Taking The Time To Comfort

In 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!

Choosing Empathy

Mom, as the family communication center, is more than just dispatching.  She is also the receiver and processor of family information.  She has the ability to be the most empathetic to her children.  Empathy is defined as, the ability to identify with and understand somebody else’s feelings or difficulties.  It goes a step deeper than sympathy.  It means hurting when someone else hurts.   Moms have the awesome ability to do this because of the deep bond she has with her children.  She has an ability to hear between the words.

This is something that some busy moms might need to get better at; especially as our kids get older and hurt us.  Moms can get more callous and begin to lose the willingness to empathize with their situations.  Empathy can be a choice.  We have to can choose to put ourselves in their shoes and feel what they are feeling.

Empathy starts by listening.  Not hearing but truly listening to what our children are saying, what they are feeling.  Everyone can heart he noise of a baby crying but the baby’s mom can sense what the cry is about … she listens past the noise. It takes time to read between the lines of what our teens are saying … to get to the root of what they are feeling.    There is no one else on this earth that can or will offer our kids this level of understanding or compassion.