Helping Kids Move Through Painful Feelings

I noticed my three year old daughter, Ava, acting out her anger, her frustration, her sadness, unable to fully articulate or perhaps even understand what is was she was feeling. I first noticed this acting out as we started spending more time with her friend and her friend's family... As Ava began taking a liking to her friend's father, she began to talk about her own missing physical daddy more often, and then began to get angry with her friend. It didn't seem fair that her friend had a daddy, and she didn't (what I observed and helped her articulate)... And so my job, to take notice, to create space where she could be free to feel without fear of being “too much,” create healthy and creative outlets (art, dance, play) for her feelings, to create an open dialogue with her to help her understand her feelings without shame, and with a lot of love. The only boundary was to be kind toward others, so that even though she was processing painful feelings, she was not hurting her friends in the process. And interestingly, for the longest time, she was afraid of all darkness in her kid movies, all of the bad guys in the Disney movies became a source of anxiety, and she preferred to simply not watch at all. And I noticed as she started acting out some of her own darkness, her own painful, “scary” feelings such as anger and frustration, and as I allowed her the safe space to do so, without telling her all the time to “be nice,” and that everything was “ok” if it wasn't, I noticed her fears and tolerance for the darker aspects of the characters in movies begin to shift. Perhaps as she was beginning to understand, embrace her own darker parts, she didn't have to feel so afraid or rejecting of the darker parts in others. All of a sudden she was drawing giants (previously feared) in her chalk pictures on the patio, and she wanted to watch, “How to Train Your Dragon,” a movie I cannot imagine her having chosen in the past (and by the way, is an awesome movie!). As we begin to illuminate, shine the light onto our darkness, we will be less likely to hate them or fear them when we see them show up in others.... And we can understand ourselves, infuse compassion into our struggle, and loosen the ropes we find ourselves entangled in. And as we find healthy ways to express these, move through these, we will keep growing and expanding beyond the limitations of our former shell, and begin to allow the shedding of a skin that no longer fits...