empathy – Page 3 – APtly Said

The Bili Baby

“Pack up the bili baby. He’s going across town,” barked the charge nurse to my newborn baby’s nurse.

I raised my eyebrows at her a little.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Are you the mom? I thought you were one of the students. That top totally hides your postpartum belly…” She continued trying to flatter me. But I couldn’t hear a thing.

Pack up the bili baby.

She said what she had to say to get a quick message to the nurse. But what I heard was, box him up and throw him in the back of the van.

She struck a nerve. He’s not The Bili Baby. He has a name. He has a family. He’s a little person who just started a brand new life, and he has a mother who is worried about him.

He is not a shipment to be boxed up.

I understand that newborn jaundice is common and treatable, and that his numbers were low enough that we were no longer throwing around scary-talk, like blood transfusions and brain damage and such. I understand that we had to move because he was the biggest and healthiest baby in the unit, and they needed the resources for a little guy who was in really bad shape.

I understand that we were the lucky ones in that situation.

But all of this – the cords, the wires, the beeps and the instruments – the NICU was a foreign land to me. And oh, did I mention I just became a mother? A mother. Which means I now have to protect someone. At minimum, I should make sure the ones I’m trusting with his life see him as, you know, a person.

The ambulance driver arrived and without saying a word, without so much as an introduction or a hello, pulled out the restraints and started strapping my sweet baby’s tiny limbs down. He wouldn’t look at me.

We walked toward the elevator. I was desperately trying to keep up, but I was recovering from birth and trailing behind. They all filed in, and the door almost closed without me. I had to wave the nurse out of a daze before she held the door. I was almost separated from my baby and I would have no idea where to stop to get to him.

We stepped out of the elevator into a cold garage, where the ambulance was waiting for us. The driver walked ahead of me, wheeling the bassinet. He seemed annoyed by the fact that I had to have my hand on the incubator. Irrational? Maybe. It was just my way of letting my baby know I was still there. He wore goggles, so he couldn’t see me, and he certainly couldn’t feel my hand on the glass. I was feeling helpless, and my hand on that incubator made me feel like I was mothering. I hadn’t had a chance to do much of that yet.

No sleep, unstable hormones, worry, and the sterile environment got to me. I broke down a bit.

“Why are you crying? They’re just going to keep him under the lights. It’s like sunbathing,” the NICU nurse said to me in the elevator.

“Oh, I haven’t slept in four days. I’m just really tired,” I lied, since she was telling me that I was wrong for being upset. After all, you sunbathe on vacation so this must feel like a vacation, right? One shouldn’t cry on vacation.

This trickle of a tear down my face, this quivering lip…that wasn’t crying. I wanted to cry. I wanted to bury my face into someone – anyone – and just sob. And be hugged. And be told that this isn’t fair – that I should be at home in my PJs with my new little man, flipping through Netflix and eating freezer casseroles and getting to know every little finger and toe and hair, every coo and whimper. That it’s not fair that I had to worry about him wiggling around with an IV needle in his head, or wonder why the beeps on his monitors were getting faster, or slowing down…

This wasn’t what we talked about at my baby shower, at the tables strewn with the pink and blue lollipops and coordinating napkins. This didn’t fit my image of the smiling, sleepy mom with her days-old baby in her arms, both drifting off into a blissful snuggle.

Instead, we were in a hospital unit that shrugged us off because my baby wasn’t all that sick.

I give the hospital staff credit for trying to reassure me that my baby would be fine. But, there came a point when I didn’t want to hear that this was no big deal. My baby may have been the least sick, but he was still sick and spending his first days in intensive care. Sick babies make mamas worry. Worried mamas get sad, and need comfort. They need empathy.

At the very least, they could do without the comments that make them feel like they’re crazy for being upset.

The Importance of Empathizing with Children – Guest Post by Dionna Ford

We are delighted to feature a guest post by Dionna Ford of Codename: Mama. Here, she flips perspective from our viewpoint as parents to that of children, as a reminder that what they experience is not the same thing as what we observe.

The Importance of Empathizing with Children

by Dionna Ford

Let’s try a couple of exercises. Ready?

Grab a mirror, a piece of paper, and a pen. Using your non-dominant hand (the hand that you usually do not write with), make a five item to do list. Here’s the catch: you are not allowed to look at your hand or the paper while writing – you may only look at the mirror.
Try doing the same thing, but have someone standing over you telling you what you’re doing wrong. Or how to do it correctly. Or telling you that you only have five minutes to complete the task. Or demanding that you not be frustrated at your inability to complete the task.

No really – do it! Even if you just try to write with your non-dominant hand, you should be feeling a little frustrated, yes?

With thanks to The Artful Mama for the mirror writing idea.

Now, imagine this scene: your child is trying to master a new task. Her face is scrunched up in concentration, her fingers are fumbling to get it right, she tries again and again.

This goes on for days. Maybe she is trying to dress herself. Tie her own shoes. Hit a ball thrown to her.

With each new attempt that does not produce the results she wants, the frustration grows. Often, she dissolves into tears or tantrums, literally collapsing with heavy feelings of defeat and frustration.

