Overcoming Her Greatest Fear: The New Baby

Our dear Tweetie Pie was already four years old when we finally decided we were ready to have a second child.  Not long after, we got a positive result and excitedly told our family the wonderful news.  TP was thrilled!  She was finally going to be a big sister.  After all, it was exactly what she was praying for.

I knew in my heart that despite her eagerness, the arrival of a new baby was going to be a big adjustment for her.  And since TP loved to read, we wasted no time in getting her books that helped her prepare for this new chapter of our lives.  We also talked to her a lot about how we took care of her when she was a baby -- how I would practically breastfeed her all day and carry her in a sling with me everywhere I went.  We even showed her videos of when she was a baby.

Since we had to have a scheduled C-section (due to my previous complicated delivery), I felt that the definite countdown made it easier for us to help TP emotionally prepare for the big day.

All the books TP had talked about what to expect when the baby comes -- how Mommy will need time to feed the baby, how the baby will cry often and need changing, and even how she may possibly feel during these times.  They helped TP get a glimpse of what it would be like to be big sister.

I felt though that there was something else we needed to do...

When I was in high school, I chanced upon a documentary that featured a values formation program created for inmates of a particular juvenile delinquency prison.  The goal of the program was to teach these lost young ones how to identify and express their emotions, whether good or bad.  A study showed that these children often grow up resorting to aggression when they are unable to express or communicate their emotions -- especially those of anger or pain.  It all made perfect sense -- and somehow, this revelation stuck with me through the years.  After all, we always feel much better after being able to express whatever is bothering us, right?

Less than two months prior to my delivery, TP suddenly started developing these fears that she never had before.  She began to be afraid of opening her favorite books because she couldn't bear to look at the pictures of the villains or seeing creatures that bared their sharp teeth.  "It's probably just a phase," we thought. "It happens a lot at this age."  We simply took her lead and avoided reading the books that she made her uncomfortable.

As I entered my ninth month, we were able to finalize the date for our C-section.  Excited about this, I told our Tweetie Pie all about the confirmed date.  It was going to be a clear countdown to the most exciting day!

That very afternoon, as I spent time with TP reading books in her room, I noticed that her fears significantly escalated.  The mere sight of the spine of the book in the shelf would make her nervous and uneasy.  My first reaction inside myself was to get frustrated and wish that she could see how unreal all these fears were.  Besides, they're just pictures of fictional creatures, aren't they?

But who am I to say that what she felt was wrong?

As a response to this, I proposed that we put all these "scary" books in a special "Put-Away Drawer," that came with a hidden lock.  I wanted her to know that I completely respected her feelings.  To get things into the "Put-Away" drawer, all she had to do was to tell me what she wanted hidden away and I would take charge of keeping them myself.  One by one, she began naming all these books.  It alarmed me how many books she had chosen to put away.  Some of them didn't even seem scary at all.

As I was collecting all her chosen books, she suddenly said, "Too bad we can't put the baby in the Put-Away Drawer."

Gasp!  Only then did it dawn on me where all her fears were coming from!  It sounds like a mean thing to even imagine.  But to me, it wasn't about her wanting to hurt our baby.  It was about her being afraid of how life would change when our baby boy arrived.

Realizing that this may have something to do with the announcement of the confirmed delivery date, I asked her, "Sweetheart, are you scared of the baby coming?"  She confirmed with a nod.  And even though I knew the answer, I still asked her, "What is it about the baby's coming that scares you most?"  I knew that letting her talk about her feelings would help her.  She replied, "I'm afraid that you won't be there for me anymore."

Being an only-child for all the four years of her life, I was there to make her feel safe and secure.  And now, here she was, terrified that I would no longer be around to protect her.

It was then that I decided to create a special diary for my dear TP.  I bought a large sketchbook and covered it with a special sparkling wrapper in her favorite color and decorated it with her name.  From then on, this was to be her special journal where she could write or draw ANYTHING she felt that day.  I said to her, "There is no right or wrong feeling.  If you're having a bad day and you feel sad or angry -- at anything or even anyone including Papa, Mama, or the baby -- you can write about it there."  She loooved the idea right away.

Soon enough, the baby came.  We were all thrilled!  TP decided her personal nickname for him would be "Bon-Bon" because he was as round as the sweet treat she named him after.  For me and my dear hubby, it was quite an adjustment attending to two kids, instead of just one.  With my determination to breastfeed and cuddle Bon-Bon as much as I did with TP, things were definitely quite hectic.  It was a lot for TP to take in, for sure.

