Being with Frustration

I liked what Caren had to say at Always Learning about learning how to be with her son's frustration:


I came to understand that expressing frustration (sometimes loudly!) was part of how Seth dealt with learning hard things. Early on, I thought that something was *wrong*, because he seemed so distressed! He *was* so distressed! But, once I stopped trying to get him to respond the way I thought he *should*, and I made peace with HOW he was responding, I was much calmer.

I am a quiet, peaceful person, and I heard his "I HATE this game!! I NEVER want to play it again!" as something that needed to be fixed. It didn't! He would yell, get it out of his system, and buckle down to play again. I tried offering to look up player's guides, videos, etc. but he would get really annoyed by my
offering! So I learned to sit with him, and let him be how he needed to be to process things, and STOP offering solutions - until he was calm, at least. I might murmur things like, "That sounds really hard!", and he was amenable to that.

It was good practice for me to not be knocked off my center - I would sit and breathe, and find calm within myself, so I could be calm for him. At 12 (13 soon) he rarely yells like that any more - I can't remember the last time. He uses the tools I helped him find - breathing deeply, closing his eyes for a moment. He grew into using those things.

I wouldn't say he "didn't like" the early process. It was hard, but the value of learning was enough for him to stick with it, despite his frustration.

And hey - in response to the Tiger Mom post - I never had to FORCE him to stick with it! It was of his choosing, even though it was difficult. This is exactly the point people are making - unschoolers DO choose to do hard things, without being forced or reminded or coerced. Let your soon keep choosing to do hard
things!

I got to a point with Seth that I heard his frustration as evidence of a strong, determined person, and I made peace with it. My peace aided his peace. Fighting against it, even in my mind, seemed to make his frustration worse.


I've had much the same experience and shared this:

Yes, Mitri is like this. I figured out that something that made the situation hard for all of us was my being disturbed by his reaction. I tried to help from a place of wanting to help him, but also from a place of "I've got to stop or alter his reaction or I won't have peace."

What I'm working on now is paying close attention when the frustration happens, staying close, being available, but not trying to fix it unless the fix feels non-intrusive and flows smoothly. Dmitri has a sort of force field around him when the frustrations erupt. If I barge into that in fix-it/end-it mode, it escalates.

The calmer I am, the more okay I am with his expressing extreme frustration, the more space he has to get over it. I aim for creating a low-pressure zone around him to ease him through it. For us, this means physical closeness that still gives him space, little to no speaking at first, with bigger windows for
talking/touching as the feelings subside.