And while your child is breaking down, you are there dealing with your own emotions. Perhaps you feel helpless, wishing you could deposit the necessary motor skills or knowledge into her brain. Sometimes you feel annoyed, because she’s taking so long and you have places to go. Often you just want to take over, to end the crying.

Grown-ups sometimes forget what it is like to be little. Children have to rely on us for so many things that they wish they could do themselves. And learning to do those things is often a tough process.

The Little Boy and the Old Man

Said the little boy, “Sometimes I drop my spoon.”
Said the old man, “I do that, too.”
The little boy whispered, “I wet my pants.”
“I do that too,” laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, “I often cry.”
The old man nodded, “So do I.”
“But worst of all,” said the boy, “it seems
Grown-ups don’t pay attention to me.”
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
“I know what you mean,” said the little old man.

— Shel Silverstein

I find that whenever I am feeling frustrated with my child’s behavior or actions, it helps to put myself in his shoes – to think of a situation where I have felt similar emotions. Empathizing with my children is a key component to my practice of two of the API principles: Responding with Sensitivity and Practice Positive Discipline.

In his book, Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg describes empathy as “‘a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing.’ Empathy is simply being with a person, non-judgmentally as they are without offering advice, validation, or solutions.”

The exercise above is meant to be one that facilitates empathy. To give you a concrete experience to reflect on the next time your child struggles to master a seemingly simple task. Having this memory tucked away will enable you to sit patiently with your child as a compassionate and supportive presence.

How do you practice empathy with your child?

How do your nurture empathy in your child?

___________________

Dionna is a lawyer turned work at home mama of two amazing kids, Kieran and Ailia. You can normally find Dionna over at Code Name: Mama where she shares information, resources, and her thoughts on natural parenting and life with little ones. Dionna is also cofounder of Natural Parents Network and NursingFreedom.org, and author of For My Children: A Mother’s Journal of Memories, Wishes, and Wisdom.

Crying as Sport?

Everyone loves babies. We’re programmed to. It’s biological: A 2008 research study at Baylor showed that the happiness centers in our brains light up when we see a baby smiling at us.

Conversely, a 2012 study at Aarhus University showed that a baby’s cry elicits a unique, lightning-fast response in his parents to soothe the baby. We want that crying to stop. We’re wired that way.

So, it’s puzzling why there seems to be a surge of entertainment centered on crying children, particularly infants. The quiver of the lip, the shaking of the chin, the miniature pout, the glistening tears. Apparently, it’s quite adorable. And as the child grows and those crying sessions become tantrums, these big reactions can seem downright hilarious to a lot of people. “You’re having a fit about what?!”

Making sport of crying babies – from Parenting.com’s “They’re mad, they’re sad, they’re so darn cute!” crying baby pictures to YouTube’s swarms of “cute baby crying” videos to talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s challenge to parents to feign eating all their child’s Halloween candy to Japan’s crying babies festival (what!?) – seems to be taking this fixation with baby cuteness one step too far.

What ever happened to adoring a baby’s tiny toes or fingernails or curls? Or, celebrating a baby’s first steps or raucous laughter at a mom blowing her nose? And why are we oohing and ahhing and laughing at a baby crying rather than grimacing and imagining how we can soothe her? Why don’t these videos and photos make us more uncomfortable than they do, ringing our psychological bells to come to her rescue?

I’ve never found my baby’s crying anything different than distressing. I can definitely identify with that lightning-fast response time. Where’s the milk? Need a diaper change? Kiss the boo-boo. No, you can’t play with the scissors but here’s a ball to look at. And of course, my lap and arms are always open to comfort.

But I admit it, there have been a couple times when my six-year-old daughter’s meltdowns bordered on funny or when my four-year-old makes a comment that almost makes me smile. Almost – because in the middle of a little person’s over-the-top outburst, when he’s feeling so misunderstood, so denied, so frustrated, angry, sad, out of control of his world, is when the parent needs to strive to empathize with his child and to stay attuned. Attunement is impossible if we’re not allowing ourselves to get down to her level to understand her emotionality because we’re too busy seeing the situation through adult eyes, which invariably looks silly or completely unreasonable from our level.

And that’s the point: children are not on an adult level, so what we find silly or alternately adorable, they find devastating. And what we adults get upset over – getting our bills paid, taking an afternoon nap, eating broccoli – our children don’t see what the big deal is. Does that mean what adults care about isn’t important? Of course not. But don’t try flipping that around and saying that just because we adults don’t think a toy car is anything to be flailing around on the supermarket floor for, doesn’t mean that it’s not important to a child. And while some of us might find the scene of a complete meltdown somewhat, or totally, hilarious, it certainly isn’t to that child.

Children can’t fathom that their anger and sadness – their emotional pain – is funny or adorable. And expressing this, even privately within our minds, is disrespectful to our children. It comes back to talking the talk and walking the walk. We want to be respected for our needs and wants, so we need to live in a way that is respectful and that teaches our children to be respectful.