To Have a Friend You must be a Friend (to Yourself)….

Social-emotional development is a hot topic these days. There is tons of research being done on the subject and lots of children books and marketing packages that are supporting families and teachers to help children learn how to be emotionally intelligent and socially connected.

As an occupational therapist and an integrated family/child coach, I see the significant impacts that parent’s have on their child’s emotional development. The focus of social-emotional development is about supporting children to learn life skills that will lead to a happier, more successful life.

The definition of social-emotional development includes the child's experience, expression, and management of emotions and the ability to establish positive and rewarding relationships with others (Cohen and others 2005). It encompasses both intra- and interpersonal processes.

In a nutshell, social skills are the ability to empathize and understand what another person is experiencing; in order to do that one has to have a good understanding of their own emotions.

The skills that are being imparted onto our children are not skills that we necessarily learned in our childhood, unless our parent’s were emotionally aware, or we, through our own life experiences, have learned through trial and error.

I consider social-emotional development a life long process, a process that we continue to refine. We continuously learn new strategies to help ourselves through our own hardships as we experience them. Social-emotional development is a never-ending evolution.

I truly believe that having my daughter has invited, really forced, me to grow more emotionally aware as I have been required to focus on dealing with situations that I would have not otherwise had to face.

Let me share an example of this. Last night my daughter and I finished a chess game that was indeed a challenge for me. She was upset because she lost for the fifth time in a row. She has legitimately beaten me twice, which is incredible. With this loss though, she took one of the ceramic chess pieces and threw it down because she was frustrated, which caused it to chip. When I said to her I think you might have broken a piece off, she blamed it on our cat. When I told her that the cat was in the bedroom to please find the broken piece, she found it and out of nowhere called herself an idiot. I asked her why she thought she was an idiot and she told me that it was because she didn’t win the game and broke the chess piece.

It was in this moment I knew I was being put to the test to use all of the EQ skills that I have developed both in my personal life, and in my professional toolbox; skills that I’m still in the process of developing.

I decided to invite my daughter to see that she was telling herself a story by saying that she was an idiot. I proceeded to reinforce her to feel empowered to know that she had a choice to believe the story or not. I once again restated that this was a decision that only she could make for herself. I finished my lecture by trying to make it better with saying that we all make mistakes and yet we are not all idiots. Mistakes are how we learn and grow.

Despite my attempts to soothe her heartache, she continued to feel sorry within herself. She did everything to push me away, to let me know she was hurt, confused and feeling alone. I laid with her, touching her when she would allow me, but also giving her the space she was demanding in that moment. I told her that I wanted to understand what she was feeling, that I loved her and would never leave her regardless of how much she pushed me away. She then said to me, while still looking in the opposite direction, “I don’t have any friends.”  She continued, “all of the girls in my class are not my friends and I feel like no one likes me.”

The frustration around losing then started to make sense. There was an underlying emotion that she was in process with that was impacting her self-perception. She had told me earlier in the evening that she shared with a friend in class that she liked a particular boy and that she had found out that her friend told her secret to the whole class.

My little love was feeling betrayed and sad; this was not the first time it had happened and I’m pretty sure that it won’t be the last. She covered it up by saying it didn’t matter, but the chess incident really allowed for me to see that it did.

In that moment I observed that she didn’t know what was at the root of her feelings. I could also witness that she didn’t know how to show up for herself and her heartache. She wasn’t sure how to deal with the difficult emotions of betrayal and sadness so instead she attempted to push it aside and abandon what she was feeling, and because of that anger arose. I witnessed that the friend that she really needed in that moment, the one she longed for, was the friend that was right there, the friend within her that wanted her to know, “it makes sense why you’re feeling hurt and it’s okay to feel it.” “Everything will be okay, you’re strong enough, just feel it.”

As a parent I wanted to fix her problem and guard her from not feeling the pains of life. I believe that this is a very common parenting response. We look towards helping our child to make sense of their world and to especially make sense of the difficult situations they are in. We, as parents, empathetically feel when things have been turned upside down for our child, and we want to help them through it so that they once again feel good and live with the zest and joy that comes so naturally to their being.

