08/01/2020
The other day I caught myself coaching my 7 year old about her tone. Her grandmother hadn’t been listening to A about how A wanted Grandma to play with her Elementals. Grandma had been making that rasping noise, for the third time, that sets A’s teeth on edge. She’d asked her not to do it and she was doing it anyway. A’s tone became demanding and rude, and I’d started lecturing her. “Honey, ”I’d said, “We can hear what you’re saying better if your tone —” I stopped mid sentence. It hit me: this one way that it starts, the pathology of whiteness.
Still my system automatically regards these behaviors as a challenge to “authority”, as disrespect, defiance, lawlessness. I notice panic rise. I feel as if THIS is when it begins: I’m losing my power over this situation (“I must dominate it until it's under control again.”), over my kid, over the horrific future I fear for her if she continues to behave so horribly. I imagine her alone, friendless, addicted, suicidal. It feels like I MUST dominate.
Then I remember that we’ve been through this before. Each time I dominate for control, her behavior gets WORSE. She “misbehaves” more often, with greater emphasis. In one particularly contentious period she got so angry that her 5 year old eyes were like little half moons of fury, her face red, teeth bared and fists balled.
Incidentally she’s quite a beauty when she’s angry, my little freyja. She’s gonna knock the socks of someone one day. But I digress.
We’ve been through this before. The key is always: Hear her, deeply. Let her know she’s heard. And, counterintuitively, give her more power. It's terrifying, giving a child more power when it seems for all the world like she’ll use it to tear down beautiful things. But the results are always the same. Her system calms. Her tone resolves on its own. She cooperates and works harder in the household. She has genuine respect for the boundaries, not just right then, but for a long, long time.
So I dropped the tone policing. And let her know I was ready to hear her.
I find myself reflecting. We often think the scared or angry little person inside of our own self doesn't deserve a voice, in part, I believe, because in our culture we have this prohibition on acting out certain kinds of feelings. We call them inappropriate, wrong. Not fit for public consumption.
So we silence them even within ourselves.
And then those denied, oppressed, suppressed parts act out.
Impelling us to take offense, for example, when others’ tone is off.
I start thinking: how can I extend this same advocacy and care to those parts of myself that I've been ashamed of? When I'm feeling "locked out of paradise" and lonely or unheard, how can I step up my generosity with myself, give space and kindness that I crave? Is it possible?
Giving space and kindness to my inner sulking and tantrums wasn't easy, not at first. But as I keep doing it over and over, I find more and more space and love for the scared little girl in me, or the girl that's afraid she doesn't have a strong enough voice to keep people from crossing grave boundaries. As I do so, my voice is stronger, and my need for rage and fear are waning, and I’m experiencing peace and confidence more and more often. I’m feeling greater agency in my world and more and more like I have the internal resources to step out and start contributing more widely to my community.
How can you be the change you want to see?