I made it a point that my dear Tweetie Pie would have some time for herself to just sit quietly and record whatever she felt that day in her journal.  Some days, her entry would be about how great the day was. On other days, it would be about how she felt that Bon-Bon was getting all the attention.

Whatever she wrote, I would hug her right after and let her know that it was wonderful that she was able to express how she felt.

By the time Bon-Bon was about 3 months old, TP started looking for some of the books we kept in the Put-Away Drawer.  As the days went by, those books were coming back to their original shelves bit by bit....  Until one day, our little Tweetie Pie was all proud of herself upon realizing the drawer was completely empty.


Since then, we haven't really been wondering about how to deal with sibling rivalry.  In fact, we've been wondering how to teach our dear Tweetie Pie to hold back on smothering her baby brother and loving him to pieces!

Perfect Parenting?

I have a bright and bubbly six-year-old daughter whom I love to call Tweetie Pie (TP).  Her mind is constantly creating ideas on arts and crafts projects, stories to publish, and play scripts to put to life.  It's like she has, what I would call, a "light-bulb moment" almost every five to ten minutes.  It's wonderful to see how she could come up with so many wonderful ideas.  The challenge though with having such a speedy, creative mind is that one also tends to expect the implementation of these ideas to catch up with one's thoughts at the same speed.

My little TP sees a vision in her mind, quickly acts on it, and expects to have perfect results after giving it just one shot.  At the end, when she sees that what she produced turned out to be a far cry from what she envisioned, she breaks down and cries -- so much so that she will end up resigning to the idea that she is terrible at such a task and give it up altogether.

One concrete example that happened recently is when she was inspired to draw a picture of a room with a flower by the window sill and a chair beside it.  She drew something similar to this:

To our surprise, she suddenly broke down, cried, and started kicking on the floor because "it doesn't look like a chair!  I can't get it to look realistic!"

Why?  What could cause her to be so hard on herself?  This is something I have asked myself as we struggled with this concern, particularly the past two years.  However, I didn't really have to go far to find the answer to this.  The answer lies in me...

As I look into my own life, I realize that I myself have given up too easily on acting on my ideas because of immediate and high expectations I put on myself and being afraid to fail in meeting them.  Perhaps my little TP got this from me through my genes.  Perhaps she picked it up from my not-so-positive outlook in life and from the way I respond to her.

Whether it's by nature or nurture, my earnest hope is that my TP will continue to value her ideas and explore them.  But even beyond that, my hope is that she will patiently and persistently work out her plan and be forgiving of herself when she fails and love herself enough to pick herself up, learn, and try again.

The only way I can teach her to do this is to do the same for myself.  We parents can only be effective as teachers of our children when we truly live out the values we wish to impart to them.

That night, when she broke down over her "failed" drawing of a chair, I initially dealt with the situation the way I always did -- by simply telling her how she shouldn't be so hard on herself and that she shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes. And since I had repeatedly done this for several months already, it had grown to a point that she could sense the frustration in my tone of voice.  But that's exactly all I would do -- just tell her -- and then go back to whatever I was doing.  I expected her to just be able to "get it" by listening to my explanation and then move on.

It suddenly dawned on me: How can I expect her to be patient and forgiving to herself if she can't feel her own parents being patient and forgiving towards her?

And so for a change, I stopped what I was doing and cuddled her in my arms to calm her down.  Then I went to her room to get her own little wooden chair and placed it in front of her.  I patiently went through every part of the chair, line by line,  corner by corner, to help her observe and figure out how to translate this 3-D object into a two dimensional drawing.  Every now and then, she had to erase and repeat certain lines -- and I made it a point to be patient and let her know that it was absolutely okay and that she could try again.  Finally, with only my verbal guidance but with my constant presence beside her, she was able to come out with this:

It was such a joy to see her so proud of herself.  Proud, not because she was some naturally gifted artist who did a great drawing -- but because she gave herself time to work on it, erase when not, right, and try again and again and again until she finished.  Aaahhh...  THIS is what our children should be learning.

It's not about how wonderful or perfect their work is but how much heart and effort they put into it.  THAT's what I want my TP to learn.  And that means THAT is also what I must learn....

Recently, TP suddenly asked me, "Mama, what's your New Year's resolution this year as a parent?"

Gulp.  Say what? (Darling TP always comes up with such surprising questions!)  I actually began year 2012 without any specific resolutions.

But suddenly it came to me so clearly that I replied to my her:

"My New Year's resolution is to be patient, persistent, forgiving, and loving to you
[and to myself!] 

so that you may also grow up to be patient, persistent, forgiving, and loving to yourself."