I am adamant about allowing my kids to feel their feelings. I want them to know that they can be upset, frustrated, angry even, and all of those feelings will be allowed. I’m sure this is coming from a place that needs healing for me; I didn’t have a lot of space to feel things in my youth. It has taken years of intentional re-wiring of my brain to learn how to communicate properly. Because of this, I knew I wanted to hold a lot of space for my children to feel whatever it is they are feeling. Not easy to do a lot of the time, especially since whining triggers me, but I knew that this was a core value for my family. I want my kids to grow up feeling like they always had a safe place to just be themselves. The tightrope, I feel, has always been how to express those feelings in a way that is not disrespectful.

This has been a little more challenging with my daughter, Lana, who is a deeply feeling kid. At six years old, she can sometimes reason like a teenager. On the one hand, she is incredibly compassionate; she acts as a protector to all of her friends, feeling the need to defend them at every turn. She wants to adopt every single kid she sees on the street. She is loving and empathetic and once she loves you, she loves you with all of her heart.

Every coin has two sides though, and as a deeply feeling kid, she sometimes acts like every perceived slight is the end of the world. As the grown up, I know that I’m the one who is supposed to be the one who has control over their emotions. I can’t expect her to know how to regulate if I’m unable to do that for myself. This wasn’t an easy thing to learn as an adult. I’m not always successful, but by the grace of God we get better at it every day. This morning, she teetered over from simply expressing her feelings into the land of disrespect. I knew it was a sit-down-and-talk moment, and some disciplining needed to be had.

I had to remind her that while we are all allowed to feel our feelings, being angry or upset is not an excuse for us to be disrespectful or mean. It might feel good to shout or stomp or roll our eyes in the moment, but it’s not a kind thing to do. When we love each other, we must always try to choose to be kind. We can tell each other that we are upset and angry and we need time to be. That’s okay, sometimes we need time away from each other. Then when we are ready, we can sit down and talk with more kindness. This is where our short conversation revolved around, and I tried to meet her where she was.

I don’t know if she fully understood what I was trying to convey. But after a few tears and apologies, she asked for a hug. She was still upset, she was frustrated, but she felt safe enough to feel those feelings while in my arms. To me, that felt like a real win. I looked at her as I held her and brushed her hair from her face, and I imagined her as a young woman. I know that we will face many more moments like this, and the issues will be bigger and will have more gravity. I know that we will feel frustrated with each other, upset, angry. My hope is that no matter her age, no matter the reason for her feelings, that she’ll always feel this safe with me. That she knows she’ll always have a place in mommy’s arms, and nothing – not even big, difficult feelings – will ever keep me from loving my baby girl.