Denying comfort to our children…or what I’m still learning…

Recently Marcy and I went with our son Max and his friend Susan to see “UP”, which is just fabulous, far and away one of the best Pixar stories ever. But during the previews we watched Eddie Murphy as the father of a four or five year old little girl, saying to her on her first day of pre-school, “Do you remember how we talked about how one day you’d have to go somewhere without your blankey? Well, this is that day.” And as he took her blankey and turned away from his child on her first day of school (no stress there), she did what the writers had written for her to do. She let out a piercing scream that was a big laugh generator in the theater.

Admittedly I’m a little down on Eddie; although he was brilliant in Bowfinger this looked like another Eddie Murphy picture where he might have just phoned it in. But the thought that stuck with me and that Marcy and I began to discuss afterward was why do we always seem to have such a great urgency to deny our children the things that comfort them when they’re small?

I think this is a fairly important question and Marcy will readily attest that Rod doesn’t jump on his high horse, he fairly flies onto it and you won’t even see his feet leave the ground. This tendency has diminished considerably over time (time will do that to you) but it can still be triggered by something that I feel is inherently wrong or dishonest. In this case, it was Eddie Murphy’s character taking away his daughter’s blankey on the first day of pre-school.

Much of this denial of comfort seems to be parental concern over appearing what…inept? Raising a child who’s not well adjusted? But as Marcy pointed out, there may have been a school regulation against kids bringing these things with them in whatever form they take…stuffed animals, their mother’s satin pajama top, their blanket or lambie…who knows?

This trigger followed another trigger that I discovered in an email list serve that I belong to where one mother of a 12 month old child was telling about how she had taken away her sons pacifier at bedtime and felt guilty about this despite the fact that he now lay in bed gurgling to himself for an hour before then falling asleep. Most of the writing I’ve found on the subject seems to suggest that pacifier use tapers off between the ages of 2 and 4, but that pacifier use and thumb sucking after the age of 6 can definitely cause dental problems later. Web MD .

But as another mother stated on that same list serve, parenting styles are very personal and should not be criticized lightly or readily. We always felt that our children’s ability to comfort themselves was a good thing, but now we feel like we should have paid more attention to teaching our children positive coping methods for times of stress. The folks at the Brain Works Project offer this article and advice and the University of District of Columbia Extension Services offers Teaching Children Coping Skills for our present, often stressful times.

We’d love to hear from others about their experiences teaching their kids coping skills and I for one suspect that stress starts at an even younger age, especially if there are medical conditions present that are differentiators and are dealt with on a daily basis. Please let us know about your experiences and any coping skills teaching wisdom that you care to share.