Having a LOT of Feelings

I never thought it would happen. I was yelling uncontrollably at my son. I love this little guy with all my heart there is no doubt. And there is no doubt he loves me with all his little heart. However, there was beginning inside of him AND me something different, something new and most importantly it was scaring me.

It would go something like this. “Isaiah, it is time to grab a book and we are going to lay down for some quiet time.” He plays around and around in la la land. I reinforce “Isaiah, you’re not listening to me. Stop and put that toy down and come grab a book with me.”

Every so often, typically over something insignificant like the above scenario, we would start bickering. Our emotions would go from 0 to 60 mph in just 4 seconds. Overwhelmed with emotions we would be yelling at eachother and it would escalate till it got physical and it would all happen so fast. There was nothing I could do and soon I was being hit and needing to protect myself, really straining myself not to hit back. Now I’m not saying that I handled this well. The stubbornness in me asking him to stop probably pushed him on.  One day I found myself in the doctor’s office just saying, “He is so angry and it escalates out of control so fast. I need help.”

The doctor kindly said, “he’s four right? Yes, this is the age of anger. They can sometimes just have so many feelings.” So my paradigm shifted. My little love bug was experiencing all these emotions but didn’t know what to do with them. It is my job to teach him to identify them and how to deal with them. She gave me a suggestion, “have him draw.” I immediately thought, what? My four year old can’t depict his feelings in a picture! Boy was I wrong.

A few days later another outburst occurred. Immediately I took him to the easel where I asked him to draw what he was feeling. I was astounded by what he produced. Although he had no words this little guy was definitely experiencing a lot of feelings. Well I too was experiencing a lot of feelings so I grabbed a pen and drew out my feelings. Together we discussed how we could turn each of our frusturated, angry, sad, etc. faces to happy ones.  I had an ahha moment about all that he was feeling and I could see him processing that I too was having my own emotions. We both learned to process them together and out of love, reconcile our differences. What a beautiful moment! I’m so grateful for this piece of advice.

After the fact, I started thinking.  Wow, I needed this as much as my dear son. I grew up in a non-confrontational family were everything was happy go lucky. I felt like a preschooler right alongside him learning how to process my own emotions.