Sometimes simple gestures are the most powerful.
Sometimes the smallest step ignites our greatest shift in direction.
Yet we repeatedly underestimate the power of the small things. Oh, us.
In the movie When Harry Met Sally an older woman tells of the day she saw her future husband walking across the room toward her and concluded that he must be coming to talk to her friend because...
“People were always crossing rooms to talk Maxine.”
Then the corners of her mouth turn up and a sparkle coyly shimmers in her eye as she says,
“But he was coming to talk to me.”
What does this have to do with RAD parenting? Everything – even if you are single.
One of the greatest challenges couples have in RAD parenting is figuring out what the secondary parent (the one receiving less of the targeted abuse and usually spending less time with the traumatized child enforcing structure) can do to support the primary parent (the one who is most targeted by the child).
Crossing the room is a key answer to that, and it looks like this.
The secondary parent returns home (usually from work).
The dogs rush at you, the children yell for you or grab your legs,
part of you would rather check the score on ESPN really fast,
but instead you intentionally march on saying,
“Your mom/dad is the queen/king of this house, and (s)he gets my attention first!”
You give the primary parent a heart-filled embrace (and maybe a kiss).
Then you ask with a willing heart, “What can I do to help?”
Secondary Parents & Parent Supports, hug the Primary Parent even if they cringe and bristle. It’s just hard to be hugged when your heart hurts so much. (The kids with RAD understand this feeling quite well!)
If you want to support a RAD parent or you’re a RAD parent or really ANY kind of parent who wants support, then learn the skills involved in this powerful greeting. And it is FULL of skills to start practicing!
How does this apply to single parents? Teach your supports – whether it’s your parents, friends, a nanny, etc. - to greet you like this, initially looking past the kids and embracing YOU. And, lucky for you, you can just ask them to read this blog post! If your support isn’t willing or able to follow through on greeting you before the kids, then this means you need to use them for your personal care or for your healthy kids and not to care for the kids with RAD.
Honoring and respecting the RAD parent is critical
if you want to see a child with RAD heal.
So here’s the challenge for the Primary Parent:
1. Pause what you’re doing and look at the Secondary Parent/Support as they walk toward you. (This is the first step to receiving their support and difficult in the chaos of it all.)
2. Receive the hug even if you REALLY REALLY REALLY don’t feel like it. Allow them to give you affection.
3. Figure out something your supporter can do.
It can be SO HARD to answer “what can I do to help” when your first thought is “give my kid a lobotomy and let me retire tomorrow to a deserted Caribbean island to live out my days in solace”.
Could anything less make ANY difference?
RAD life is HARD. But because you are choosing the victory of truth and love, you press on and because Heidi wrote in her blog that you had to do this, you find some task your support can do – stir this pot, get the mail, feed the dog, restrain this violent kid so I can use the toilet or go cry, hold me a few more minutes, let me go hide in my room for the rest of the night...
The requested task probably didn’t change the world or even the moment, but it was the intentional practice of SUPER IMPORTANT skills that need to occur MORE THAN DAILY:
· Turning toward one another
· Prioritizing the Primary Caregiver over the children, pets and our own enjoyment
· Giving and receiving affection
· Offering help and fulfilling whatever is requested to the best of our ability
· Asking for help and finding ways to utilize it
When adults greet one another in this way the children feel SAFER and MORE LOVED.
Fancy that.
So go practice and remember:
To Save a Child, Hug a Parent
