It Works for Parenting, Too

I have an educator friend who is training in Teaching through Emotions. Here is

a story

she brought to the training group this week:

In COVID times, my friend — let’s call her Tracey — is doing her best to get her kids out and about, away from their screens, moving their bodies and having fun. Her daughter, fortunately, loves horseback riding. Her son doesn’t like trying anything new — like horseback riding.

Tracey suggested to her son, Billy, that he join his sister in a riding lesson. Knowing that he needed to warm to the idea, she talked to him about it for days, describing what it would be like, asking what made him nervous about the idea, basically drawing him out and letting him be. Not pressuring. Anticipating. And just being curious.

Billy decided he wanted to try it. So Tracey arranged for her son and daughter to take a lesson together.

The day of the lesson rolled around, and Tracey, once again, prepped her son. “You’re going to need boots with heels” and “you’ll need to dress warmly” and “we’re leaving at 1:30 sharp,” she told him that morning. Plenty of time. Plenty of patience.

But, as Tracey told us, the inevitable happened. At 1:29 Billy told her he wasn’t going.

Tracey panicked. And started feeling enraged.

Normally, she told us, she would just yell. In frustration and disbelief. And helplessness in the face of her son’s obstinacy. Normally, she knew, this response would accomplish nothing — other than regret on her part and (good guess) anger and shame on her son’s.

This time, though, because of the work we’d been doing in the training group, Tracey excused herself and found a quiet room. Where she thought about boundaries and gardens. Where she made the flip. What’s mine? What’s his? What are the natural consequences of what’s his? What am I feeling? What do my emotions teach me about his emotions? Why would he be feeling those emotions? What am I willing to do with all these data?

She did this, I might add, in just a couple of minutes.

When she returned to Billy, she had a plan. “Billy,” she said calmly, “I understand that you’re really nervous about trying horseback riding. But I’ve already booked your lesson. So you have a choice: You can get your boots and go to your lesson, or you can use your birthday money to pay for your lesson. Either way is fine with me. But you have to choose now.”

Billy chose to go to the lesson.

And he’s been to two more since then.

It seems so obvious after the fact, doesn’t it? When a parenting move pans out? But Tracey had no idea what the right thing to do at that moment was. She was so flush with anger and last-minute change-of-plans panic. She had very little time to respond — and yet she did. Beautifully.

Tracey used the logic of her emotions to pave the way for the magic of attuned relationships and, therefore, healthy development. This is not how most of us respond to our emotions: to work through them, to learn from them, to make a plan of action based on them.

Many — most? — of us just yell.

Moral of the story: parenting through emotions works just as well as teaching through emotions. And vice-versa.