Unexpected Mirrors

Kiki is much like Anne from Anne of Green Gables. Everything is either horrible or wonderful, and she always uses extravagant language to describe exactly how wonderful or horrible things are. Her frequent (but thankfully short-lived) emotional crises rarely come at convenient times. I get frustrated because I know that this horrible situation that is unbearable to Kiki will completely evaporate into a non-problem very shortly. I just want to skip the emotional wrangle and get to the non-problem part. Because of this I’ve been looking at these emotional upsets as problems to be solved.

Not long ago Kiki was all worked up over some minor (to me) issue and wouldn’t let it go. She was so hyper-focused on the problem that it made anything else impossible. She stomped off to her room and slammed the door. I stayed in the kitchen fuming. Howard wandered in and I began to spill my frustration into his ears. I can’t remember the exact wording of what Howard said next, but he adroitly pointed out that I was as hyperfocused on Kiki’s emotional upset as she had been on the minor issue. My daughter was like me, or I am like her. I hadn’t even seen that before. We both hyperfocus and then manage to step back, see things differently, then solve the problem.

That insight sat in my brain for a week or so. Then last night Kiki had an emotional upheaval about her new school and the amount of homework she is getting and she doesn’t like having to raise her hand to be excused for lunch, and the new school’s playground has gotten boring and she is stupid in math and everyone in the whole school can type faster than she can and she wants to go back to her old school and why can’t she just go watch Daddy playing starcraft. As she presented each subject of her upset I was in full problem solving mode. I wanted to grab each concern and hang onto it until it was solved. But I just start to get a grip on a subject when she would shift. It felt a lot like being caught in a whirlwind. On the last point I consented just to have a little peace. She went to watch Daddy and I sat in the kitchen trying to regain my equilibrium. When I’d achieved calm inside my head, insight hit. When Kiki is upset she doesn’t need me to solve anything, she needs me to listen to everything. She finds her own solutions once she has calmed down, but she needs validation that she isn’t unbalanced or unnatural for having the feelings she does. My efforts to help were making the emotions worse.

I’ve been reading Anne of Green Gables aloud to Kiki at bedtime lately. I haven’t yet mentioned to Kiki how much like Anne she seems. I want to wait until we’ve reached the end and Anne has grown from a scatterbrained, imaginative child into a self confident, competant young adult. Kiki needs to be able to picture that future for herself. As for me I’m grateful to L. M. Montgomery for new insights into my daughter.