Set the tone and not the pace

The pace at which a child lives is determined by their age, developmental stage, and the struggles and joys they’re currently experiencing in daily life. But no matter their current pace, you are the emotional safe space your child seeks.

Every child has an internal clock which determines the pace at which they grow, learn and develop all of the skills they need for life. As parents, there is nothing we can do to quicken that pace, but what we can do is partner with it. We know that a toddler walking along a pathway cannot be hurried! We do our best parenting when we match our pace with theirs and walk with them, joining them in their explorations. This is, of course, not possible in every single situation because our pace of life varies according to the demands upon us at any given time.

The pace at which a child lives is determined by their age, developmental stage, and the struggles and joys they’re currently experiencing in daily life. But no matter their current pace, you are the emotional safe space your child seeks. While you can’t control your child’s internal pace, you do have a lot of influence over the emotional tone in which they grow.

Emotional tone is the emotional atmosphere that we carry and is evident in our body language, tone of voice and facial expressions that impacts on our relationships with others.

Emotional tone can be warm, kind and inviting or it can be harsh, critical and cold. Emotional tone is also conveyed in the sense of humour we use; sarcasm may be amusing, but carries a cynical undertone that can undermine a child’s sense of self.

Warm emotional tone is inviting, reassuring and safe for children. It helps them to feel secure and loved and helps to build resilience as they grow. Children growing up in this environment will more likely know how to build healthy relationships and have good emotional health overall.

A colder emotional tone tends to cause children to be more cautious, anxious and have a less secure sense of self. These children may try whatever they feel is necessary to please their parents in order to elicit warmth and care from them, including matching their parent’s pace at the expense of their own emotional needs.

It is sometimes a lot easier to set the pace in order to ensure everything gets done, rather than to think about the emotional tone which we are communicating. After all, ‘getting stuff done’ is fairly black and white, you do the task, you tick the box off, you move on. The work of dealing with emotions of self and others is a lot greyer and more textured and honestly, more messy than task completion.  What we need to remember is we can’t put our emotional tone on a schedule and we can’t buy the emotional tone our home needs. We need to do the work ourselves. This may be hard if we have grown up in harsh, critical environments. But we need to acknowledge where we’re at and seek help to grow.

It is more important for our children’s long term development that they know we have time to offer them reassurance, kindness, and love than it is that they achieve everything at some predetermined pace. We need to set our default pace to match that of our child when we are with them, and not expect them to keep up with ours. After all, how many of us feel completely comfortable with the pace at which we’re currently living? If we’re feeling stifled by it, then imagine how our children feel trying to keep up with it.

We can reserve our fast pace for our work or other adult interactions where it may be required, but with our children we need to remind ourselves to breath, slow down and play. Warmth, love and communication with our children take place at a slower, more gentle pace that is set by them.

Growing in warmth and positive emotional tone is possible when we are honest with ourselves and ready to do the work. Finding a safe person to speak to about our emotional tone and health is a great first step. Change is always possible.