The most important thing we can offer them is an attitude of curiosity about, and acceptance of, all of their experience. This involves us checking out our hunches about what our child might be experiencing: “Sarah, you seem kind of irritated. Is there something you’re upset about?”, “Abdul, you’ve been pretty quiet since you got home from school. How was your day?”, “Kim, you haven’t said anything about Terri since she moved away, but I’m imagining that you miss her a lot?” While we will not always be correct, the important thing is that we are displaying an obvious interest in our child’s experience, and inviting her to tell us about it.
Our acceptance of all of our children’s experience as being acceptable and understandable moves them away from shame and self-hatred and towards self-acceptance. While we may not find some aspect of our child’s behaviour to be acceptable, all of their feelings, desires, and impulses are. As discussed earlier, all feelings and desires are healthy and understandable and none of them could ever be “bad.” Sasha’s desire to hurt her little sister is perfectly understandable and acceptable, even if we will do all we can to make sure that she does not inflict harm. Sasha may be feeling jealous of her mother’s attention being diverted to her younger sister, she may resent that her younger sister has broken her toy, or feel hurt that Daddy now looks at her the way he used to look at Sasha. Any message of rejection of Sasha’s feelings of anger and hostility towards her sister will contribute to her self-hatred, and towards Sasha becoming sneakier in finding ways to hurt her little sister. Instead, we need to give Sasha the message that her feelings are acceptable, and understandable, and (as is discussed below) tell her why hurting her little sister is unacceptable to us: “Honey, you’re being too rough with Angie. I guess you’re kind of mad at her, huh?” (Wait for Sasha’s response.); “I sure get that you’d be frustrated that I keep interrupting our play to take care of Angie. It must feel really bad for you. I’ll see if Daddy can spend some time with Angie tomorrow so we won’t be interrupted. I don’t want you to hurt Angie though, no matter how angry you feel.” There are other aspects of communicating with children that are illustrated here, including addressing the child’s desires (in reality or in fantasy) and setting limits on behaviour, but the crucial thing I want to convey is that all of Sasha’s feelings are understandable and acceptable, including wanting to hurt her little sister, no matter how much we don’t like it.
