
Story Time!
I spent last week sick with a cough. I stayed home for a few days and the cough naturally waned and things were fine. Suddenly yesterday I had an onslaught of symptoms: muscle aches, more chesty coughing, extreme fatigue. Time to go to the doctor. Unfortunately, my doctor and my backup doctor are both on vacation, and the backup to the backup wasn’t open. I found any available doc in the area, dragged myself out of bed, masked up, and went.
I need help
I approached reception and said, "My usual doctor is on vacation, and I am sick!" The receptionist asked me who my normal doc was, and when I answered she said, “You have to go to her backup doctor.” I explained that I understood, but that doctor was closed so I looked for anyone available. She said, “We don’t have any possibility to get you seen today.” I said, “Please, I am really sick–” She cut me off and repeated that there was simply no chance. Not only did she not offer me any support to find another doctor, she didn’t even ask what my symptoms were. I broke. I raised my voice and said, “You can’t treat people like this. I could barely get out of bed, I am not ok and I need to see a doctor!” She told me not to raise my voice, and that there was nothing she could do. I began to cry and said, “You can’t do this to people who need help.”
Dismissed and dejected
I left, utterly defeated. I sobbed. I felt so small, so worthless. My needs hadn’t even been part of the consideration. The receptionist knew what her answer was going to be before I even spoke.
In the following hours, I thought a lot about how children are often put in the position I was in. How often has your child had a big reaction to you saying “no”? How often are you saying “no”?
How do you say no to your child?
Consider the impact our “no” is having on a child. Not the no itself, but the dismissal of their request. We adults, in our big adult bodies, make all the adult decisions and our children are at our mercy. Just like I was at the mercy of a receptionist who not only didn't understand my need, but didn't care.
How do you think I felt? I'll tell you: insignificant, unimportant, tiny, vulnerable, scared. Not at all unlike how a child might feel when they are trying to express a need to an adult who is responsible for their well being and actively dismissing their request.
Power Dynamics
Power dynamics matter. In my story, I was ill and required the services of a doctor. The doctor's office had the power to approve or deny my request. I had no power to force them to take care of my needs. My attempt to take some of my power back failed miserably and only escalated the situation.
Who are the adults who are typically responsible to meet the needs of a child? Teachers, parents, grandparents, babysitters--the usual suspects. How often do you think a child's bid for attention or request to have a need met is dismissed? And what does it look like when a child tries to take back some of the power they've lost to an adult who simply said, "No, not possible. No chance."? That's when we see bargaining, manipulation, yelling, screaming, stomping, hitting, throwing--in a word: escalation.
How to de-escalate
I'm a trained de-escalator. I knew in my situation that raising my voice was going to escalate, and I chose to do it anyway out of an overflow of intense emotion. I didn't care about the consequences, I wanted to be heard. Nothing I did was going to change the outcome anyway, so the least I could do was try to prove a point. The power lay solely with the receptionist, and it all depended on her goal for the interaction. If patient care was her priority, she would have likely asked to know my symptoms to assess the severity, and then given me a recommendation based on that. It might have gone like this:
Patient: "My usual doctor is on vacation, and I am sick!"
Receptionist: "Who is your doctor?" (my answer) "You need to go to her assigned backup doctor."
Patient: "They're already closed, and I'm really concerned about my illness."
Receptionist: "I'm really sorry, but we are so booked that we wouldn't be able to see you, even if it was urgent. If you describe your symptoms to me, I can tell you if you should go to the hospital, or I can give you a list of other doctors in the area."
In this dialogue, the receptionist listened, acknowledged, and responded to the patient. Let's translate this to a situation with a child:
Child: "I wanna go to the playground!"
Adult: "Not right now sweetie."
Child: "But I really wanna gooooo!" (whining, bargaining, crying, etc)
Adult: "Oh! Are you trying to tell me that it's really important to you? I understand! It's almost dinner time, so we can't make it work today. We have time tomorrow after kindergarten. Let's go then!"
Listen. Acknowledge. Respond.
We are not required to meet every single need a child has at the moment they have it - in fact, please don't do that! However, we do bear the burden of appropriately communicating with our littles about the needs they have.
Resolution
I had to wait 24 hours until the doctor I was required to go to was available. It took 30 minutes to walk to the office which was only 15 minutes away. I left 2.5 hours later, antibiotics prescription in hand.
It’s important to differentiate something here: saying “no” when it matters is not the same as responding “no” because we think we know better or because we don’t have the space or time to respond to a child’s request. We can do better.
But you don’t have to do it alone. I’m here to help.