Owen's Fall: Return to Joy

Attunement: Helping my son through a traumatic memory. 

We were going to the pool the other day, but my 7 year old son Owen wouldn't put his bathing suit on. I was a bit frustrated over this, but I brought it to the pool anyway. When we got there I asked him to to "go get your suit on" but he said “No! I'm not going in the pool today” with a very willful attitude. “Okay, fine!” I thought. He does what he wants. 

 He got out a tennis ball and begin to bounce it in a puddle by the side of the pool as I dove in to swim a few laps. As I was coming up for air, I looked over at him and I had a memory. A week ago he had fallen over the corner of the pool as he was running and badly hurt his knee and the bottoms of his feet with cuts on the rough cement. He had been bandaged up all week. Looking at him, Jesus spoke in my heart and made it clear that my son was traumatized by what had happened and that this is why he wouldn't go in the pool. I swam over to him and begin to ask him about what he was feeling. 

“Are you remembering when you fell in the pool last week? That was scary wasn't it?” He didn't respond much. He just began to splash the ball into the pool. Each time he did, I grabbed it and handed it back to him. 

 In that moment, I had a tiny flashback to when I was a child and would not go in the pool because I was afraid. The adults in my life did not know to help me through my fear, but rather tried to force it. It was a horrible scene with screaming and pulling. Right now, I wanted to be with my son in what he was feeling, and I knew that any kind of force was not the best option.

 I decided to share some of my feelings on the matter to see if I could help him work through it. “You know Owen, when I saw you fall I was really scared.” Even as I said it I could recall the heartrending feeling of seeing my child fall and how my heart dropped about 2 feet and the kind of hot flash went over my whole body as I hurriedly jumped out of the pool and ran to pick him and hold him in my lap as he cried. It had been a very traumatic experience for both of us, but I had stayed calm and held him quietly in the pain.

 In the present moment, I gave him a little bit of time to ponder what had happened and then I asked him. 

“Was Jesus with you then when you fell and hurt yourself?” 

“Yes, he was with me”, Owen said. 

I paused for another moment or two, remembering how Owen had cried as I held him to me and then asked him, “Can you find Jesus in the garden of your heart right now?” Owen looked up at the spot where he had fallen and said, “There's a pool just like this one in my garden. It has a bigger diving board though, three times bigger.”

I said, “Owie, You went in the other pool at that party yesterday. The bandages are off now and your cuts are all dried out.”

 He looked at me and said, “Yes, but that was that pool this is this pool.” 

 I could see that he was clearly not going in because of the memory of what happened in this place. It was being triggered from his unconscious. Owen has so many places in his life where fear keeps him stuck. I so badly wanted to help him through this, but I didn’t want to push it. I knew inside that I just needed to be patient.

 And with that I had a somewhat logical thought. I probably shouldn't have said it, but I did. “You know Owen, when you fell you were running outside the pool. That's why we shouldn't run, but if you came in the pool now you'd be in less danger of falling and hurting yourself.” Even as I said it I knew it was not going to be helpful.

Maybe that’s why I swam away from him. 

When I came up for air at the far end of the pool I looked to where he had been happily playing with his tennis ball and he was gone. Oh great. 

A kind of fear struck my heart then. My informing him of the chances of being hurt was not helpful. Have I totally messed this up?  I looked to see if he was nearby, but I couldn't see him anywhere. I felt a kind of catch in my throat, wondering where he was. I looked over to the playground, perhaps he was there but I didn't see him. Finally I climbed out of the pool and found him in the area where we had put our things down by a picnic bench. He was sitting there with his head hung low. I wondered if he was feeling ashamed. I sat down next to him, “That was really hard when you fell wasn't it? It's been a hard week with those bandages having to come off every day.”

“Yeah”, he said. I knew I just wanted to be with him in the feelings, but I didn’t know how.

 I put my hand on his shoulder and just waited. He never really did express his feelings very much. He just looked up at me and said. “I want to go get my bathing suit on now.”

I knew that we were home free as soon as I saw him shrugging his arms out of the shirt sleeves, the way kids do. I jumped back in the pool and we swam laps in the shallow end. Owen swam better than I've seen before and we gave each other high fives every time we came up for a rest by the wall. He would slap my hands with them halfway in the water, splashing me in the face and we both laughed joyfully every time as I sputtered and coughed.

This story may not seem like much to you, but for me it is a milestone. My parenting style was manipulative by default when my kids were born. I only knew how to use threats, arguments, or rewards to try to get them to do things. I didn’t know how to change that bad habit of mine. I’ve now learned that it is our secure emotional bond that gives me influence in my children’s lives. It’s not about outcomes, it’s about sharing our hearts. The practice of joyful connection, and learning how to attune with the feelings of others, has taken me on a journey into my children’s hearts. Where before I only had a kind of parental logic that never helped, now I have this pull in my heart to feel their feelings with them, attune to their hearts, and walk through things together.