My youngest daughter built quite the reputation for going with the flow over her first three years of life. She's not needy.
On a 72-hour whirlwind holiday trip to my in-laws last Thanksgiving, she, literally, was just along for the ride, sitting happily in the back seat as her older sister dealt unsuccessfully with hours of stationary boredom. As a baby, she easily slept through the night and barely cried when her diapers were stinky. As a young toddler, she was cheerful and funny, always holding our attention with her lighthearted antics and roll with the punches attitude.
She also kept it together as my husband and I dealt with her older sister’s needs.
My eldest struggles with severe anxiety—for much of her young life it kept her from enjoying a lot of her childhood. Potty training, starting school, meeting new friends—even being at her own birthday parties—was always a lot of hard work for her and for us.
Something changed last month, though. We finally made some progress on the behavioral health front with the help of a skilled psychiatrist. She was suddenly less needy.
The breakthrough felt like heaven. My husband and I looked at each other, tears welling up in our eyes, as we remarked how different it was to be around our little girl. She was singing in the bath, happy to attend gymnastics class, excited to meet the mascot at the baseball game. We were having more fun as a family and life was a lot easier.
“Who is this kid?” My husband asked.
“It’s your daughter as her true self,” I found myself responding, flabbergasted myself.
Then something else happened. As soon as my older daughter got out of fight or flight mode, and started acting more like herself, my younger daughter started acting up.
Drama replaced drama.
At first, I chalked it up to her age. She is just barely three after all and, like every other threenager I know, suddenly has opinions everything, from demanding rainbow over fairy rain boots to choosing only the red vegetables on her plate for a full nine weeks.
Then, I thought maybe she was nervous to start preschool after years of one-on-one care with a nanny. It made sense anticipating a new environment might be causing her to be more demanding and unpredictable.
My husband and I talked about it with our couples therapist.
“Man, sometimes it feels like when one thing gets better, another thing just gets harder in its place,” I said.
She nodded, obviously thinking things through before she responded.
“You know, it’s funny. In family therapy, sometimes we talk about how there’s only so much space in a relationship or in a family. Maybe your daughter isn’t acting out, she’s just finally taking up some space now that there’s a little more to go around.”
My jaw almost hit the floor. You know when someone drops mind-blowing knowledge on you at exactly at the right moment for you to actually be able to receive it and accept it? That’s what happened to me.
In that split second, I saw how my sweet, go with the flow little baby had not been easy going ONLY because she was born that way. She had been easy going in part because she HAD to be.
The role was assigned to her. She had somehow subconsciously realized there wasn’t enough space for her to be super needy. She sensed that her sister was taking up a lot of the emotional space in our family. Now that there was more room, she was flexing her high-maintenance muscles just a little bit.
The therapist’s words could have made me feel guilty for not being able to give my kids equal attention at all times in the past, but they didn’t. In my heart, I knew it wasn’t lack of love or care that created our family dynamic. You focus your attention where you’re needed most, and when the thing that needs you most is your sobbing, worried, struggling child, you focus if there. You try your best with everything else.
No, the therapists’ words brought relief and deep gratitude. This was an opportunity. While I’d immediately seen my older daughter’s freedom from severe anxiety as a huge gift, I now also saw I had another gift — the gift to BE ABLE to focus more on my littlest one.
I had the gift of giving her the space she needed to be needy.
We can’t love our kids
exactly equally and we definitely can’t love them perfectly. We can, though, look for the times when they really need us to let them take up a little more room in our schedules or on the balance scales as we determine where to put our energy and focus. We can also pay attention when others are able to see even more clearly into our lives, giving us the perspective that sometimes only an outsider can provide.