I’ve started to ask myself though, is this love? If love could speak for itself would it say, “lets smooth over the messiness and focus only on the positive because that is what I’m most comfortable with?”

I’ve considered loving and supporting a child to be that I help them recognize the power of their thoughts because that is what I was taught and have learned for myself. I’ve tried to help my daughter and the kiddos that I work with to grow more emotionally intelligent by showing them how they can change their feelings by changing the way they think about things.

Is it a loving gesture to convince or guide another to focus only on the positive while deflecting the negative?

Moreover, are we teaching our children through this process to judge themselves for any negative emotions they may be having? Have we judged them when they’ve shown up angry, disappointed, or sad because it was difficult for us to deal with? Have we taught them that feeling sad or angry is not helpful to their life, by always trying to make it better for them?

Think about how adults even do this when children are infants. We try endlessly to make it better, even if that means giving them a pacifier when they are too old for it, or a preferred toy/meal so that they will stop feeling upset.

I started to consider my daughter’s and my experience this morning when I was on my mediation mat and felt the strong urge to come and write this blog. What popped into my head was that we have to be a friend to ourselves in order to be a true friend to another.

What does this mean in context to the experience I had with my daughter?

Before I can answer that I want to take a moment to consider what it means to be a parent?

I believe to be a parent is to love and nurture a child where it is hardest. To be with them where they don’t know how to be with themselves, to love them where they push and kick, or shut down; to let them know that they are not alone where uncomfortable emotions exist. To be a parent is to be with a child through the highs and lows of emotions without turning our back, so that they learn how to be with themselves, without abandonment, as they go through their life rollercoaster.

And in order to do any of these things, we first have to do it within ourselves.

Lets make something clear, neither parents nor friends can fix our problems. They can help change our perspective and attitude towards the experience at hand, but they can’t make it better. And even in writing this, what we see is a trend to make it better, to lift another by helping them to see the light. Is this though what is most helpful? Possibly, or possibly not.

What happens when we can’t make it better for our child? What happens when we’re not able to raise the clouded lens that is impacting a clear and objective perspective? How about if we can’t help our baby to stop crying because the thing that is making them cry is the thing that we took away, like that pacifier.

As you can see, life and the way it unfolds is undoubtedly messy. This is especially highlighted in parenthood. So, what can we do as parents to help our children through the messiness in the most effective way and in that support them to develop their own social-emotional intelligence?

Let’s start by considering this. Emotions are changes in energy or vibration within our body. We label the experience by calling it an emotion, but how about if we consider it a sensation that shifts our focus and helps us to have variability in our life experiences.

Through a person’s life they’re going to experience the gamut of both “good” and “bad” emotions. It’s easy to be around a person when they are light and bubbly. To spend time with them when they’re in their good feelings.

How, though, do we feel when we are around a person who is in the more dense and heavy emotions? What is our natural instinct when that happens? Do we immediately go to trying to make it better? What is the pattern that we go into if someone is feeling those uncomfortable pains of life? Where do we go within ourselves when we are in it?

You see, when we get to a point that we can admit to ourselves that we can’t truly make it better, we are stepping in the right direction. Time, changes in perspective, and life experience will support this process. Heartache will indefinitely happen throughout our child’s life.

When we consider how to raise an emotionally intelligent and socially in-tune child, we’re really talking about how we can support them to be compassionate and empathetic to their own feelings, in other words to be their own best friend.

I believe parenting is a partnership. It’s a partnership in the way that we support a child through what we model and share, both mentally and emotionally. At the very core though, it is up to our child to process and integrate the information that we’ve shared. We can guide them to see things from different perspectives, but we can’t force them to adopt those perspectives. That is up to them to do.

So if we can’t make it better the question then becomes how do we get to a place within ourselves to feel comfortable to sit with our child, or friend, as they go through an experience and experience it with them without judgment?

