"And if the relationship is strained, so there’s tension between us or anything like that… sometimes I‘ll just say: ‘let’s have a hug’ and that can just completely change it. And then we can move on to the next thing or resolve whatever the issue was or deal with the stuff. (My daughter) will say to me: ‘I need a hug too’".
The quote above is from a mother called Kitty who didn’t shy away from talking about the moments when the last thing she wanted to do was hold her daughter.
For any mother, there are times of tension, distress, anger and resentment in their lives. Sometimes we’re frazzled or overburdened or desperately tired. If we have to face another load of washing or just answer one more email, we’re going to lose it. In these moments we’re really not in the mood to hold our children.
At other times, these difficult feelings might explicitly arise from our relationship with our children. Maybe our kids have yelled at us, or refused to pick up after themselves, maybe they don’t want to go to school, or they take ten minutes to put on their shoes when you’re running late or perhaps they’ve decided now is the perfect time to argue the point…on everything.
Kitty was aware of the times when her relationship with her daughter felt strained. In moments of tension, holding her daughter was not something that appealed. And yet Kitty developed another skill as time went by. She was able to pause for a moment, take a few breaths and consider whether holding her daughter might help…them both. She discovered that sometimes she would offer her daughter a hug, almost instinctually. Her daughter would receive that hug and then the atmosphere between them would change.
The hugs that Kitty gave in these moments were not forced. She might feel a little resistance in herself or her daughter but not enough to stop her approaching Harley with the offer of a cuddle. If that affection was rebuffed, Kitty would not push it. In that moment, other ways of easing the tension between them were found, sometimes that just meant having space from one another.
Importantly, a hug doesn’t do what a hug is supposed to do if it’s imposed on our children. There’s quite a bit of literature on how very badly coercive holding can go when it’s forced upon a child. For interested readers, enter a google search on Holding Therapy. Please note, information ranges from descriptions of intense and insensitive holding through to holding that resulted in the death of children.
As a rule, if there’s a relational issue between mother and child, then as mothers and responsible adults we’ll have to engage with that issue on some level alone, prior to holding our child, to get ourselves together. That might only mean an expletive uttered under our breath or a minute to cool down and gather ourselves. I found at really difficult times, I’d leave the space I shared with my child, go into the kitchen, sink to the ground and take a moment to stare at the floorboards. I have gotten to know the gnarls in the wood quite well. It was my ‘time out’. Sometimes I’d text a friend who I knew would get where I was coming from or go out onto the veranda and just breathe. Some of that initial anger/frustration/sadness/confusion has to express itself, before the offer of a hug even occurs to me.
Then comes the magic. Maybe it’s a hug, maybe it’s a touch on the shoulder, maybe it’s going over and sitting beside my child, and leaning against one another. Something happens when we don’t re-engage in the argument with words but rather offer ourselves in an unspoken moment. Right now, no one is right or wrong. For the time it takes for a cuddle or a touch to occur, the argument or tension is not a part of the relationship. The mother/child bond returns to a simple, embodied encounter.
I think that this moment serves as a reminder for both mother and child about what matters between them generally, beneath day to day irritations or pain. It takes both back to a time when things were simpler, when affection was frequently given, when love had less layers and a lot fewer words.
With this brief (or not), non-verbal moment of touch and connection, arguments tend to lose a little momentum, tensions ease for both mother and child. Bodies relax, energy is refocused on this moment, here and now, between us. And hugs like these just feel good.
It’s like taking a moment for yourself, but by taking the moment together, it’s the relationship taking a moment for itself.
When the cause of the problem is relational, attending to it relationally makes sense. As described, this doesn’t preclude giving yourself and your child some space to breathe before engaging in relational repair. You have to be able to feel negative emotions, acknowledge them, recognise that your child is probably feeling them too. But coming back to your relationship in an embodied, non-verbal way, after a little time, can make all the difference.
I know that if I’ve had a grumpy moment with my son and then I go away to ‘calm my farm’ the farm isn’t really calmed until I’ve reconnected with him. My heart might be hammering, my throat tight, I might feel pressured or sore in the head. I might be able to figure how it all went wrong or I might have absolutely no clue. I might need a minute, or twenty. For those with teenage children, that twenty minutes might look more like a few hours or a day. But if I go to him, or he comes to me, and we do something that reminds us of why we like one another, that’s really only when I’ll feel better. That’s when my body lets go of the tension I was holding, I breathe normally again, my worries and fears slow down.
I’m going to take a moment to allow space for the fact that your kids can hurt you. They can hurt you so much that you feel your heart has been ripped out, smacked up against a spiked wall and trampled on. That is not an exaggeration. They can hurt you intentionally and unintentionally, in little ways and huge ways. It can take a while to come back from that hurt, you have the right to take some time (appropriate to their age) in a way that doesn’t punish them but allows you to acknowledge how you feel and find a way to care for yourself.
Every relationship has its own quirky ways of sorting itself out, at least on the small stuff. Maybe after you’ve had a moment, a hug is your first go to. Maybe one of you might make a funny noise at the other (nothing wrong with a good ‘moo’ or ‘meh’ if that’s a part of your shared history), maybe one of you gives the other a soft toy, or sends an emoji or tickles a tummy, depending on the age of your child (and yourself!). And maybe after that you can take a moment to offer a hug or touch.
Whenever you choose to offer it, touch and holding do something that supports the ongoing ‘rupture and repair’ that happens in every mother/child relationship. Like Kitty, sensitive, responsive holding can ‘break the circuit’ and move mother and child from anger, sadness, frustration or resentment to a realisation that, under it all, we’re still ‘us’. And ‘us’ is a great thing to be.
This post is written by Dr Ariel Moy. She is passionate about developing mother/child relationships, she has a private practice as a creative arts therapist, is a Professional member of ANZACATA and is an academic teacher at The MIECAT Institute in Melbourne, Australia.
Comments