Mothering a sensitive child

 

Lila was brought to me just before her second birthday. She quivered with sensitivity and hid behind her mother’s legs, unable to come to terms with the new environment of the clinic waiting room that had so many new sights and sounds to take in.

 

The first session was spent in the waiting room. Lila sat on the couch and stared at the tropical plants. I sat a couple of metres from her just sensing the edge of her energy field, with her mother over the other side of the room. For 20 minutes she gazed around, sang, talked and slowly calmed down. Then her little body started shaking and she sobbed and sobbed, and turned around looking startled to find comfort in her mother.  During the whole session I gave her space and let her know I was right there with her, and she was able to reconnect with herself and start to feel. It was a wonderful experience, also for her mother who began to get a sense of what an extraordinary being her daughter is. She was also shocked to see how little she had been connecting with her daughter on her own terms.

 

In the following sessions I worked with Lila to begin to allow her to express her emotion by word and gesture. She was visibly struggling to find words for her rich inner world that obviously hadn’t been noticed or engaged with by her parents, so she was in effect mute. This is very common with highly sensitive children. She would stare and blink as if lost in another world, without knowing how to speak about it.

 

Since her mother was always in the room, there was also the opportunity to teach her how not to dominate her daughter with her own energy, how to stay centred, and how to give her child the space she needed. Each week a situation or event would occur that enabled me to translate from her super sensitive, aware daughter to her mother so that the mother was able to begin to relate empathetically to her daughter and meet her needs.

 

Her mother realized she needed to have some sessions herself to get more in touch with her own physical body and ability to feel, and to learn how to connect with her daughter as I did. This opened a considerable space for learning and healing in the whole family.

 

A considerable amount of lack of self-worth, self-blame and pain came up on the mother’s part, and feelings of inadequacy around not being able to do what her daughter needed naturally. I explained step by step how the mother’s own needs would not have been met by her mother, leading her to numbness and disconnects within herself.  These in turn would prevent her from being able to connect fully with a highly sensitive child. As she grasped this and began to feel compassion for herself and experience her own vulnerable emotions, things began to change.

 

The mother was more able to feel her daughter, and Lila responded with visible delight to being felt and acknowledged rather than dominated and overwhelmed. She began to talk and offer comments that were funny and accurate. She also began to show that despite her sensitivity she had a very strong and opinionated character…

 

Fortunately the mother also came for sessions, so was able to begin to feel her own unfelt childhood emotions that her children were having such a hard time dealing with.  As she learnt to stay calm and acknowledge her own feelings, her clarity for seeing what was going on in her children increased, and she began to be able to relate to them more effectively and understand what they were trying to communicate. Her own work on being grounded helped her daughters enormously not to feel so overwhelmed, and both began to flourish and develop.

 

“Through working with Mira I’ve learnt how a mother’s energy can be so heavy on the children. I learnt to feel myself and not to overwhelm them. When I approach the kids, I tune in. I sensitize myself to feeling them and do it in a way they can handle. I can actually feel them now. Sometimes I still forget and then I appologise for being rough or loud. Mira made me aware how soft and perceptive they are, and now I can sense that, I often feel like cuddling them… I can acknowledge their emotions, and I can say “I can see that you are sad, but mummy said no” and there is so much more understanding and communication. They are less angry, they understand too. You can see the shift. The work I’ve done with Mira is very present in my daily approach to my children and family.”

 

 

 

On one occasion Lila had a bad shock just after a session, where a dog got out and jumped up at her, and her mother was able to watch me accompany her through the emotions of shock, hurt, crying and learn how important it is to accept and be with each nuance of emotion that a sensitive child feels, without judging. She began to appreciate her children more and more, and to want to spend time with them, recognizing instinctively what each needed, and how the needs differed according to character. She also learnt a lot about her own conditioning and wrong ideas about parenting that she had been taught, in the process. After the event she commented:

 

“At home I’m forever glossing over my children’s emotions as if they didn’t matter rather than acknowledging them, and I just saw what a difference it makes to accept their emotions and be with them, rather than to say it was nothing, you’re alright really… I can see that’s such a denial of my child’s experience and it’s not helpful”…

 

 

 

This mother’s experience was difficult, because as well as having to parent and be with two very demanding children, they triggered her own deepest feelings and she had to learn to cope with and experience her sensations and emotions whilst also learning to relate to her children. It was an intense learning experience, but after about 8 months she found some stability in herself, and since then things have got steadily better, clearer and more manageable for her and her family.