My 3-year-old has recently moved from the little kids' area at his daycare to the preschool.
While the days have gone well the mornings have been dramatic. I mean sobbing, pulling me by the hair, screaming, "Mummy I love you don't leave me!" kind of stuff.
Apparently it all shuts off about two mintues after I leave (though I'm messy for a lot longer). But he feels separations keenly. Any sort of good-bye can be fraught.
He and I talk a lot about this. He tells me the day before school: "I'm going to cry tomorrow when you leave."
Me: "Why?"
Him: "Because I'll be sad when you leave. I want you to stay with me."
Me: "I know how you feel. I'm sad saying goodbye too. I wish I could stay all day."
I got the last bit from reading Between Parent and Child (Ginott). He says that children need to know they've been understood primarily and this fits in really with my agenda here. (That sounds so nefarious - but I do spend a lot fot ime pretending to an evil villain that must be "fighted" by "supercool hero man" and his special powers. It rubs off.)
I am consciously trying to build resilience in these kinds of interactions with my son.
This involves three things (that I can think of):
* Acknowledging and accepting sadness, giving it its due place. It's sometimes appropriate to be sad. It's for each one of us to decide for ourselves when that is so.
* Expressing sadness - whether it be crying or whatever.
* Moving on when finished.
My partner very rarely names his feelings. I think he only allows himself to feel anger (and that's ultimately turned on himself).
What I mean is, when something happens he doesn't say: "My boss sent me a really offensive email. She doesn't appreciate my work. It's so demoralising."
He clams up instead and goes to bed. Or he says: "I hate my job. Everything is fucked. I'm an idiot." And then he goes to bed.
I am hoping that if I can give my son routines for processing things, dividing emotion into manageable bits and being comfortable with it, then he won't be overwhelmed.
I think he's young enough now to set those grooves in his mind so that's the default path he treads when dificult things come up.
So, tempting as it is, I try really hard never to say: Don't cry. It's fine. Because obviously it doesn't feel fine to him and by denying his feelings all I'll do is drive them underground and he'll learn to supress them and, well, we all know the story.
Everything I've read points towards the fact that having a depressed parent makes a child more likely to suffer from depression themselves, so I'm trying really hard to prevent this. Even if it's genetic, I think what we teach our son now can make a difference.
I heard a great program about autism today and the work that's being done on looking for an autism genome. One of the researchers interviewed said a fantastic thing. He said, "We can fight the genome."
If you have children in your life what are your strategies for helping them avoid depression?
Do you worry that you need to work consciously to provide an alternative to what they might see modeled by a depressed family member?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and also any reading recommendations you might have.
Flo
Once again a lot of this post is familiar. My partner (and his family) hardly ever name feelings. I make an effort to name my feelings infront of our son, whether happy or sad (withing reason of course I don't provide a running commentary!). I have made an effort to acknowledge sadness anger etc but also to be up beat.
ReplyDeleteIt was something that really puzzled me in the depths of the dark times why my partner was seemingly willing to let his son (whom he loves so dearly) grow up in the same sea of negativity and misery he did (and is so critical of). I would ask him about it and he would not deny that was what was happening but he had no answer, I suppose that is a symptom of being ill.
One good side effect of all this is that my battle not to be dragged down and to understand what has been going on has turned me from a glass half empty person to a much more positive, realistic one. I really, really want my son to be resilient, willing to give things a try and not afraid of 'failure', qualities its taken me until middle age to develop (with my partner's help in the good times. My mother too was/is a negative, anxious, depressive type of person (though not nearly as bad as my partner's mother) and this stuff does get passed down until someone does something to fight it.