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Your child needs medical or health care but is refusing to let you or the professional touch them.
As parents committed to more peaceful and gentle approaches, we do all we can to avoid being forceful with our children. We want our children to have a strong sense of body autonomy. We want them to know they have the right to choices and boundaries, especially related to their body, to be able to confidently express; “no I don’t want a hug.” And we don’t want them to develop fears or phobias relating to health interventions.Â
Yet there are times when parents need to help their child through something they don’t want to do, something that needs to happen for health and safety reasons. We know that untreated ailments or injuries can lead to much bigger problems. This article will give you some guidelines on managing these very difficult situations.
What not to do
The “just do it and don’t complain” authoritarian approach is what most of us experienced and witnessed as children and still witness around us today. It’s one version or another of insisting that it has to happen whether they like it or not, with little if any genuine care and empathy expressed for the child’s resistance.
Equally unhelpful are the distraction tactics that attempt to cajole the child to focus their attention elsewhere. This tends to leave them feeling alone in the situation, hence more anxious, hence more resistant.
To become present with their emotions, centre yourself first
The concerns for our child’s health can evoke a lot of anxiety in us parents, and this anxiety can put us into the stress response. This is so understandable! It’s important to be mindful that it’s harder to be emotionally present and sensitive when we are anxious. When parents are unaware of operating from the stress response, parents can become overly insistent and forceful. We risk further escalating our child’s stress and anxiety, when we’re unable to be emotionally present and accessible.
Yet whether it’s giving them medicine or a medical emergency, these are times when our child most needs to truly feel and access the sense of safety that only connection can bring. Even reassuring words can fail to reach our child in a way that reduces their anxiety when the child can’t feel that warmth of heart. It helps to remember what a huge role that the stress or happy hormones play in maximising or minimising pain, in optimising or suppressing the immune system.
You might also like to read My Body Belongs to Me
They can’t trust our reassurance until they feel seen
Our child knowing we can see and care for their feelings behind their resistance determines whether they can even process our words. If you have wondered why your child dismisses your reassurances that it’s going to be ok, it’s probably because they don’t yet know that you get how nervous they are. Reflect back to them what why they don’t want this to happen, show them you have listened to them.
With parents I help, I’ve repeatedly witnessed the power struggles shift and the child better trusting and following their parent’s care and guidance when genuinely warm emotional connection is maintained during such challenges.
When we cross the bridge and tune in to our child’s experience from a calm, centered place, we can bring our child back to feeling more safe and secure. Â
However you achieve it, it’s essential, at such times, to convey to your child at a very emotional and energetic level that even though they’re nervous about the experience, that overall they truly are safe and in good hands. No matter how challenging the ordeal, this is the factor that helps our child increase their capacity to deal with these tough and sometimes terrifying experiences. This is also why parents need to access the emotional support they need when worried about their child.
Before the feared experience
- Talk it through. Explain what will happen and what to expect. Include in the plan that which they can look forward to after the event. Reducing the unknown helps to reduce overwhelm.
- Give them choices where you can. Can they bring a favourite toy or blanket? Can they choose the order of the day’s activities? Involvement reduces powerlessness.
- Carve out quality one-on-one time beforehand. Quality one-on-one time fills their “love tank,” calms their nervous system, and strengthens their trust in you going into the experience.
- Encourage feelings, not bravery. Avoid “be brave” or “don’t cry”. These messages suppress emotion, which can come out as defiance, aggression, or physical symptoms like stomachaches. Instead, let them know their feelings are completely understandable and they’re not alone in them.
- Practise a pause signal. Agree on a hand gesture they can use to request a pause. You can agree to then ask the doctor or dentist to stop for a moment. This small sense of control can prevent the overwhelm that leads to negative associations and phobias.
During the experience
- Let them squeeze your hand. This gives them somewhere to offload feelings non-verbally. “You can push your nervous feelings into my hand.”
- Breathe together. Slow breathing together can effectively reduce anxiety or even take them out of stress mode. Countless studies have shown that slowing down our breathing can take us out of the stress response. As you reassure your child; “that’s it slowly breathing out the stress”, it gives you the opportunity to do the same!
