Thunder Does Not Grow Flowers
The four tenets of Gentle Parenting include empathy, respect, understanding, and boundaries.
With this comes different practices for certain scenarios but, for example, if your child is having big feelings, the gentle parenting practice has you show up for your child from a grounded place and let them feel their feelings before naming what happened. Another example would be to sandwich "no" with a yes— that might look like "We can't have another snack right now, but we can have lunch" or "I can't let you play with this, but you can play with that". So basically, you self-regulate yourself and then keep your child safe as their big feelings run their course before assessing the situation and trying to find resolution, all while talking to your child as an equal.
A few days ago, my son was having some big feelings. I approached him with the gentle parenting guidelines in mind— got down on his level, acknowledged his feelings and then named what was happening for him ("I see you're frustrated because we had to turn the TV off but I know you are tired and a nap will help you feel better. When we sleep our brains get to rest and reset!" or something like that).
This is pretty typical in our house. We try to meet our kids where they are and help them process their feelings, while keeping them safe and out of harm's way.
Well, surprise, surprise. I'm human. Today he wanted to play with something that is not a toy, and I did a "no" sandwich... a few times. His feelings got bigger, I lost my patience and I yelled.
And you know what he did? HE YELLED BACK AT ME.
It's true. Thunder does not grow flowers. This is true for children AND it's true for adults.
We can, and should, spin the practice of gentle parenting around on our own selves. By approaching our own selves with these gentle parenting guidelines, we might be more mindful and aware of our own big feelings and be able to navigate them "faster". Suppressed thoughts and emotions grow bigger and snowball until eventually they cause an emotional outburst. Not to mention they take much longer to navigate because we keep turning a blind eye to them.
So how liberating might it be to take a deep breath, acknowledge the big feelings, let them run their course, and then navigate through to a solution instead of pushing these feelings to the wayside for them to only grow bigger and bigger— I think there would be more space for flowers to grow. After all, thunder does not grow flowers.
Let's all try to be a little gentler towards ourselves— and each other.
*Note: Gentle parenting is one of many parenting approaches and it's what works best for us but might not work for you. I will always be of the mindset "you do you" meaning ya gotta do what's best for YOUR family— without guilt. This is a safe space for all beliefs!
