A Safe Space to Cry, Part 2
"sometimes I feel sensitive too"
Crying in the Bathroom:
It was a normal day in the middle of the week. I don’t remember if I was overly tired or had read too much heartwrenching news that morning, but I was sensitive.
We were playing hide and seek and the three school-age kids kept yelling and making jokes, laughing and throwing stuff around. All in good spirits- I could not handle the stimulation. Someone said or did something that bent my last straw and I ran to the bathroom and locked the door.
I wouldn’t mind crying in front of kids if it were a moment that called for it. If I had gotten hurt, scared, or received some bad news. This was different, it had nothing to do with anything besides the unforeseen instability of my inner world that day.
I had felt these emotions boiling up throughout the morning- it felt like impatience, irritability, and wanting to shut myself away.
Those feelings had nothing to do with the kids, but would soon affect them if I didn’t make space for myself to process and release.
So I sat in the bathroom and cried, not trying to talk myself out of it, crying as dramatically and silently as I could, I yelled out that I was on pause from the game, using the bathroom.
Afterward, I felt better. Creating a safe space for myself that day made an even safer space for the kids around me.
A Toddler’s Special Empathy:
Crying around babies and toddlers is a whole other playing field. Something about their smallness allows them to understand emotions differently, or be ok with not understanding them, making it somehow easier to express myself in front of them.
I’ve spent multiple years nannying for babies between the ages of 3 months to 2 years. Naturally, as a sensitive person, there have been moments where I’ve calmly cried in their presence.
When this happens I don’t usually hide from them. I’ll keep doing whatever it is we are doing: walking around the house with them in my arms, rocking them to sleep, preparing their food for lunch, or paging through a touch-and-feel book.
The majority of times this has happened, the little ones haven't said anything to me. They tend to stare calmly toward my face, observing, or not notice at all. There is just one time I can recall when a toddler did say something.
He looked me in the eyes and asked why I was crying. I told him I was feeling sensitive. (I didn't feel like it was the right moment for me to explain death, as my Grandma, who was a dear friend of mine, had just recently passed.)
He wiped my tears and told me, sometimes I feel sensitive too.
In conclusion…
Being with children can sometimes feel like navigating a straw boat through a stormy sea… counting breaths until naptime, screentime, or bedtime. We humans like to pretend nothing is wrong, and sometimes we do it really well! Other times, we explode in unexpected ways, and end up having to apologize while sitting on the other side of a closed door (See pt. 1; Crying in the Closet.)
Whether we realize we are on a sinking straw boat early on or at the last possible moment, by looking out for ourselves, we look out for the children around us… Even when that means crying in the bathroom during a standard game of hide and seek.
