Missed Connections

In August my 5 year old made a list.

She had gotten tired of asking for something and then realizing I had forgotten we were going to do the thing later that day. I was overwhelmed in all spheres of my life, and just trying to make it through the summer before my kids were back in school so we could return to some structure in our lives. My head was on a swivel attempting to keep track of all the things I had to get done to keep my head above water. I was alert to the tasks on my list, but I was overlooking the people in my life.

So, my daughter took matters into her own hands. She brought over a large pad of paper and asked me how to spell a few words that represented her requests: “invitations,” “latch hook,” and “dress”. She then proceeded to daily bring her list over to me and hold it over her head. When she didn’t see movement in the space of a week, she refined her plan. She put each item on a separate piece of paper and drew a picture of the item underneath.

“Mama!” she would say, and when I would turn towards her she would raise the illustrated page over her head. Essentially she was saying “HERE IS MY NEED,”  in Gottman’s words a “bid for connection.”

It worked.

I bought her a beginner’s latch hook kit and we worked on it over the next 10 days, for 30 to 60 minutes a day until she lost interest.

Her intuition about the need to make a connection with me and to speak her needs helped me see that I was absent. I was lost in my thoughts, lost in my obligations, and losing time. Time is life and I was losing time with her – time learning about her interests and time investing in building that relationship brick by brick.

In my work with adolescents, I find that whether or not it's spoken out loud by the teen these little moments mean the world to them. Moments are the difference between being known and being forgotten. The deep sadness of forgotten children is a thick cloud that follows them everywhere. They are lost in there. They talk about feeling alone, unsafe. They drift, unable to know where they can root and call a place home. Often therapy for these youth is a place where they can finally have the space to be seen and to be known. Then, with little effort on my part, their other problems start to recede and they start looking forward again. Their inner light starts to glow with more clarity and strength.

These connections are made up of moments – and in that is both the challenge and the cure. It’s easy to drift, to not realize that the one degree off course 10 miles back has slowly created a huge gap between you and your child (or spouse, or friend), but it’s just as easy to course correct and close the gap between you with small and consistent efforts.

Yet it’s so easy to miss the cues. My daughter was really kind and literally created a cue card for me. Other children, however, speak in ways that require us to really pay attention – and sometimes they communicate in a way that is hard, even painful, for us to understand. Communication can be subtle, like how a kid turns towards you and the light in their eyes gets a little brighter when they realize you get it. Communication can be in the body, like when a tween leans on you ennui-style. It can be aggressive, like when a kid hits a sibling because the sibling is getting the attention they secretly desire.

Parents who are great at decoding these varied types of communication are the parents who observe well and can separate their own reaction from their interpretation of the child’s behavior. They are also really good at holding compassion for themselves and others, forgiving themselves and course correcting, which may include asking for the child to forgive them too.

Recently my daughter found her list again. She yelled “Mama!!” and when I turned she was displaying “dress” over her head. I smiled. Last time she used this tactic I had responded. Now, this act that had been born of me not seeing her had transformed into a resource for her, a way that she can state and request that her needs be met. “We can start working on your dress this weekend,” I said. The smile and puffed chest that greeted my words … beautiful connection. (I better put sewing in my calendar!)