventing it from flowing out later.

Now I bring my anger to prayer. I have found that when I bring anger to prayer and offload to God, the anger dissipates and gets replaced with peace relatively quickly.

With children, especially young children, it can be difficult to put into words the feelings that need to be felt and released. Play and drawing/painting/etc allow them to explore those big feelings in a safe and effective way. It can be easier for a child to play out a toy being angry than it is to talk about themselves.

It can be tricky to help our children navigate anger, but if we have healed from our own past hurts and have forgiven ourselves for past mistakes, we can be present with our kids’ big feelings without our own feelings interfering. Praying before all interactions helps us to remember to allow the Holy Spirit to guide those interactions, thus setting ourselves up for success.

May Christ’s Peace be with you.

💕🙏💕

[I came to peaceful parenting a bit later in my parenting journey (when my boys were about 9 and 5), so I sometimes like to share scenarios and compare how I used to handle things to how I handle things now that I’ve discovered peaceful parenting.

The above scenario was from 2015, about 3 years into my peaceful parenting journey.]