Day 84: Make the good things bigger
Grow the good things; shrink the bad things.
That was the theme of my talk with Cambria tonight after a dramatic and exhaustive episode involving tweezers, a small piece of glass, and my nine year old's foot.
Despite the efforts of me and my mom, there was no calming Cambria down once she realized tweezers were needed to remove the piece of glass from under her foot. She was fine with the piece of glass. But the tweezers? No way.
We tried everything from making jokes, raising our voices to "toughen" her up, speaking in calm reassurance. I told her she had two choices - one, to suck it up and let me pull it out before it got worse (she'd be pain-free in moments), or two, to leave it in and let it get infected and ultimately have to go to the hospital where she would most likely have to be strapped down while a surgeon cut open her foot and dug in to get it. She chose option two.
No logic or sympathy could bring her down. So my mom held her while she screamed bloody murder and I carefully extracted the glass as quickly as possible.
After she calmed down enough to have some sense about everything, I had her to go the bathroom to wash her feet so we could put a small band-aid on it. I began my feeble attempt at turning this into some extravagant life lesson that she'd always remember.
First of all, there's no escaping pain in this life. There will always be some kind of pain whether it's physical, mental or emotional. The sooner you can accept that, the sooner you can move on and work on making yourself stronger so you can deal with it.
Second of all, we have absolutely no control over what happens on the outside. We have 100% control over what happens on the inside. But this is actually a good thing, because reality comes from within us. We can't know for sure that there even is such as thing as "out there" -- it's all "in here." We each live our own lives and create our own realities.
Then I held up my fingers to show her about an inch of space. This is how big your pain and fear actually were. You made it grow until it was this big. I grew the space between my fingers until it turned to both my hands showing about a foot of space. With every negative thought you had about it -- "I'm going to bleed more; the tweezers will accidentally take some of my flesh (her words); it's going to hurt so much..." -- that small thing grew so big.
Instead of growing it, you actually had the power to shrink it. Thoughts like, "I trust my Mommy to be gentle and careful; the pain will be gone in a few minutes; the tweezers will help take the glass out, not hurt me more..." would've made it shrink so tiny you would have hardly known it was there.
I felt like I reached her, although I could be flattering myself. I told her the next time something like this happens, she needs to use it as practice and I expect her to comfort herself and make her insides stronger.
We'll see ...
That was the theme of my talk with Cambria tonight after a dramatic and exhaustive episode involving tweezers, a small piece of glass, and my nine year old's foot.
Despite the efforts of me and my mom, there was no calming Cambria down once she realized tweezers were needed to remove the piece of glass from under her foot. She was fine with the piece of glass. But the tweezers? No way.
We tried everything from making jokes, raising our voices to "toughen" her up, speaking in calm reassurance. I told her she had two choices - one, to suck it up and let me pull it out before it got worse (she'd be pain-free in moments), or two, to leave it in and let it get infected and ultimately have to go to the hospital where she would most likely have to be strapped down while a surgeon cut open her foot and dug in to get it. She chose option two.
No logic or sympathy could bring her down. So my mom held her while she screamed bloody murder and I carefully extracted the glass as quickly as possible.
After she calmed down enough to have some sense about everything, I had her to go the bathroom to wash her feet so we could put a small band-aid on it. I began my feeble attempt at turning this into some extravagant life lesson that she'd always remember.
First of all, there's no escaping pain in this life. There will always be some kind of pain whether it's physical, mental or emotional. The sooner you can accept that, the sooner you can move on and work on making yourself stronger so you can deal with it.
Second of all, we have absolutely no control over what happens on the outside. We have 100% control over what happens on the inside. But this is actually a good thing, because reality comes from within us. We can't know for sure that there even is such as thing as "out there" -- it's all "in here." We each live our own lives and create our own realities.
Then I held up my fingers to show her about an inch of space. This is how big your pain and fear actually were. You made it grow until it was this big. I grew the space between my fingers until it turned to both my hands showing about a foot of space. With every negative thought you had about it -- "I'm going to bleed more; the tweezers will accidentally take some of my flesh (her words); it's going to hurt so much..." -- that small thing grew so big.
Instead of growing it, you actually had the power to shrink it. Thoughts like, "I trust my Mommy to be gentle and careful; the pain will be gone in a few minutes; the tweezers will help take the glass out, not hurt me more..." would've made it shrink so tiny you would have hardly known it was there.
I felt like I reached her, although I could be flattering myself. I told her the next time something like this happens, she needs to use it as practice and I expect her to comfort herself and make her insides stronger.
We'll see ...
Image used from http://blog.timesunion.com/aimee/category/vegetables/
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