Taking The Time To Comfort
Taking The Time To Comfort
Jun 14In the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30), Jesus described the difference between empathy and comfort. Empathy is a feeling for someone else’s pain. Comfort is an action we take to help someone in pain. We talked about choosing to learn to be empathetic with our kids yesterday. This means that we can identify with what our kids are feeling, in essence we hurt when they hurt. Another area that moms are great at is taking the next step, comforting. To do that we have to know when our kids are hurting. When children are small and they hurt they hold their little arms up to be held and comforted. They run to mom to help them feel better… often running right past Dad. As our children grow up they sometime don’t know how to ask for the comfort of mom. Sometimes when they are hurting they even take it out on mom. As moms, we need to see past this and learn how to comfort our older children and teens. This is such an important area that moms can help their kids learn.
“Honey, I know you are hurting right now.” A mom can start the conversation. “I know because you are taking it out on me by the way you are treating me.” Let me first say that it’s not right to act this toward me. Let’s talk about what’s really bothering you. Who hurt you today? What happened?”
This not only opens the door for your teen to begin to learn to talk about pain, but a mom can also use this to train a child to process his or her pain. This is a needed marriageable trait for the future for your teen. In short, with mom’s communication abilities, she can become the family counselor.
This will be different for each child. It may simply starting with a hug. Sitting on the edge of their bed at night and listening can be a comfort. Even leaving encouraging notes on their bathroom mirror or on their bed when they get home from school. The important thing is just to simply give them the time to comfort them communicates that they are worth it to you!
