Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy (PACE Part 2)

Welcome to the Loved Called Gifted podcast.

This is your place to come for musings about spirituality, identity and purpose.

I'm your host, Catherine Cowell.

C: I'm joined again by Margaret MacGregor. It's lovely to have you here again, Margaret.

M: Thank you for having me.

C: So this is the second of our episodes looking at the concept of PACE, which is an approach to parenting and PACE stands for Playfulness, Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy.

So the last time that we spoke, which if you want to go back to it is episode 52, or if your podcast player doesn't tell you episodes, it was the 19th of July, 2024.

So we talked about play last time and we are going to talk about Acceptance, Curiosity and Empathy this time.

But before we do that, would you like to introduce yourself, Margaret?

M: Yes.

My name is Margaret, married to Frank for a long time and we have five children, two that grew elsewhere, but have been included in our family for 14, 16 years now.

So we've got two children who are 17 and 14 and they're the only ones left at home now.

And I've worked in the health service, we've worked in church leadership over the years.

And I don't like saying I'm just a mum in the main at the moment, because actually that is a huge job.

It's not just a mum, but my main focus is at home with the kids.

C: Yeah.

We've both been working together, beginning to support other parents of children with additional needs, which is kind of where a lot of our friendship has grown from.

A joint sense of understanding about the things that we've been tackling, dealing with over the years.

So this is one of the things that we've been talking about.

So PACE was developed by somebody called Dan Hughes, who was a psychologist working primarily with children with trauma and attachment issues and was developed as a way of approaching interactions with your children really.

And one of the things which we have realised in our journeying and in our supporting of others is that these concepts of playfulness, acceptance, curiosity and empathy don't just work for therapeutic parenting.

Actually, they work for all of our interactions and in particular, our interactions with ourselves and also with God.

M: Yeah.

Yeah.

It's been quite interesting actually, working together on this course that God uses therapeutic parenting PACE on us as well.

And we use the prodigal son story to show that and that was really interesting.

And I think the group, including ourselves got a lot out of that.

And all the way through with PACE, it's all about relationship.

And we felt that the way we parent, the way we interact with other people, it's all relationship, but it all goes back to our relationship with God first and how that is the priority.

And that then helps us with our interactions with other people and obviously into our interactions with our children as well.

So PACE goes all the way through and up and round.

C: Yeah.

Yeah.

So if we start by thinking about acceptance, so this acceptance, curiosity and empathy, partly it's kind of what happened when you're in the middle of a situation where you think, "Oh, what do I do about this?"

Or, "Oh my goodness, what's going on now?"

Which is relatively frequent.

Coming with that attitude first of acceptance and then curiosity, "I wonder what's going on here."

And then empathy, "There's something in me which understands where you're at and why you might be behaving in the way that you're behaving," is really helpful.

So acceptance has kind of two elements to it really.

One is that level of personal acceptance, understanding that we are accepted as we are.

And then there's the acceptance that we sort of employ in the moment.

So just accepting this is what's happened now.

So when you think of acceptance, Margaret, what comes to mind?

M: I think first of all, I think about my relationship with God and that I am accepted for who I am.

He created me.

I am who I'm meant to be.

And because I have quite a strong belief in that, that helps me to accept other people, you know, how they are.

Actually, I love people watching and actually watching people just walking by, talking or, you know, doing whatever they're doing, I think helps me to understand other people. And I think because I'm being curious, say with acceptance and curious, I actually, I think I do those interchangeably and that I'm curious. I wonder what their story is, what their backstory is, wonder why they're doing what they're doing or all that sort of thing helps me to accept me, myself, but also accept those around me doing what they're doing.

I think with the curiosity, because I do find them completely interlinked, that I'm always thinking, why did that happen?

What happened there?

And it's that thing when we're looking at perhaps incidences that are happening with our children, why the child, why did that happen? What was that reaction? What triggered that reaction?

And then obviously, then you sometimes you can go on to think, well, actually, how do we prevent that if that, you know, a negative reaction or actually, oh, okay, if the child reacts in that way, in that situation, perhaps it was too loud, perhaps they need to perhaps, you know, avoid that situation helps me understand the person, the child, sometimes my children.

