calming terror
My granddaughters spent the afternoon with me. Haley (8), Alexa (4 1⁄2), and I walked to Lakeside Park near my house to enjoy the beautiful day and “see what we could see.” We strolled through the charming botanical garden. We played Billy Goats Gruff on the bridge (taking turns being the troll). They found fishing poles in the pond, and eventually we ended up on the playground. It was a great day for all of us.
We then headed back home, with Grama Lulu (me) in the lead. All was going well as the girls followed me, noticing the squirrels and the fountain. I turned around to see how they were progressing, just in time to see Alexa running, tripping, and falling! As she screamed at the top of her lungs, I ran to her side and gently wrapped my arms around her.
I have been reading a wonderful book* by renowned child psychiatrist, Dr. Bruce D. Perry. As I held Alexa, I was reminded of her statement: “To calm a frightened child, you must first calm yourself.” With this in mind, I took several deep breaths as I assessed this very distressed and frightened girl’s injuries: blood above her elbow and blood near the tip of a finger.
Bruce Perry also wrote about “The Arousal Continuum,” which tells us that with trauma we go from calm, to alert, then to alarm, then to fear, and finally…to terror. Alexa had gone from her calm state of amusement to terror in about 15 seconds! My goal was to reduce tension, to help her return to a state of calm and equanimity. I tried to comfort her and calm her down. She yelled, “I want my mommy!” With her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist, we made it across the main road and started up the hill. “I want my mommy!” She sobbed. She kept screaming. I kept reassuring her. (I wondered if worried neighbors would think she was kidnapping her.)
Walking into the lobby, I reminded her to use her “inner voice,” which calmed her down a bit. Inside my condo she continued, especially when I tried to clean the wounds and put on Band-Aids. That done, we sat on the floor and I held her in my arms for a while. She suddenly looked at her finger in amazement and announced, “It doesn’t hurt anymore!” The storm had passed. She endured the pain and came out the other side. She had returned to Calm, a natural process.
Her young brain recorded this experience, which will help her withstand future traumas in life. The phone conversation he later had with her mother was the icing on the cake for her. It was, as recent research revealed, as good as a loving hug (“A mother’s voice on the phone can calm a child as much as a hug, study suggests”).
With every Event, whether it’s a scraped knee, a broken heart, or an earthquake, our Response determines the Result. In short: E+R=O. I learned this at a Jack Canfield lecture. We may be out of control of many events (especially accidents) that happen in life, but we influence the outcome by how we respond. It’s better if we do it from a calm, cool and collected place, without reacting (“clumsy child!”), dismissing (“that’s nothing” or “don’t be a baby”) or scolding (“you should have looked where you were going”). In every situation, we respond best if we are in a calm and peaceful state of mind.
{*The boy who was raised as a dogBruce Perry, MD, Ph.D.}