We can support them to problem solve, and consider different options as to what they can do, but we can’t fix the “problem” of feeling. In other words, we can’t change the negative feeling. The negative feeling will change when it is felt, and after it is felt we can then support their process by helping them tap into the more logical aspect of the brain so that they can develop more self-understanding and cultivate new strategies to move through life with.   

I think it’s important for us to consider how we can find comfort within ourselves to know that our compassionate and empathetic presence is enough.

I truly believe we can get to this place of being a compassionate and empathetic presences when we have taken the time to sit compassionately with ourselves through our own internal strife; when we’ve not run away from our heart’s pain, or analyzed and judged our emotions. I believe we are able to truly hold space for another when we stop attempting to convince ourselves to see a situation that is causing us pain differently, and rather just take the time to feel what it is we are feeling without self-judgment. I’ve witnessed that when we start to schedule time to be with the parts of ourselves that we’ve found hardest to love, we start to live more compassionately.

So the question then becomes, what happens when we stop abandoning or judging ourselves when we’re in our own pain? What happens when we learn how to be our own friend?

It is only when we can do this with ourselves, we can than do it with another.

This is what I am in the process of developing as my tool for growing more emotionally intelligent… The more comfortable I am with my own discord, the more comfortable I am with another’s.

This is especially true for my daughter. I want her to be able to be with the difficult emotions life brings while I’m around to just be with her. To nurture her with empathy and compassion so she learns how to do that within herself. I want to do this so that she can see that she is able to be with herself with kindheartedness, without judging and bullying herself for feeling.  I want her to see and know that she is able to be with anything and through that see herself as the resilient and strong human being that she is.  I also want her to learn that she doesn’t have to try to make it better because feeling is an important process of life, and a critical component of social-emotional development.  

I believe things get better when we stop trying to make it better, when we learn how to be with our pain in the same way that we feel comfort in being with our joy.

I’ve considered friendship like this… there will be times that a friend, just by contextual constraints, will not be able to show up the way I want them to. However, in befriending myself, I’m ensured that I will always be there when the going gets tough.

Who do you have to turn to in your life? Wouldn’t it be nice to feel, I mean really feel the gift of saying, “me!”

I can say for certain that the only friend that will be around for the whole of life, in all of it’s entirety, is the friend that we can find within. She or he will be there when we wake up in middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep because we’re filled with anxiety. He or she will be there when we are beaten and broken because a friend has betrayed us, or a parent has passed. When we choose to befriend ourselves, the critical voice of judgment turns to a compassionate voice of reason.

In this time there is so much focus on the social emotional development piece of how to be with another. We look at developing skills that show measurable differences in a child’s behavior.

What, though, would it mean to teach children how to first be their own friend? How different will the generations to come look if we teach ourselves how to recognize with objectivity the stories, judgments, we tell and see that it is not true unless we choose to believe so. How different will society be if we start to see negative emotion as just that, a change in energy that allows us to have different life experiences? If we start to adopt another perspective of so called “negative emotions,” will that stop the judgmental stories we tell ourselves that haunt us until we feel what we didn’t have the support to feel when the emotion emerged? I believe so..

Lastly, I wonder what it would be like if we all understood the gift of showing up with compassion and empathy for ourselves, if we truly started to practice self-love in this way.

As an adult who has really come to understand the importance of being my own friend, I believe with all of my heart that there is a need to teach children how to compassionately show up; to be the friend to themselves that they would want another to be to them. To be a friend by monitoring their self-talk, to see if they’re bullying themselves or being a friend to themselves. To be a friend by asking themselves, am I being kind or mean to me?

And as a parent I believe my role is to be a model to my daughter, to model the process of being my own friend, over and over.

I am choosing to build a knowingness in myself so that I can share with my daughter that I am my own true best friend. I want to develop a greater awareness in me that my negative feelings are helpful experiences that teach me the strength of my own resilience, and that support me with the gift of loving myself.

This is what I believe emotional intelligence is. This is where unconditional connection and friendship can develop from, rather than the neediness of having a person fill a space in us that is empty because it is unloved.

Let’s revolutionize this world by helping our children understand the very nature of themselves, by looking to understand it within ourselves.