Connecting Anxiety and Teaching Resilience

 Yesterday one of my daughter's friends was at our house for a playdate. They went outside to play but about 10 minutes later, while checking on them through the window, I witnessed a strange behavior. The girl was walking rapidly in a circle about 10 feet in diameter, talking to herself. I couldn't hear well from inside but it sounded like she was distressed. I paused a moment to see if she was looking for something. I thought if she found it she'd be okay. 

But, after another moment it became clear she was just walking aimlessly and frantically, not looking for anything. I went to the door and called to her. She stopped and looked at me. I said, "is something wrong?" She began to cry and said, "I miss my mommy." 

I called her into the house and comforted her and explained that if she wanted something all she had to do was ask. I said, "what do you want?" She said, "I'm tired." I got her settled with a book on a chair, called my daughter inside to join her so she had some company, and all was fine for the next half hour until it was time for her to go home. 

At times over the past 2.5 years I've seen one of my adoptive daughters get mentally stuck. Sometimes due to fear; other times due to frustration. They can't make any decisions and just make sounds of distress. 

Every time that's happened I've coached my girls, "So, what do you want to do?" I first modeled and then prompted them to articulate the solution to the problem and then to go through the act of requesting that solution. 

Often it's as simple as asking for help getting their sock on straight, or the cap off the toothpaste, or to know where I'm going when I leave the house. But they first have to move from a place of believing they are trapped by a problem to a place where they believe they can solve it. I have consistently forced my daughters to move into the mindset of solving their problem by requiring them to articulate what they want. I did it, at first, to teach them that we will meet their needs and they aren't neglected children anymore. I wanted them to say their need out loud so that it set me up to meet that need. I thought that was all I was doing. 

Now, I think I was instinctively parenting on an even deeper level.

The act of naming the problem and then requesting the solution was also the act of empowering them, and thereby reducing anxiety and teaching resilience and perseverance, or, grit, to use the hottest buzz word in education and parenting. 

But I didn't think of it as anything special at all. If I reflected on why I instinctively did that all day long in a 100 different situations, I guess I would've said it was because a) I didn't want to hear them whine, and b) the sooner they're independent the easier my life will be. 

Seems pretty selfish when I phrase it like that. But, there's an element of truth to that. The sooner the kids quit pestering the parents, the happier everyone is. Independent, self-sufficient, confident, problem-solving kids let our family focus on fun and accomplishments rather than being hamstrung by needs. 

I realize, though, that this parenting philosophy is more and more rare these days. According to the mores of the times, good parents cater to every need. Good parents are still dressing kids and undoing the cap for them. Good parents hyper-focus on every distressing emotion their child has ever had and do their best to shield their child from it. 

But, what do we see more and more? Anxious kids. Kids who walk frantically in circles mewling helplessly to themselves not ten feet from the solution to their problem.

When I was a kid I grew up on a farm where my dad never said we couldn't do anything, but he sure didn't help us, either. He said, "figure it out". I was also given chores I didn't want or fully know how to do. I was still told, "figure it out". What was the result? The belief that I could figure it out. 

Awhile ago I took my youngest three to see the second Frozen movie. They're still terrified by that movie. Why? Because of the focus on fear and loneliness. There's a long scene where the characters are running scared from forest monsters. The movie shows dozens of close-ups of fear-stricken faces and terrified screaming. The characters have no tools to fight back; they only run and hide. Gave my kids nightmares for weeks and I swore off all Disney movies.

Today I took my kids to see Raya and the Last Dragon. There's some monsters in this movie, too. There's also a lot of fighting and pseudo-death. You know what there wasn't? Any fear. In every situation the characters fought back. They either had weapons or super powers and they always showed determination and bravery. If a character was about to succumb and be turned into a stone statue, they did so with acceptance and calm. No close up of a face twisted in agony. No fear.

My kids came out of this movie raving about the beautiful dragons and showing no distress. For my kids, watching someone be afraid was 100 times worse than watching someone fight bravely. Watching a character "die" was less scary than watching a character hide.

I think we have an epidemic of kids with anxiety, because they have parents who weren't told to figure it out on their own. I think most parents today were taught to hide rather than fight.

The little girl who came to our house is only 4 years old but her mother has already told me all about how the girl suffers from anxiety. She has "big feelings" and "doesn't know how to mange them". I wonder, does the mother know how to parent the girl into managing her emotions? Does the mother know how to step back and say, "figure it out"? Does the mother know how powerful it is to model to a child that the parents absolutely believes the child can do it for herself? 

It may look selfish to say I just want my kids to be independent so they'll quit pestering me. And if that was my only reason, yes, it would be damn selfish. But modern parents are so caught up in avoiding the awful stigma of being the selfish, non-sacrificial parent, that they've crippled their own families. Parents are trapped meeting every need while kids, in turn, grow all the more needy. 

Figure it out. What do you need? Okay, so what are you going to do about that? 

Saying those simple phrases has begun to feel like giving my kids super powers.