Hellobee

What, exactly, do you say to your child when she hangs over the back of the sofa, tears streaming down her red face, fists clenched, trying desperately to understand why her friend no longer wants to be her friend? Meanwhile, said friend calls over, “I have better friends than you. They’re nicer. I gave you two chances. Now I’m not your friend anymore.” Ellie turns to me with a look of painful desperation. “See? See? She hates me!” And off she goes. Who knows where. That’s just what Ellie does when her feelings are so strong she just can’t seem to share space with anyone else.

My heart was shattering into a million pieces. Meanwhile, my head was in a million places at once. “I hate Susie. We should never have invited her over in the first place. If only Ellie would learn to apologize without looking like a warrior ready to ambush. Her ‘I’m sorry; let’s be friends again’ picture might have gone over better if she hadn’t hurled it at Susie’s head… Children are mean. Good thing we’re homeschooling– no more kids for us. We will just be our own, lonely, sane unit.”

I was feeling so much. Angry. Worried. Disappointed. Sad. Frustrated. I know Ellie was, too, but she was having a hard time approaching Susie in a way that would mend the disagreement. I had tried to gently coach her through an apology. “Why be nice?” she asked me, incredulous. “Susie’s not being nice. She said she hated me. And she does. So now I just want her to go home.” Ellie was smart enough to direct many of these statements towards me, but, like most seven-year-olds, wasn’t quite emotionally intelligent enough to realize that her words, even when not directed at her friend, were hurting her just the same.

So, still not able to shake the torrent of conflicting thoughts barreling through my head, I decided to try to regroup. I read all the same parenting stuff you read. So I know about “the helicopter parents.” I keep my hover on low-gear. “Hovering? Nah. I’m not hovering. I’m just… uh… standing here. See? I’m… cleaning this thing. This– what the crap is this thing? Nice weather we’re having, right?” I mean, I really don’t think I do hover too much. Honest. I also read some book about Parenting Around the World, looking for best practice. My interference in child disputes technique came from Japan. We do French food theory. We run around outside and do stuff with sticks like we’re in Sweden. So I knew that the right thing to do– I mean the proper thing to do– was to let them work it out. I noticed that Ellie was doing a pretty masterful job of walking away and calming down when she needed to. I also noticed, however, that she had zero desire to be the one to actually end the skirmish. She wanted Susie to grandly declare that she thought Ellie was a great friend, she wanted to play with her, and the whole thing had just been silly. I could also sense that her wish might actually come true. If she stopped using the word “hate” in every apology and didn’t fling gifts in Susie’s general direction as though they were grenades.

So I did what every self-respecting and non-interfering parent trying to build their child’s sacred autonomy would do: I interfered.

Hear me out. Lorelei and Susie were playing happily. I asked Ellie to follow me into another room where we could have some privacy.

“I noticed you’re feeling sad that Susie isn’t playing with you right now.” Arms cross. Nose scrunches. Eyes narrow. She’s defensive.

“I’m not sad. I’m angry.”

“Well, I can see you’re feeling angry. You really want to play with Susie.”

“Yeah. I do. And she won’t play with me. She hates me and she doesn’t want to be my friend. I wish she’d just go home.”

“I know. I know it’s really frustrating to disagree with someone. Do you think you could help me brainstorm for a minute?”

“Yeah. I guess.” A huff at the end lets me know the hackles are still up, though we’re maybe all the way down to a DEFCON 3 from a DEFCON 5. Improvement.

“Well, what do you think you could do right now, since Susie’s mom isn’t coming to get her for a while yet?”

“Ignore her?”

“Okay. Yeah. You could ignore her. That would be one thing you could do. What else?” A sardonic smile flashes quickly.

“Tell her I hate her. I can find a better friend. A nicer friend. Someone who isn’t so fancy. And mean.” Man, clearly Susie’s earlier words cut pretty deeply. Like most verbal knives, the instinct is to turn it around and aim it right back at the originator.

“What do you think would happen if you said that?”

“I’d be on break.”

“Yes. You would. If you weren’t able to be kind, or at least ignore, you’d have to be on break. And if you couldn’t be in the same room and come off break…”

“I’d have to take break in my room,” she fired back. “But I don’t want to. I want to be able to play, too. It’s not fair that she gets to play with all my stuff and I’d have to sit in my room!”

“It’s your choice, though. You get to decide what happens next. I can think of at least one other thing you could do.”

“I don’t want to apologize, though. She should apologize to me.”

“Fair enough. But when two people are angry with one another, one of them has to be the first one. One of them has to decide to be kind. Otherwise the anger and the frustration just keeps going. So you can choose to turn things around. You can tell her sorry, and tell her what you want, and you can be the one to end the fight. It takes a lot of strength and maturity and bravery to be the first person to choose kindness, especially when you are still feeling mad.”

I decided to pay her a hefty points bonus. In our discipline system she earns points for positive behavior, which she can then use for privileges later on. My rationale was that she wasn’t feeling very brave about saying sorry. She wasn’t sure it would work; and she was clearly scared that Susie could reject the apology. We role-played the encounter several times.

But Ellie was still feeling overwhelmed. “Why don’t you take a minute to play some games on the computer to calm down. Do you want me to set a timer, or come get you in ten minutes?” Ellie really doesn’t like timers. It’s funny, because they are really useful for her when she doesn’t fight them. So I agreed to come back in ten minutes. Then she could apologize, if she was ready, and we would have lunch. Otherwise she could be civil and apologize some time after lunch.

As soon as I got her, Ellie went to Susie and apologized. Sincere voice, sincere face; and told her that she wanted to be friends. And just like that, the whole thing was over. They helped eachother set the table. They played together when the meal was done. The whole rest of the day they navigated conflicts with ease. Ellie seemed to hang onto the substance of the lesson, and continued to apply it with great results. She felt good about herself. Proud, and capable, and powerful. And she was. She was every single one of those things.

So, the moral of the story is this: being “that helicopter parent” can sometimes hinder development. But sometimes helicopters can do some amazing rescues. Ellie needed some tools to navigate this particular conflict in a way that could have a happy ending. Helicopters be damned– it was the right thing.