Dear Hildegaard

Refried beans and self-regulation

Dear Hildegaard,

You got upset today. You tried to walk across the street to the schoolyard where the elementary kids play. But you don’t yet understand about cars and traffic and pain. So I grabbed your little hand and pulled you back to the sidewalk where you immediately broke down. It’s amazing how easy it is to break a child's hearts. Hand them the wrong cup? Heartbreak. Turn off Winnie the Pooh? Devastation. You screamed and kicked a bit–not your best effort, but decent–until I scooped you up, looked into your eyes, and began to breathe. 

I exhaled right into your face and stopped your crying, mid-air. You switched your attention to my exaggerated inhaling and exhaling. When I quoted your I Calm Down book, about filling up your chest like a balloon and blowing your air out like puffing out a Birthday candle, you started to giggle. 

This doesn’t always work. Sometimes it seems to make you even angrier. I think you are smart enough to know what I’m doing. Maybe it feels like the equivalent of a man telling a woman she needs to “calm down” when she is upset. Even so, I keep at it.

Because I’m trying to teach you how to approach your growing heart. I don’t ever want you to feel helpless, as if your feelings are in charge of you, rather than you being in charge of them. It’s okay to be angry and stomp a little. You saw me scream into a pillow last week when you rubbed refried beans into your freshly washed hair! Feelings are real and valid, and you get to have them. So do I. But I want you to know how to calm back down after being upset. How to breathe in and out when life feels suffocating. This is important.

It’s also important that I let you be the little girl who wants to run across the street to where the school kids play. The little girl who wants to rub refried beans into her hair, just to see what it feels like. You are fearfully and wonderfully made, my heart knows this full well. And cherishes it. 

Cover image by Aaron Burden