Free Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne, Lisa M. Ross Page A

stuck. These outbursts—symptoms of the same soul fever—were echoing throughout her life. In no arena—home, school, or friends—was she getting the counterbalance she needed. Nobody was helping her fill the middle ground, showing the value of warmth rather than anger’s pure heat. Nobody was modeling compromise, how to build or hold on to relationships. She was being allowed to revel in her own power and independence, repressing her need to belong.
    The developmental purpose of adolescence’s polarities is a zig-zaggedy path toward self-regulation. We now know the brain is stilldeveloping during these years, particularly those sections that are critical for judgment and reason. What allows a teenager to move between polarities is the (boring) stability in their lives. A safe and stable context allows teens to swing between polarities without getting stuck in one extreme or another. It gives them a center, a plumb line to use as they learn to regulate their behavior. Luckily for Teresa (who is now a college graduate and in her late twenties, by the way), the adults in her life—family, teachers, and an athletic coach—met while she was in high school to discuss and commit to ways to provide more form and consistency in her life.
    The first step then, toward taking care of our child’s soul fever, just as with a physical fever, is noticing it. And there will be times when just that—our noticing—will be enough for a child to feel bolstered, supported, understood. When we think back to our childhoods (as our children will to theirs), these small acts of noticing can form the emotional foundation of “home” or “family”: the place where we were “read,” understood, held in balance. And in adult life—in marriage and business—isn’t it easy to see whose emotional landscapes were not well read? The symptoms are the same—pouting, tantrums, icy withdrawal—but they get more convoluted as we get older. As parents we can be thankful for our six-year-old’s dramatically furrowed brow, his slouchy posture, his mumbled responses, his big sighs. And when he doesn’t even laugh at his sister’s silly dancing you know—thank heavens that subtlety and subterfuge are still beyond him—that something is really bothering him. “Sweetheart, what’s up?”
    Symptoms that are missed or ignored tend to worsen, or disappear and reappear in a stronger form, until the internal conflict is addressed. There are a couple of reasons why noticing a child’s soul fever can be difficult. Parents who are very busy and preoccupied, overloaded themselves, can miss the initial signs of a child’s unease. This happens, just as it’s possible to miss the first signs of a physical fever. And as parents, we don’t want to develop our own hair-trigger response to a child’s normal emotional ups and downs. A pout, a bad mood: These come and go. Like the sniffles, or a bump on the knee, their effects are temporary, easily shaken. But a soul fever lingers. Years ago it might have been called a growing pain, both inevitable and painful. And while it may not seem like much to us (compared with the stresses of adult life), there is some sense of loss associated with these growing pains. When you imagine the incredible rate at which children change and evolve, you can beginto see how their heart sometimes resists the adjustment. They must let go of comforts and assurances with one hand to have both hands free to reach ahead, to pull toward some new level of maturity.
    Understandably, life’s pace and pressures can sometimes distract a parent from the signs of their child’s soul fever. Yet when a child’s emotional distress is routinely ignored, they will usually, consciously or unconsciously, find other ways to solicit attention. Parental attention is the safest and most convenient, especially when one is displaying all of one’s “nasty bits” (as one four-year-old described a tantrum). But if a child can’t garner attention