By Jessica Shattuck
A friend of mine picked up her five-year-old son from kindergarten the other day and arrived to find the class bully throwing his shoes at the bookshelf in a fit of anger. "Stop doing that, Carson," his mom was pleading. "When you do that, it makes me feel like you don't care about me." Carson was apparently undeterred.
Wow — later, she and I laughed about this. That kid is going to spend years on some therapist's couch. The weird illogic her particular Jedi mind-trick of pop psychology made it almost impossible to unpack (The equation of me with the bookshelf? The meaning of "care" to a five-year-old?). There was something so depressing about the passivity of the plea, something so desperate about the invoking of her own fragile ego as a reason the kid should behave.
It gave me one of those smug, moments of self-congratulation (I
may be a model of inconsistency when it comes to bedtime and
mid-night wake-ups, but at least I don't threaten my children
with my own hurt feelings) that always come back to bite
you.
Sure enough, I began to notice my five-year-old whining about
"feeling like" she just needed something sweet (never
mind whether it was time for desert or five-thirty in the morning),
or "feeling like" she would never, ever fall asleep. I
recognized that, she was, not infrequently, having tantrums
involving the accusation that I just didn't understand
"her feelings" (that, for instance, she didn't like
time outs, or that it made her furious to be told we were not going
to watch a movie tonight).
The awareness of what we feel is prominent enough to shape the
idiomatic pattern of our speech.This is not to say
that I was suddenly flooded with recovered memories of emotionally
blackmailing my children, but I did start to think about how often
I bring up "feelings" (my own, my kids', their
friends, the dog next door's . . . ). I did start to think
about how often I, like so many women of my age, begin way too many
sentences with the unnecessary declaration (or caveat, depending on
how you see it) of "I feel like...".
"I feel like my kids are driving me crazy" or "I
feel like we need raised garden beds if we're going to plant
veggies." At least half the time the phrase is totally
unnecessary. Why not just my kids are driving me crazy? Or I need
raised beds in the garden — when there's really nothing
subjective about it.
It's just a pattern of speech of course, like adding
"like" to so many sentences. But it is also a reflection
of a sort of generational uber-attention to feelings. The awareness
of what we feel is prominent enough to shape the idiomatic pattern
of our speech.
Like so many thirty-somethings I know, I grew up on the doctrines
of Sesame Street (remember Gordon's heart-felt
exhortation to "Let Your Feelings Show?") and Free To
Be You and Me (which made sure we knew "It's All
Right to Cry" practically before we knew how to walk). Our
parents, those children of The Greatest Generation — whose own
feelings were steadily and consistently shut down by their stoic
war veteran fathers and questing-for-perfection 1950s moms — went
all out to make sure their kids had the vocabulary, the awareness
and the comfort to express their feelings and be emotionally
sensitive beings. Maybe it is only logical that, consciously or
not, we perpetuate the trend.
But watching my own children articulate and attend to their own feelings with enough gusto to turn blue in the face ("Mama!!! Come!! I feel like a monster is behind me," my three-year-old screams from midway up the stairs), I have to wonder if all this emphasis on feelings is such a good thing. Feeling like there is a monster doesn't mean there is a monster. Feeling like you need to have ice cream doesn't mean you need to have ice cream.
"Feelings aren't facts" a friend of mine always quotes a sage uncle as saying. In my own life as an adult this has been extremely helpful to remember. Feelings pass. Feelings aren't rational. Feeling something doesn't make it so. And while it might be too much to ask children to understand this concept, modeling it by overlooking irrelevant feelings and talking a little less about how everyone feels might work to that end.
We ask our children so much about their inner state — does that
make you feel happy? Did that make you feel sad? There is the whole
Dr. Barry Brazelton school of "reflecting back," as in,
"I can see you're feeling angry about giving that hammer
back to me but it just isn't safe to play with." And the
Dr. Sears focus on finding new ways to express feelings.
Read more here.
