My dear son,
Your dad began whispering through the phone and I began to feel frustrated. I was having a hard time hearing his voice on speaker phone and he wasn’t hearing my request to wait while I turned the speaker off.
He quietly recounted how you exited school with an intense scowl on your face. You weren’t talking and he knew that talking to your teacher might give insight to what had transpired. He said that you had jabbed a friend in the stomach a little too hard and as a result, you had to move your clip down to black on the behavior chart. He wanted me to know that you were emotional and meltdowns were being triggered rather easily.
As I walked through the door, I could hear the shrieking sounds of you and your brother playfully wrestling. The energy escalated and eventually you were both in a place where you had little control of your bodies. We tried to encourage you both to separate but you were like frenzied magnets and your ears were not in tune with any requests.
Once you separated, you washed up and began setting out the placemats as requested. You were distracted by the Magna Doodle and I began to grow frustrated as you started to shut down and ignore my requests to put the toy away and continue setting the table.
I tried to simplify my requests asking you to just set out the forks and I would do the rest but you sat there with a vacant look on your face. It appeared as if you were being defiant and at a loss for direction we decided that you should go to your room until you could choose to engage with us. When you didn’t go, your dad took you by the hand to escort you to your room and as you passed the pile of forks, you made sure to turn back and scatter them all across the table. In that moment, it felt difficult to hold the details of your day and I in turn got big and loud and made sure you knew that I was angry.
Your hardness broke as you cried and I could feel that the cries were coming from a deep place inside of you. A place where fight or flight are the only reasonable responses for the fear that you are feeling. The unrest in your body that you have no words to explain because you are only a child. Goodness, who am I kidding? I barely have words to explain the unrest for myself so often until after I have spilled out all over the place.
Your dad told me later that while I was attempting to persuade you to set the table, I missed you sitting at the table, pantomiming with your finger a picture of a jail cell as you said under your breath, “bad guy, in jail.” Oh buddy. How my heart sank. It sank, knowing that in that moment, you were your greatest enemy and nothing I could say would take away how you felt about yourself.
In this parenting journey, I am learning more about guiding a highly sensitive and anxious child. There is an awe I experience with you at times that brings tears when your sensitive heart is kind and tender. At times, your sensitivity also brings tears as I watch you draw inside of yourself, becoming overwhelmed by the perceived danger that you experience, causing you to lash out on yourself and those around you.
Andrew Peterson sings a song that you’ve heard me play many times. I wonder if you’ve listened the words as it plays. Whether you ever realize what he is saying in his song or not, I hope you know that this is the cry of my heart for you.
“You got all that emotion that’s heaving like an ocean
And you’re drowning in a deep, dark well
I can hear it in your voice that if you only had a choice
You would rather be anyone else
I love you just the way that you are
I love the way He made your precious heart
Be kind to yourself
I know it’s hard to hear it when that anger in your spirit
Is pointed like an arrow at your chest
When the voices in your mind are anything but kind
And you can’t believe your Father knows best
I love you just the way that you are
I love the way He’s shaping your heart
Be kind to yourself
How does it end when the war that you’re in
Is just you against you against you
Gotta learn to love, learn to love
Learn to love your enemies too
You can’t expect to be perfect
It’s a fight you’ve got to forfeit
You belong to me whatever you do
So lay down your weapon, darling
Take a deep breath and believe that I love you
Be kind to yourself
Be kind to yourself. I am right here with you learning this lesson as we face danger together, my son.
Love you always,
Mom
Bethany Cabell is a Texas transplant, residing in Michigan with her husband and their two young boys. A lover of beauty, she lives life chasing after wide-open spaces: sharing her heart with others, in relationship with Jesus, and through music and photography. She tells her story here.
&n
Dear Bethany, as a mom of anxious ones, now adults, and as a school counselor I so appreciate your words of insight into the hearts and minds of little ones who struggle with high emotions and anxiety. It gives me pause to remember what is happening inside of them and to be gentle…………..thank you.
Thank you Cindy for your response. The pause is often so hard in the moment. Thank you for sharing your experience.
Oh man. I have 2 boys. 8 and 3, and this letter could be written to my oldest. When he says, “I just don’t like myself. I wish I could be different” it just about kills me. He doesn’t see the beauty in his sensitive soul. How do we raise him to drown out the deafening voices of the world that tells a boy that what he’s feeling is not okay. And how do I maintain my cool in the trying times so as not to tell him I’m not okay with his feelings. He’s not too much, he is beautiful and perfect. I want him to know only how stunning he really is.
Amy, thank you for your response. I love all your questions and although there is such a struggle, awareness feels like it opens our hearts to be a safe place in those challenging times. It is heartbreaking and a difficult road…keeping you in my thoughts as you love your little one well.
Oh Bethany I pray that your little ones can hear the truth of your love and the words within the song Be Kind to Yourself even when the evidence seems to indicate otherwise.
Annette, thank you for your prayers and your response…I do too!
I love that song…I love that you play it often, often enough for Wyatt to recognize it. Your heart is a fiercely beautiful thing Bethany.
Thank you friend…it’s such a good song for all of us, isn’t it.
Thank you I always look forward to reading your writing. You have an insight that speaks to my heart…through tears I listened to the song. In going to risk sending the link to one of my adult sons who I so misunderstood during his formative years and still have lots of brokenness in our relationship. Praying God will honor and bless my effort.
Thank you Jaimi. Your words of affirmation are a blessing to my vulnerable heart. Praying with you as you risk with your son and hoping for opportunities to connect and begin to engage the brokeness. You have a beautiful mother’s heart.
Your attention to your son’s anxiety and fear with such love and kindness is so good. And your honesty in how you, like all of us, miss it sometimes is real. I relate to the challenges of embracing and aching for the sensitivity in a child…though my sensitive anxious one is now a man. You are a gift to your sons!
Thank you Janet…always the both/and 🙂 Thankful for women who have walked this road before me and encourage…you have done that for me. Thank you.
How you always look for the deeper feelings and emotions underneath what he is or isn’t doing is such a gift for his heart. No one could love or care for him the way you can. I’ve seen and experienced that first hand. You mother his heart with such grace and beauty.
Thank you friend…holding onto those words even in the moments when I miss him. Grateful you know.
Bethany you have such a beautiful heart and I love to read your posts they are so meaty, no fluff. I would love to be closer in geography to learn that type of love from you.. Just remember your beauty is deep, deep, deep and oh yea, YOU ROCK 😉 Much love and respect.
Meaty…no fluff! I love it. Thank you for your words. You are also a woman with a heart full of love. Miss you and grateful for your reminder.
Bethany, thank you, once again, to letting us into your world, your home, your family. I am grateful you are aware of your son’s struggles and I only wish that generations before you had the keen insight and help that in place in 2015. I trust you are a beacon to many parents as you articulate the difficult path. Blessings and hugs across the many miles.
Thank you Becky for your response. It is my honor to share although at times it feels very vulnerable. Praying for those who stumble across my words looking for help. I’ll take the blessings and hugs!