When my son started attending second grade at a new school, he was introduced to the idea of a “kindness jar” in his classroom. During the first couple of months, he was VERY bothered by this jar. To the point where it was difficult for him to even go to school. Many mornings were filled with emotional outbursts which eventually circled back to this jar. I got curious and asked him about it. He explained that if children were being quiet, the teacher will put pom poms into the jar. If they were noisy, loud or shouting, pom poms would get taken out of the jar. He couldn’t, for the life of him, wrap his head around this idea. “How can they remove kindness so easily that has already been done, Ma?” he asked me with tear filled eyes. He expressed extreme concern that “none of the other kids even cared about it.” They just kept talking anyway. His last point: “If kindness can be removed for the children yelling, shouldn’t it be removed every time the teacher yells too? Yelling at anyone is not kind, no?”
I honestly had no words for him. Children are incredible at spotting our inconsistencies. Highly sensitive children, even more so. I cannot tell you how many times my child has inadvertently helped me realize my own. I listened and simply acknowledged his hurt feelings, careful not to explain away or “fix” those feelings, as many times as it took. This was very difficult for him to work through. But work through it he did.
Over the course of the following weeks, he came to the realization that even though it was called a “kindness” jar, it really was a reward-punishment jar in disguise. Kindness cannot be undone. We don’t do rewards or punishments at home, so once he came to this realization, it started to bother him less. He knew that many other grown ups do use such strategies to “get kids to do things”. But the biggest relief came from the fact that it did not dilute his understanding of kindness after all. Along the way, we decided to have a kindness jar at home into which he was free to put as many pom poms as he liked for each act of kindness as perceived by him. Within a week, the jar was nearly full…and these pom poms never came back out.
As difficult as those weeks were for me, they were more so for him, dealing with big ideas in his little head. Had I lost my patience through any part of this process, (and believe me, I came close many times), or tried to “fix” his feelings or “cheer him up”, he would not have emerged as resilient in the end. It took time (about two whole months), but he came through the dark tunnel of turbulent feelings knowing, subconsciously, that he can work through tough situations. When he needed my unconditional support and acknowledgement for how he was feeling or a shoulder to cry on, I was there. It has not been an easy road for me to get to this point of patience or understanding, but it has been every bit worth it – not just for his sake, but also my own.
This is another example of the depth at which highly sensitive children process situations that often go unnoticed or taken for face value by others. Many of us mistake such outburts for an over-reaction and without meaning to, belittle their feelings, saying things like, “Oh that’s nothing” or “That’s not a big deal”. However, the emotional depth, intellect and comprehension that HSCs often exhibit grows by leaps and bounds when they engage in analyses that go beyond the surface. Allowing them to express and make sense of these feelings in their own timeline is immensely helpful to their resiliency, providing scaffolding along the way in the form of acknowledgement and guidance when they ask for it.
In my next post, I will outline some perspective shifts and strategies for supporting a healthy and resilient HSC as well as point to further reading and resources.