Kind, Gentle, Loving Calm…an expert’s confirmation

In our book, The Yes Child, I talk about a group of words that we came to rely on at a stressful period in our lives. Those words are Kind, Gentle, Loving, Calm. Camila Batmanghelidjh, a psychotherapist and founder of the children’s charity, Kids Company had this to say about calm in an article on the website Goop:

“What research shows is that in the presence of a caring companion, the calm from the caretaker’s brain can create calm in the child’s brain. Because their brain is not developed fully, very young children will need the adult consistently with them to help them manage emotions and energy. But as the brain develops, the capacity to calm down is “internalized.” The child carries the memories of this ability and can use it to soothe themselves when distressed because they remember how the parent did it.

Parents can’t be calm and gentle all the time. You will lose your temper, shout and scream and behave impatiently. But if you apologize and “own the problem” as yours, the child will feel they are not the bad one. They will learn resilience, which, in effect, is the ability to fix bad situations and get the good out of them or transform them into positive outcomes.

The best way to think about the parental task is like “banking care” so that your child can draw upon the resource when they need it.”