Kids are simple, yet masterful communicators. Right from when they’re born, despite lacking the skills of a formal language, they perfectly convey what they want in their own unique way.
It is only as we grow up, that we unlearn some of that skill, and complicate things for ourselves. I’ve started to learn from my 21-month old son, that quite the same applies to emotions as well. While we think kids don’t have control over their emotions and have fits of anger or go through the notorious “terrible twos” with tons of tantrums, the reality is quite different.
Here is a quick cheat sheet of the key learnings my wife and I have had over this eventful, nearly 2-yr long journey so far.
There’s no room for grudges
This one is critical because as adults we’re always stuck between the battle of forgiving and forgetting. We, in fact, often pride ourselves in never forgetting even if we do forgive.
Yet, a child’s psychology is absolutely different about grudges — they don’t know what a grudge is! And that is a beautiful ignorance to have.
Childcare is a rollercoaster ride. There are times when you lose your cool and shout at your child over something or times when you unintentionally commit a parenting blunder.
I was once getting my son out of his pre-bedtime bath when he playfully started to lightly hit my face. He’d probably learned from one of the older kids during playgroup, and so I calmly asked him to stop a few times. Yet, he continued to laugh and hit me, which to him was probably a game. That’s when one of his “slaps” hit me too hard right across the eye, and out of an impulse, I shouted his name at the top of my voice.
Kids are sensitive. He suddenly went from a playfully happy to a sad face and then broke into a loud cry. My wife ran to the bathroom, and came and held him. He wasn’t to be consoled. Yet, a minute into crying, he turned to me and said “aado” — his endearing version of a Hindi term for “come, hold me”.
Yes, he wanted to come back to me, and hug and makeup. A few moments later, he was quite calm, with his head on my shoulders, safely in my embrace. The slap and my unwarranted angry voice were not only forgiven but also forgotten.
This is one of many instances when I’ve made a small parenting mistake. Yet, I am one of my son’s two favorite people in the world, and he probably doesn’t remember any of those mistakes.
Kids don’t hold grudges — they express their disapproval in that very moment, but when they hug and makeup, there are no hidden feelings left in the heart. It’s all transparent.
Trust is unconditional — there’s no other kind
A newborn relies on the parents or the adults around him for everything. (S)He can’t feed on their own, clean themselves, or even stay safely asleep — absolutely nothing at all.
So, in the first few months of being fully reliant on others for survival, trust becomes an important part of the child’s psychology. As cliched as it may sound — when you throw a tiny child up in the air, they’re always smiling and giggling, with absolute trust that you’ll catch them and won’t let them fall from a height that’s probably twice or thrice their own.
Whatever you feed them as their parents, they accept, no questions asked, and learn what you teach them without prejudice or doubt — as if it were the absolute truth.
Trust is an absolute and unconditional thing until we grow up and are given reasons to doubt and question the things people say or do.
Anger isn’t a feeling — it is a mere expression of disapproval
This one just dismisses the existence of a specific emotion in its entirety. Anger — something we all struggle to manage as we get older, isn’t something that is truly an emotion or feeling for kids.
Anger is just a means or a way to express something. But isn’t that what emotion is? No, emotion is something that is felt deeply and lasts longer than a few moments.
Anger, for kids, is a short-period of shouting or screaming or crying to get something they want or to express their disagreement with something. Once that has been addressed, it’s gone. It doesn’t linger on inside of them, and it doesn’t bother them.
A kid is never upset or angry with you over something for days on end. That is a game only grown-ups love playing.
There are no half-measures when it comes to emotions
Shades of grey are something that we acquire over time — kids are largely black and white. They don’t have a “middle-ground” to anything. Everything is absolute and to the fullest.
Joy for a kid is an absolutely unbridled expression of happiness. When I sit with my son and draw his favorite things with a pen on a diary, the laughter that he has as a fan takes shape on paper, and a butterfly appears, is pure unadulterated joy.
When I lay down on the bed with him for his sleep time, and he holds my face between his hands and says “papa”, the love that he has in his voice and his eyes is complete and sincere.
When I get back from office, he drops whatever it is that he is doing, and just puts his arms out and says “aado” as if he is commanding me to mirror him — to drop everything and just take him in my arms. It isn’t a request or a polite ask — it’s a command because that’s the only way he knows.
Emotions when fully expressed leave no room for guessing, and hence no room for misunderstandings. Yet, we learn the art of hiding and misrepresenting our emotions as we grow up.
Kids have a sixth sense in knowing when something is off
This one came as a shock to me and my wife, when we realized how perceptive our son is.
There are times when I and my wife have a heated discussion, or we’ve got some bad news and one of us has tears in our eyes. Or there are times when we’re having an emotionally charged discussion about life, work, or something else.
Our son has a sixth sense about ANYTHING that may in the least upset my wife or me. The moment one of us raises our voice, even in a casual conversation, our son will interrupt with some action or expression. If we’re watching a movie and one of us gets teary-eyed, he’ll drop everything, walk up to that person, and go “mama” or “papa” and remind you to smile or he’ll get sad too. He doesn’t say it — it’s his expression that says it all.
My wife and I have barely had any fights since we’ve had him in our lives because he keeps a constant check on even the smallest argument turning into a fight.
Kids have an amazing perceptive ability to sense emotions that aren’t even fully expressed. There’s not much you can hide from them despite how much smarter and more mature you may think yourself to be. This is also why you need to be that much more sensitive about the emotions you display in front of kids because they’re extremely impressionable.
Among the many lessons parenting has taught us, being more aware of our emotions and learning and unlearning how we handle emotions has been one of the most rewarding experiences. And I hope that we can turn to the innocence and purity of the emotions of a child, and imbibe some of it in our lives too.
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This post was previously published on Medium.com.
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Photo credit: Ryan Franco on Unsplash