The Fine Art of Self Soothing

I’ve blogged regularly on the subject of anxiety (Oy Vay: High Anxiety),  the possible reasons for the exponential increase over the last several years of the culture’s anxiety and possible ways to approach it holistically.  Most of what I write about has been in the context of the adult population.  This post mostly concerns children and young adults.

Once upon a time, and long long long ago, generations of parents cultivated in their babies and young children the art of self soothing.  This was a spontaneous and natural response on parent’s parts, probably learned from generations before them, involving bed time rituals to settle their kids: warm, relaxing baths, melodically read bed time stories, oils massaged into their necks and temples and sung lullabies.  It was (subliminally?) considered an unconditional love time when the central nervous system settles down for the night, the mom and child’s breathing rhythms match up and synchronize and a sense of calm, all-is-well-in-the-world takes precedence.  Everybody in the home would dial it back a bit and a sense of safety, oneness and wellbeing was shared.

There is a natural response to the sun setting, darkness moving in, and the universal signal by our circadian rhythm to quiet and sleep.  There are many variations on this.  In a darkened bedroom, a parent sitting with a child listening together to the crickets or bullfrogs outside, something they do in the summer months when the windows are open, the curtain fluttering languidly against the sill.  Sometimes there is a few spare murmurs between them on the mutuality of the share. Night sounds. Sounds that becomes associated with rest, repose and comfort.  Subliminal images and an ambiance that trigger in oneself from an early age that all is well. It just as easily could be the urban sound of cars moving on the street outside, an occasional muffled horn sounding or the magical non-sound of snow falling, collecting on trees or pavement.  There is a sense of safety in the nightly being tucked in in a particular way and the comfort of no light, maybe sounds of family moving in a kitchen, inaudible voices in conversation or other household members making their own sleep preparations.

I think these night-time rituals must still go on to some extent in most households across the world; how could they not, they bring delight and peace to all.  But it is a different world we live in now, and the children are anxious. There is a trend of popping Melatonin for 12 year olds and kids reporting they can’t go to sleep for hours after lying down. The members of today’s nuclear family often each have a bedroom of their own, thus the comforting sounds of a sister or brother in a bunk above snoring lightly aren’t present to a sibling as they find their way to sleep.

It’s a more complicated world, with more tenacious tensions. And somehow, parents (for all the reasons mentioned in my other posts dealing with anxiety) aren’t managing their own tensions well, which obviously osmotically affects their children. Adults perhaps don’t have a sense of their own containment or a value for the sublime and ephemeral markers which produce a perfect repose.  It may be akin to the difference of writing a letter by hand instead of sending an email or singing a song instead of playing it on a CD player, or reading a story aloud instead of hearing it on an electronic device.  Something of great value transpires in the direct human expression that will never be matched otherwise by anything else.  Children energetically require this.  And they are missing it.

So, we have children experiencing adult challenges (like insomnia) and being treated like adults in how it is remedied. Especially babies and children need to learn the fine art of self soothing. And probably direct information is not the best approach (breathing techniques, relaxation exercises, etc).  Accessing their imaginations in a positive way around the ending of a day and the beginning of a night, providing markers and repetitive opportunities to help them identify in their own unique way that which relaxes them would be a tremendous act of charity they will have their entire lives to draw upon. Parents realizing one’s own held tensions, hypervigiliance, lack of trust of the unfolding of the day, of a childhood, of a life is a big start.

For many families, child-rearing has become a very tense, uber-planned, perfection-oriented feat to perform.  When really, it is this natural exploration of being in relationship with someone who has these huge growth and evolutionary leaps over a twenty year period.  Life moves extremely quickly when raising a child, we want to grasp a knowing what to do when we’re stymied.  Understandably.  But this inability to have a spontaneous response and reliance on contrived and strategized approaches can be stifling, especially to an open perception, which is a child. 

I have a sense this is anxiety producing for kids; this lack of trust of the unknown which their parents and other adults around them suffer.  And nothing makes a kid more anxious than (energetically) witnessing a suffering parent.