- Counting together can help. “Let’s count to 30 together”. This activates the left brain, which helps to keep your child grounded as the unpleasant intervention takes place.
- Speak to their feelings, not their thoughts. “You seem nervous, honey, are you a bit scared?” Slow, affectionate touch like patting their head conveys the same. When they feel truly seen, they’re more likely to tell you what they need: “What might help you cope right now?”
After the ordeal
Don’t rush past the experience. Supporting your child to release and work through what happened means future interventions will be far less distressing — for them, and for you.
- Hold space for tears. At a calm moment, get really present: “Oh sweetheart, you didn’t like that at all, did you? That was really hard. Yes that’s it, have a big cry.” Don’t rush them through it, let them decide when to move on. You can trust that supporting your child to work through those emotions can be very healing.
- Welcome the complaints. Be assured that your child complaining about their experience is a healthy sign that they’re trying to resolve those feelings and get them out of their system. Your empathy is the balm that helps them process the event.
- Power reversal play resolves feelings of powerlessness. Power reversal games are great for helping children resolve frustrations and fears. Invite them to pretend to give you the medicine while you act scared and goofy. The more exaggerated, the better because their laughter is therapeutic and helps resolve feelings of powerlessness. Any play where the child gets to “win” or be in charge will help them to work the experience out of their system.
- Skip the treat as distraction. It’s tempting to reach for the iPad or something sweet, but distracting a child out of their distress doesn’t resolve it, and risks them burying those feelings. The next mention of going to the dentist again, for instance, will confirm the anxiety is still very much there. Closeness, laughter, and being truly heard are the real remedies.
What about the next experience?
Whether the experience was very distressing or just bad enough for them to be resistant again the next time, supporting your child’s natural healing instincts to release and resolve any trapped shock or fear after the event can prevent a snowball of fears and resistance relating to similar experiences going forward. Print out this article and re-read often to ensure you’ll feel confident and equipped the next time your child needs medical care.Â
Be assured that you are setting them up to feel confident that they deserve and can access support when they’re facing scary challenges. You are likely breaking generational cycles by holding space for them to talk it through, to vent or cry and to re-enact what happened.
If you feel that you’ve missed the opportunity to help your child through something difficult, be assured that how you respond the next time can begin a journey of repair.
Some of these remedies can happen in retrospect by sharing a story that touches on the topic while sitting on the couch at home at a calm connected moment. Maybe do some journalling or share with a friend to help your own emotions around difficult situations in the past. Inch by inch you can help your child increase their feelings of safety and security through touching on such difficult ordeals at times when they naturally surface and when you have the capacity for that topic. Also, a reminder that being in nature supports the optimal physiological healing mechanisms in us parents and in our children.
Any of these suggestions can help, but the more of them and the more often the better. Helping your child resolve and work through the fears and resistances they’ve built up after the event will result in similar future interventions being much less anxiety provoking for your child. Hence, much less stressful and anxiety-provoking for you!
Read more about the healing power of Power Reversal Games in my article The Power of Play.
Avoid using food or other treats to comfort them
It’s tempting to immediately distract them with a treat like something sweet to eat or put on the iPad (if you use screens). However, the risk here is that your child is learning to dissociate and disconnect, and develop what author and psychologist Dr Aletha Solter coined to be control patterns.Â
Distracting the child with sweet food, screens or something else that tends to instantly change a child’s state can create the illusion for parents and child alike that all that distress is resolved. Yet the mere mention of the dreaded activity will likely be a reminder that the anxiety is still very much in their body, mind and nervous system.
The best remedy is closeness either in the form of affection and active listening or play with lots of laughter. The connection-based responses give the child an outlet and will help them generally work through their big feelings about the treatment or medicine.
First published in The Natural Parenting Magazine
Genevieve Simperingham is a Psychosynthesis Counsellor, a Parenting Instructor and coach, public speaker, human rights advocate, writer and the founder of The Peaceful Parent Institute. Check out her articles, Peaceful Parenting eCourses, forums and one-year Peaceful Parenting Instructor Training through this website or join over 90,000 followers on her Facebook page The Way of the Peaceful Parent.
