When Your Kids Hurt You Feel Their Pain Too
By: Nicole Akers
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Travel, Advice, Parenting

My youngest daughter recently had a birthday, and both living Grandmothers forgot to acknowledge her birthday in any form. She was heartbroken. If it was the first time, there would be plenty of excuses made on their behalves. She was upset, not because she didn’t get a toy or a gift, but because, “Grandma forgot again, proving she doesn’t care.” While there’s a lot of family drama that she partially understands, she still hoped for a card. It hurts even more that her sibling is never forgotten on special occasions. Maybe at least she would get a phone call or a text message with well wishes. The hopes were too high.

The situation is more of a reflection on us as her parents than her directly. Neither of our mothers will come to terms with the fact that they raised us to be our own people, and we stepped out of the smalltown box and closed-minded thinking they never wanted us to leave. When we grew outside of their comfort zones, they turned on us, feeling we had somehow betrayed them personally. Perhaps you grew beyond what your parents could dream was possible, and they wanted their little kid back, but you didn’t know how to grow smaller after you had already grown bigger. It’s one kind of situation for adults, but how does a child cope with ongoing emotional hurt?

Acknowledge the Hurt

We let her tears flow as she hurt. Psychologists say crying can be good for you. If a trauma memory comes back, or you’re frustrated, or overly stressed, tears can be a positive release. In her case, we let her cry on our shoulders until the tears stopped flowing to establish an emotional connection.

At first, we didn’t try to explain anything. We just loved her for as long as she wanted to be loved. If you are in this kind of pain, you may need some time to reflect without doing anything. And in the silence, you’ll likely discover the next steps.

Let Silence Speak for You

Silence is golden. Words can be a good thing unless silence can better serve needs. Scary Mommy says you’re connected to your kids’ feelings:

I swear our emotions and psyches are inextricably linked with our children’s in some deep, cosmic way.

The need to empathize by connecting without judging or solving is essential. Acknowledge the problem, whatever it is, without trying to fix it. Right now, the other person doesn’t need anyone to fix anything. What is most needed is that the person who is hurting gets to talk or cry without interruption. Work to develop an emotional connection:

An emotional connection is a feeling of alignment and intimacy between two people that goes beyond just physical attraction, having fun together, surface-level conversations, or even intellectual similarities. Instead, it feels like you’re connecting on a deeper soul level — and feel secure connecting that deeply.

In the moments of silence, you build more than a special connection. You also build trust.

Build Unbreakable Trust

In the darkest moments of hurting a person shows how vulnerable they can be. It’s important to understand that these moments can make or break the trust of a person who’s willing to share their pain. More than 1.7 million kids in the US alone are in pain. How you handle this trust can positively or negatively affect your relationship. When you prove yourself trustworthy in this regard, a person will be more likely to share their pain in the future.

Explain Only if it can Help

Explaining for your sake isn’t helpful. And using words that don’t apply to this situation won’t help the hurt go away. It would be easy to say something like, “I’m sorry your Grandmothers hate us so much they’re willing to hurt you,” but that won’t do anything to solve the hurt. Instead we said, “Each one is broken in some way that we can’t explain.” If there is no reasonable explanation, it is better to be quiet than to fill the void with words that can cause more hurt.

Psychologists say clichés are better left unsaid:

‘You poor thing.’ ‘It’s not your fault.’ Or, ‘Don’t worry about it.’

Most importantly, you need to find a way to move past the hurt, but it’s not always easy to move on without someone you love, even from a distance.

Look Forward

The best advice I can offer, having used it many times myself, is to move forward. Just because your parents hurt you, and possibly even your kids, doesn’t mean that you have to continue the pattern. You can break the generational pattern. You can love better than they are capable of loving you. When your kids come home from college with a pet lizard, have colorful hair, or a nose ring, smile and love them for who they are, even if they become someone different than who you hoped they would be.