10 Things Girls Need Most: To grow up strong and free

very nervous and afraid 1 2 3 4 5so calm I almost fell asleep

These questions add up to the whole picture, and so total your scores. My total ___________________

If you have less than 10, that’s quite a stressful time. Around 15 would be about average – not too bad.

Over 20 would be a miracle!

For many reading this, the scoring on the last questionnaire will come as a bit of a blow, because parenthood in the modern world has been made terribly stressful, and unsupported. We may be materially very secure, but emotionally far from that. Or the reverse. Or neither.

And there is another option. It’s possible the questionnaire is completely wrong in your case. Sometimes that can happen. You can have had a terrible time in the first year, little support, poor circumstances materially, isolated from others, and awful childhood memories of your own, and yet by sheer fierceness of your love and commitment, you just made sure her situation was nurturing, responsive and calm. Draw a circle around this sentence, just to celebrate …

‘I think I have overcome tough circumstances, or a terrible background of my own, and still made sure my daughter felt loved.’

Massive admiration and love to you.

And if not, if either way you look at it, it wasn’t an ideal start – don’t blame yourself. Don’t blame others. Allow that there may have been a stress burden, in your family and in your daughter’s early experience, which may explain some of the challenges she has. There are things you can do about these, but it begins with an honest appraisal. If the sense of being loved and secure is wobbly, then that has to be the primary focus. Even if she is ten or sixteen, repairing those babyhood feelings might still be the priority. She might really need lots of cuddles and quiet times with you each day just to settle down her autonomic nervous system which has always been set on ‘red alert’ since she was little. She can be capable, helpful, and deal with the big world, but still need to stop and fill her tank regularly until her mind learns that she really is secure.

“Our daughter was adopted: she came to live with us when she was one. We don’t even know what her babyhood was like – we suspect it was pretty terrible. She had quite a lot of issues growing up. But we loved her relentlessly and patiently, and knew she needed lots of reassurance, routine, lots of cuddles, lots of building up. We had read in Steve’s books that at the age of thirteen children ‘recycle’ their babyhood, or have a second babyhood, that makes them more open to love and affection. So we babied her a lot at that age. By fourteen she was completely out of that stage, and she has been going great ever since. She’ll always be a rather intense girl, I think, but her life is going fine.”

Mark, 48 and Amy, 42

“When my baby was one, I had to leave China for a year to study in the US. Our baby stayed with her grandma. When I came home, it was to have a second new baby. So our relationship is quite wobbly. She was fine with her grandma, but can’t live with her now. I am not sure that my career path has been good for her, and hope I can make it up to her.”

Guan-yin, 38

Loving small children is natural – we have hormones like oxytocin which help us to feel melty and soft when we are around them. But that doesn’t mean that the caring role comes naturally to everyone, because though the feeling may be there, the doing of it has to be learned. If we haven’t seen or experienced how loving is done, we might actually be quite tense and awkward in expressing our love for our baby. (Sometimes a mother or father feels almost nothing at all towards their new baby, and has to start gradually by getting to know them, and being helped with outside support to do this.) Almost everyone today has gaps in their ability to love, but don’t worry about this because, rather like a fire, you can create and kindle the beginnings and it starts to take off by itself.

There are two things that increase the capacity for love in your family. These love sources are:

1. Slowing down your world.

2. Getting into the river of love.

Let’s explain what these mean …

Slowing Down

THE SECRET OF WHERE LOVE GROWS

When I talk to audiences of parents, I watch and listen closely. Some ideas make people go quiet. Some make them laugh out loud. Some make the room light up with acknowledgement – of ‘Yes, that’s right!’. A good example of that last one is that HURRY IS THE ENEMY OF LOVE. When we are rushing through our lives, our interactions get more and more jarring and unsatisfying, even insensitive. The warmth and harmony between us disappears. Husbands and wives stop getting along. Parents and children annoy and irritate each other. Love is there, but it’s eaten away by not quite being attuned to each other, and so things go badly. Reaffirming closeness, understanding ‘where each other is at’, takes time. If you have children, especially small ones, then slowness is essential to love being able to grow.

For love to exist between a parent and child (or adult and adult) they have to first feel settled and present. You have to be tuned in – to yourself, and to them.

The sequence for making human connection is timeless. It can only go in this order. You settle down. You breathe and your shoulders relax and you sink into the chair. You begin to feel at home inside yourself. (Sometimes you realize – ‘I am really hungry’, or ‘I need a wee!’ It might be good to fix this!) Now, there is this baby, or toddler, or older child in front of you. From your feeling of OK-ness in yourself, you reach out to them. Perhaps they are fretting and anxious, or needy, or wanting to talk to you or get your help. Because you are OK on the inside, and have the time, their distress doesn’t distress you. You care about them, and are happy to help.

