The "map of we" Both Separate and Connected (part 2 of 2)

Does this image remind you of the 1982 movie "E.T." about a boy who discovers, befriends and saves a tenderhearted extra terrestrial? It makes me chuckle a little bit to remember myself playing that out as a kid.

It's pretty obvious to us that when we watch E.T. the two main characters, a human boy and an extraterrestrial, are pretty different. It's not a stretch to know they are entirely separate beings- and yet they share a deep connection. Elliot (the boy) has to work pretty hard to try to understand what E.T. wants and he is repaid with a deep bond that develops between them.

In my previous letter to you I wrote about how we can cultivate a deep bond with our child when we know we are both separate people.

Unfortunately it might not be as easy as having a cute stuffed-animal-looking alien with big eyes and an even bigger head in front of us. It can be a little harder when the person we're communicating with is our child- someone we are already so intimately bonded with, so close, already so familiar...

..it's very easy to assume our child's experience is similar to our own and we already know what they're feeling and needing.

However, if we start with compassion for myself, the first step of The Heart People, it helps us pause for a moment before we react to our child. We pause to stop and think about ourselves first! 

We check in:

"am I buzzing with irritation right now?"

"do I feel a weight of dread in my chest?"

"are there jittery jangly butterflys in my stomach?"

Staying with our own body is the beginning of a movement towards separateness...

...then we remember that our child's experience is different than our own and particularly, different from our own experience of childhood. We parse out the differences:

"oh right, I felt this jangly feeling when I was starting school, my jangly feeling is separate from whatever my child's feelings are as she starts school."

Once we pause to feel our own feelings we can take responsibility for ourselves. This means we can find ways to process our own experience without doing it through or foisting it upon our child's experience.

Next we have compassion for the child.

We engage our child with one of the most helpful tools of communication: the OBSERVE statement.

The observe statement is a fact, it's...

...a reality check

...reason

...radical acceptance

...what we can see and hear as if it was recorded and played back

No judgment, just exactly what happened.

We make an unemotional, factual statement:

"I see big tears, I hear you say "I hate school," I saw you throw your bag to the floor and slam your door."

The observe statement isn't even really for our child. It's for us. It helps us accept the moment for what it is. And in that moment is a person in front of us who is struggling in some way. The observe statement says, let's start with where you're at, not with where I think you are, or where you should be (ie: "I've told you a million times not to yell and throw things")

From here we can dive more deeply into curiosity and empathy for our child's experience:

"It all seems so hard honey, are you feeling overwhelmed with everything about school? Am I getting that right?" 

We check in with what the need is. We ask open-ended questions:

"Do you wish it was a bit easier?"

"Do you want more help understanding how it all works?"

"Maybe you just need me to listen to you right now?"

"Is there a way I can help you?"

Which brings us to the third and last step.

Solutions and Strengths is about finding a way to resolve the unmet needs of the child with the reality of the circumstances, usually the other persons needs or a limit (remember the limit we shouted earlier? about not yelling and throwing things? Now we can address it more effectively!)

This is what neurobiologist Dan Seigel calls "the map of we;" an ability to hold my experience and your experience together in my mind. We can't get to the "map of we" if we don't first have the "map of me" and the "map of you" or in other words, the understanding that you and I are separate people.

When I created The Heart People my goal was to make compassionate, unconditionally loving and conscious parenting a more simple and straightforward process. My greatest desire is for ever more loving connection to flourish in your relationship between you and your child for the health of your family and the world. Please reach out if you would like more support beyond these letters, even if it's just the work of processing through your own experience. And I wish for you much joy, delight, connection, and healing along the way.

With so much love,

Vanessa