There are few things I find fascinating and original when it comes to advice on raising little humans. The train analogy I recently came across ticks both those boxes. It can change the way you see your crying child and the way you feel you should deal with it.
In fact, the analogy is nothing new. We’ve all heard it in some form or another. It goes like this:
“Difficult feelings are tunnels and we are trains traveling through them. We have to move all the way through the darkness to get to the calm, peaceful light at the end of the tunnel.”
Plain and simple yet when it comes to our children, while our intentions are good, most of us ignore this piece of advice and intercept the natural flow.
Reading through Katie M. McLaughlin’s article I began to understand why Georgie, during this past year, has been quick to react with sadness, fear, embarrassment and/or anger to situations that wouldn’t otherwise bother him. We’ve been overcompensating since James was born because Georgie was an only child for five years and now he’s not. Those feelings and changes are difficult enough for anyone to handle, by trying to apply logic when it comes to a six year old we were definitely not making it easier as time went by. We were interfering in every bitter aspect of his life without realising that…
“We can’t teach our kids there’s some secret side exit when there’s really not. There is no way out except through and it’s our job to guide them there.”
Building resilience and remembering my job as a parent were two of the most important lessons I took from reading this mother’s article. Go give it a read yourself and let me know what you think.
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Katie McLaughlin runs the site Pick Any Two.