So you soothe them with words or touch, and they feel that you are calm, so they start to calm down too. (Babies and toddlers can’t regulate their own emotions. Many times a day, a baby or small child will ‘freak out’ at something strange, a loud noise, a stranger, falling and hurting themselves, a frustration they encounter, not getting what they want, or just some reason you or they can’t even figure out. A lot of what we do as parents is soothing these reactions, just holding them patiently as they let those feelings abate, and letting them settle, so they find a way out of their distress. After several years of us providing this, the pathways in their mind to a calmer state will be well trodden, and they will be able to do this for themselves.) If your child is old enough to talk, of course it’s easier: you listen to their worries, or help in a practical way, but you still keep that calm sense of attention and patience. They feel loved and noticed. They don’t need to be naughty or difficult to get your attention.

But this means you must not be busy! Which is tough, because the big world wants you to rush – timetables, bills, appointments, lessons and meals are all crowding in. It wants you to earn money, spend money, buy stuff you don’t need, be always on the go with self-improving activities, rushing kids to classes and sports and so on. Life is just so complicated and full – how can we do it without rush? And yet, when we rush, things always go wrong. Have you noticed that?

“I noticed something about myself – that I had a hurried feeling on the inside nearly all the time. It occurred to me – could I do things, even busy things, and be very active, but have a peaceful inside as I was doing it? Gradually I realized that I could. It meant being really mindful, and cultivating that feeling. You can be fast, but peaceful, for short bursts at least. You have to stop making yourself all stressy, stop being in the victim position. It’s rather good to enjoy getting a lot done while feeling good on the inside. But I still prefer lying around when I can!”

Serena, 40

So here is a very important first question.

Am I too busy?

(Tick which statement fits you best.)

□ 1. Yes, but I have to be to survive.

□ 2. Yes, and I want to do something about it.

□ 3. Sometimes things get crazy, but generally it calms down again.

□ 4. Changes have been made. I'm currently living at a slower pace than previously and it’s so much better now.

How Love Grows

To sum up – love takes time. It’s rare for two human beings to love each other from the very first moment. Even with little babies. Love is an interchange – you give a little, get something back, give more, get more back. This has to be tentative, respectful, you have to get attuned to each other. And even though we love each other, that connection is a living thing – it has to be re-established whenever we meet. It’s the same between husband and wife at the end of the day, or parent and a child who has been away all day at school.

In the way that families live now, though, hurrying can mean that this quality of connection happens less and less. Before long, you are just people under the same roof, living separate lives. Almost every marriage drifts into this place sometimes, and it’s lonely and sad. You have to win back the time, whatever it costs. It’s cheaper than divorce, or a child seeing a psychiatrist, or a teenager on drugs. (Drug use among teenagers does not correlate with any specific factor, such as poverty, but it does correlate with lack of parental time.) Sometimes you have to ‘put your family back together’ by slowing it down. Rekindle the respect and caring in your relationships. Rebond with the teenagers who all you seem to do is ‘manage’. Resteady your school-aged child who has become overscheduled. And settle your new baby by just hanging out with them for long lazy times. Win back the time of your life and use it to make your family harmonious again.

Have you ever done this deliberate slowing down of life?

Do you think this is needed in your family at the moment?

It might need the help of others in your family to achieve this. Talk it over. Make practical decisions about what might have to be dropped or let go, to reduce the hurry and rush.

The River of Love

Sometimes it isn’t possible to create love out of nowhere. There is a shortage – everyone in the family is running on an empty tank. How can you fill each other up? If your life is feeling impossible, then there is something else you have to do. You have to get into the ‘river’.

We humans are a species that developed with strong social supports always surrounding us. For millions of years our ancestors lived in caring, supportive groups, large extended families or clans of twenty to forty people. So when we start a family, it’s quite urgent that we seek out the ‘village’ that we are going to need. Nothing is more important for parents than to receive love and care themselves, so that they can give it to their child.

“My parents were loving, but very uptight people. They’d come through World War II as children, but at least had done so among many relatives and lifelong friends. Then, when we migrated to Australia, they were cut off from family supports and long-established friendships. They were better off materially, but much more lonely. Like many migrants, they had got out of the river. I had to get back in on my own. As a young man, I spent about a decade hanging out with kind older people before I was really at ease in the world, confident enough to be a father.”

Will, 62

You must, if you are a parent, and especially if you are finding it hard, seek out kind people to talk to, hang around with, get encouragement from. I remember as a young dad, just having to go to a playground and talk to the first other parent who came along. But sometimes it needs someone older, less competing or judgemental. In your neighbourhood, workplace, or in more formal ways like counselling or parenting groups and courses, find people who are loving and learn from them. Accept their care and attention as a necessary part of your parental role.

How would you describe your own sociability at this time in your life?

(Tick the one that comes closest.)

□ 1. I am a lone wolf. Nobody knows me, or cares about me.

□ 2. I am a reluctant lone wolf. I would like more emotional support, but don’t know where to find it.