Affirming Emotions

Aimee wrote this entry, and she's pictured here, as a child,
on her horse, Duke. Her brother is holding the reigns.

              After reading the chapter, I felt I wanted to change the way I interact with children.  Gordon talks about the importance of communicating emotions to children. She says “They do not need to see our tears to know something is wrong” (p.134). Children often can tell when an adult is sad, happy or mad. They see our emotions on our faces, in our voices, and through our actions. In this section, Gordon tells us that children should be told the reasons for our emotions and that it is alright to even cry in front of children. She says that hiding our emotions can lead to children hiding their emotions. This is a very scary thought; if children do not express their feelings, emotions can come out in harmful ways later on in their lives. An example is that, if a person has hidden her anger and it builds up inside of her, at some point it may come out and may come in a form of aggression towards other people.

            I remember as a child one particularly terrifying event that I experienced, a time that my mother communicated that is was okay to express my emotions. I was about 7 years old when my father decided to let me ride my horse Duke by myself. I was just starting to understand the concept of turning the reins to the right to go right and left to go left. As I began to turn to the right this time, I turned right into the swing set. The horse kept going straight into the monkey bars, so his head and part of his back were almost entirely under the monkey bars. As the bars kept coming toward me, I started to panic. For some reason, I then decided to get my feet out of the stirrups, and I jumped off the horse, using the monkey bars to pull myself off the saddle. I got off the horse safe and sound right before the saddle horn got stuck in the monkey bars. The horse then panicked and ended up destroying the entire swing set, bucking and pulling the swing set out of the ground where it had been cemented. The horse ended up being totally fine after this happened, with not even a scratch on him. However, my emotions were all over the place. I did not want to get on the horse out of fear of getting hurt.

            As the phrase goes, “You’ve got to get back on the horse.” My father was determined that I should get back on the horse. I waited a few days because I was afraid of horses in general. But the thing that I remember most about this incident was my family. They were so supportive and let me cry when I was frightened. My parents always affirmed my emotions; they also expressed their own fear of me getting hurt during this event.  My mother even told me how she laid awake that night thinking about how I could have gotten hurt. After a few days I got back on the horse and faced my fears. I think that if my parents had not supported me and my emotions, I might have not faced my fear of getting back on the horse.

            I think it is crucial for parents and adults to affirm their children’s emotions. I want to be an adult who affirms emotions of children. Being a preschool teacher has provided great opportunities to talk to children about their emotions, and let them know it is okay to be upset, angry, and happy. I hope that the children I work with will be able to always express their emotions throughout their lives.