This week, a teacher told us at our teacher debrief about a difficult situation she had had with a child, and I loved the words she used, so perfectly Cottage. She told us, “I felt challenged by her”-- see how the child expressing their feelings was not the issue? The issue is that the adult was having some feelings about how the child was expressing themselves and the adult was skilled enough to be able to take responsibility for their part. “I felt challenged by her”. Then the teacher told us that she helped herself respond calmly by repeating a short mantra to herself, silently: “It’s not about me. It’s not about me”. What an important and empowering reminder, for all of those (lo so many) times when we are feeling challenged by a child. 

Granted, it’s easier for us teachers to remember and use that mantra because although these are our students, we have the emotional distance to know that whatever is happening with a child was not caused by the way we are raising them. As parents, it’s a whole lot harder to really know that we are not the reason our child is upset. It is very hard not to take a child’s unhappiness personally, and I bet right now, you are thinking of reasons why you are an exception, and how you really did do something that is making your child miserable. I am too, I have a million reasons. Mine include passing on my funny brain to two innocent children, and having the audacity to leave them in care to go to work, and to have personal time for myself. What a horrible mom, right?

Of course not. 

You don’t think I’m a horrible mom for going to work, and guess what? Neither do my kids, although they sure have loudly expressed unhappiness about it sometimes, especially when they were tiny. 

Let me tell you, I felt challenged by them expressing that. I cried in the car many a time. And also, I do know that me making a rich and fulfilling life for myself is important for my whole family. I would never want to model selfless devotion as the ideal my children should aspire to. I want them to go and make happy, fulfilling lives for themselves, as I have. 

And so to return to the mantra, “this is not about me”-- even if it’s about me, it’s not about me. People feel feelings, and that’s okay. Little tiny people feel super big unfiltered feelings, and that is okay too. And people’s feelings are amplified by things like being tired, or hot, or hungry, or itchy, or needing a hug or a big cry, or so many other factors. Being uncomfortable in our bodies makes it almost impossible to just be cool. And people go through a range of emotions in a day, and that’s okay too. It’s not reasonable to expect anyone to be happy or content all the time, but somehow we think children should be exempt from that?  They most certainly are not; they have every right to a full range of emotions. It is truly not about us. 

The role of the adults here at Cottage (and everywhere really) is to use our self-regulation skills to calm ourselves down, and use our calm to co-regulate the kids in our care. Kids can’t relax when their grownups are flipping out– it’s a pretty clear signal to them that something is wrong. So, always, first, we calm ourselves. And if we forget that step, we remember it right after we accidentally send everybody through the roof because we brought our own big feelings into an already volatile situation.  And then we do a do-over.