Our first child was born a highly sensitive child. Ada (name changed) joined our family during a bit of a stressful time; we were living with my parents and building a house an hour away. Very soon after being born, she started with the colic. I remember many evenings of pacing the floor, each member of the family joining in turns to try and help calm her. Nothing really worked until she was 4 months old and started to suck her thumb. Hallelujah for self soothing!
What we experienced was all new to us, as we were new to this parenting thing. Ada had the typical childhood, with learning experiences, good things happening, and normal struggles. But to her everything felt bigger. For those individuals who are more sensitive, the depth of emotions are that much more extreme. What she loved, she loved with a great depth and happiness, but she had major outbursts when she didn't get her way. From a young age she told us she didn't want to be a part of our family when she wasn't happy with us. Her emotions were all over the place and we didn't know how to direct her to work through the emotional highs and lows. I don't know how many parenting books I read, how much I prayed for direction, how much advice I asked for from my mom. And I felt I still failed her at every turn. Yes, she told me often I was the worst mom in the world. Yay me! But, I was never going to give up on trying to give her the best I could.
When Ada was in 6th grade, we decided to put her in therapy. We were at a loss to know how to cope with her outbursts, her defiance, her desire to not be a part of our family. (We understand now that she was emotionally manipulating us. She would do what she could to hurt us because she was hurting in her own way. Was she doing it on purpose? Maybe not at first, but it was something that she used more and more often as she grew.) I didn't make her do therapy alone. I, too, started personal therapy. I wanted her to see she wasn't a problem to be solved, but a child to be loved. I wanted her to see she was never alone. She was not "broken". The truth is nothing is truly "wrong" with anyone in this world. Everyone is exactly who they are supposed to be, unique in their own right. Our job as fellow humans is to learn the best way to interact with each unique being. I told Ada I needed help, that I needed the tools to help her. I showed her I was vulnerable, and that it's okay to ask for help. I had reached the end of my knowledge; I needed support and direction to know how to help her express her feelings in an appropriate way. And I needed to understand my own feelings and sort through my own understanding of my role as a parent.
There is a scripture in our church that reads as follows:
D&C 68:25
And again, inasmuch as parents have children in Zion, or in any part of her stakes which are organized, that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents.
As a young parent I totally missed the point of this scripture. I always focused on the last part: I will be held accountable for all my children do. If they don't follow the teaching, their sins become my sins. Is that what it really says? Nope, not in the least. I was telling myself I was personally responsible for the salvation of our children. So when they do wrong, I felt I had done wrong. I felt I had failed in my duty to them. I was forgetting the many other scriptures that say we will be punished for our own sins, no one else's. Or all the scriptures that talk about the Atonement of Christ, and how He is our only salvation. It took my going to therapy to reread this scripture in a different way.
Go back to the first line of the verse: We are responsible to Teach our children the doctrine. They are agents unto themselves and they are responsible to govern themselves. This also helps so much when your child takes on the victim mentality. "It's your fault that I am the way I am. You screwed up my life. I can't change my behavior because you made me this way." Ah, the victim mentality. A post for a different day.
If we are becoming like the Father, wouldn't it do well to see His roll as a parent? He is not responsible for our use of agency to choose sin. If He were, He wouldn't be worthy to be God. Ponder that. He teaches us and lets us experience agency and then He loves us and teaches us again. How could I not see this before?! I didn't not need to beat myself up. I am giving every one of my children opportunities to learn the gospel, every day I am providing them with those opportunities. I am doing everything I can to teach them the gospel of Christ. As long as I am at peace with my Heavenly Father, in knowing I am doing my best, He will bless me for that. And bless them.
You might wonder if therapy helped Ada at this time. I believe some of it did. I believe it was a start for her, the start of many belief changes that needed to be shifted in her mind. She viewed things very different than we did. She took correction very personally. She has told us now that she thought much of our interactions where passive/aggressive, that we were trying to make her feel guilt and cause her to choose in a certain way. So interesting. Because we were not doing that in the least. We really didn't care which way she chose in certain situations, such as which room to watch TV in, yet she felt she was going to make the wrong choice. It is interesting to talk to her now and see how she interpreted things that were so different than the intention we had. Isn't that like every parent/child relationship? Actually, every relationship. We have to see things differently, see where they are coming from. We have to mature enough to realize our parents are human beings having a human experience as well. That they did the very best they could with the life experience they came from and the trials they were enduring. We have to forgive them for where we feel they failed and forgive ourselves for judging so harshly.
For these people, like Ada, who struggle with understanding the depth of their feelings, they have a difficult time knowing how to work through them. They often turn to other coping mechanisms. Drugs, pornography, self harm, sexual relationships, etc. They are trying to find an escape, a way to release the extreme emotions they themselves don't know how to deal with. Little do they know that these coping mechanisms often exasperate the problem. But Satan knows. And I can just see him laughing and laughing as he grabs hold of these innocent children at a young age.
Through this whole time period, we were dealing with some of our own major trials. As we attempted to work through them, Satan took the opportunity to attack our innocent child. His goal: to destroy the family. Any way he can. In a book I am currently studying, there is a line that struck home: "This vicious attack also affects the children who are often tempted and stolen away while the parents are incapacitated." Satan's attacks are vicious. He is cruel beyond belief. He doesn't care that the parents are struggling to keep their heads above water, saying "oh, I'll give that family a rest until they can recover a bit." On the contrary. He laughs in our faces and takes down as many victims as he can get his hands on.
But we had one thing on our side, a child on the other side of the veil who was fighting even harder to make sure we stayed an eternal family. He had been born a few years after Ada, and had only lived an hour. Because of our temple covenants, he was sealed to our family. He did not want that eternal family to dissolve. He was going to fight for it. And fight he did. I know without a doubt that he was with our family through this time, doing everything he was allowed to do, to fight off Satan's attacks and to be there to help Ada remember the love of family.
I know this has been a lengthy post, most of it being about things I have learned later in this experience with being a parent to Ada. More of her story will come, the part that is probably the most emotional for me to write. But I wanted to give a foundation of where we have come from, and possibly a help in understanding for those who are currently struggling with young children. Please forgive yourselves for your failings, because they really aren't failings. The beauty of this life is that Heavenly Father can take ANY experience and bring goodness from it. ANY. Isn't that beautiful?
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