When something uncomfortable—like something for medical health and safety—has to happen for a child, it’s often adults’ instinct to try to do it as fast as possible, to get it over with. (After all, it would be kind of barbaric to extend an uncomfortable or painful experience when it could be sped up and then be done.)
However, babies, toddlers, and children process things slower than adults do. Sometimes, in an attempt to “get it over with”, what we end up putting on our children is a massive blurry sensory rush of confusing discomfort or pain. It’s hard to break it down into smaller parts—“moving that way hurt”, “the medicine feels cold” or “tastes bad”, “my mom held me close”…it’s all just one big Vaguely Bad thing. “Mom was there, smells were there, sights were there, sounds were there, pain was there, all of it was Bad.”
Even something that isn’t painful or scary but routine parts of health and body care, like washing off in the bathtub or changing diapers, is still worth slowing down for. The baby (or toddler or child) can make sense of the steps of what’s happening to them that way. They can also practice being a willing participant in their own care — or not! Pausing long enough to say “can you put your foot there? Got it! Here’s a wipe, do you want to wipe yourself?…” and letting the child try out being a part of what happens to them in a day is empowering.
It’s also empowering to be able to feel how they actually feel, all the way through it. If a baby (or toddler or child) absolutely hates something medical and necessary, we don’t have to try to persuade them to feel a different way, or to not tell us how they feel (i.e., not cry, not resist).
Of course, if there’s any other way to do it at all then it’s worth talking with a doctor or exploring other types of caregiving strategies that could help make the process less terrible; I don’t mean that they should just suck it up and deal with it and it is what it is. But sometimes parents get sort of “stuck” because they feel like they have to give their child control over their own body, yet they also have to give their child vital medicine or ointment or whatever, and the child doesn’t want them to. The child is allowed to not want them to. The child is allowed to feel their own feelings about it, and those feelings be honored without persuading them out of it.
There are also times when the opposite is true. Sometimes, there is nothing to do but to power through it. Using a tool to distract yourself or your child during that is OK, especially if you keep in mind that the emotions may come out somewhere else, later in the day or later on down the line. For example, I had to have bloodwork done recently — something I loathe. I don’t force myself to “live in the moment” and experience every bit of the bloodwork. I distract myself with as many alternate sensory things as I possibly can (listened to music, watched a deep breathing visual aid and took deep breaths, nervous-ramble-chatted with my husband). And then I keep in mind that I need to process for the rest of the day and for several days afterward: for me, this looks like babying the arm that blood was drawn from and refusing to use it for several things, and wearing long sleeves so I don’t have to see my own arm or elbowpit. For a child, that delayed processing might look like anger, sadness, fear, etc spilling out at something inconsequential later on.
It’s helpful to know both tools. Sometimes you slow down to try to make sense of it. Sometimes (especially if you already know it sucks, or it’s frequently recurring, etc) you distract, power through, know it might bubble back up later.