So I'm ahead of the game.

Some of that can be quite exhausting because you're trying to think before a situation that you're going into, but it just comes back to the person that's in front of the child that's in front of you is who they are.

There is nothing wrong with that child or person.

It's just the way they are and the acceptance of that person then helps you to get alongside them, to build a relationship with them and to help them be the best person they can be as well as the best person I can be as well.

So it is very interlinked, the curiosity and acceptance. And I find it quite hard to separate the two because I think they're just interweave with each other.

C: Yeah.

Yeah.

And I knew before we started this conversation that we were probably going to kind of weave around.

I'm thinking it might be helpful in terms of thinking of particular situations to kind of think of an example.

And the simple example that comes to mind for me would be a situation where I was with my boys at a school fate type thing, and it was very wet and there was a part of the playground which tended to get very, very full of water. It's a kind of enormous puddle.

And my boys ended up playing in the puddle.

And so my first thing was, well, it is what it is. There is a large puddle. I have two small boys,
The boys are playing in the water.

M: Yes.

C: And then there might be a bit of curiosity that comes alongside that.

Well, I wonder what it is that means that they're playing in the water.

Well, there were a number of things that fairly obviously would have led them to be playing in the water.

One was that it was outside of the noisy hall where all of the handicrafts were being sold and there's hard surfaces and it's absolutely chaotic. And so to find a space outside felt much, much safer for my kids. And I knew that they couldn't cope with the crowds.

And they needed the sensory thing.

M: A lot of sensory.

C: Absolutely.

So the water was quite calming for them and the splashing in the water and the response that they kind of got in their body from that was quite calming.

M: Yeah.

C: And I had a real sense of empathy for them because we tried to go to this event and actually it was really noisy and I can really see that if you've got sensory issues and my boys are both hyper vigilant.

M: Yeah.

C: So because of the difficulties that they faced when they were younger, they are on the alert for danger.

And there's a lot less danger to be looking out for in the dusk, in the playground where there's nobody else around and there's just some water.

M: Yeah.

C: So I've got real empathy for what might be going on for them.

And then one of the teachers came out and she did the absolute opposite, which is that she saw some kids playing in a puddle and decided that this situation needed sorting out.

Oh, so she came out and shouted at them because they were in the puddle.

"This is ridiculous. Don't be so stupid. It's completely stupid to be playing in that water. Come out immediately."

Which left me in a slightly tricky situation because it was kind of in school.

But that is a kind of the contrast that if you come at a situation with a sense of judgment, what you're saying is I'm immediately deciding whether I think this is good or not.

And my immediate response then is to try and change it.

So evaluation and immediate reaction, I need to change this is what we often end up being tempted into, I think.

M: And often we react to things. So we see our children doing something and that may trigger us as well. So we react very quickly.

We're going back to the primitive responses. We react to what they are reacting to or their reaction to what they're reacting to. And that can be really unhelpful because often that escalates the situation.

And sometimes therapeutic parenting, the pace can feel a little bit counterintuitive.

We often talk about parenting, you've got to go with your gut instincts. You know, I say that a lot, actually. It is, how is it feeling? But sometimes with pace, you have to stop yourself. I often say deep breathe, take a deep breath and look at it in a different way.

And understanding our children's difficulties, issues, helps us to take a breath and then think, okay, what is happening in that situation?

Like your boys jumping a muddy puddle.

It sounds like it was winter time, you know, so you're thinking, oh, it's cold, they're going to be wet, they're going to be miserable.

But you quite quickly understood and accepted that that was actually a way of calming them down from what I can imagine. I'm feeling it myself. It'll be a really crowded, hot, noisy environment, which I'm with you, I don't think I would have liked either. I might not have joined them in their muddy puddle.

But yeah, absolutely understanding our children, understanding why they need to do sometimes what they need to do, helps us understand them, helps to accept them.

And using empathy is like putting yourself in that situation. Actually, what are they hearing? What are they seeing? What is that making them feel like?

And often it is a physical reaction that our children are, it's not just, oh, that's really loud, but it actually makes the whole body feel not comfortable. And so they have to do something like jumping in a muddy puddle to help calm them down. Although they're not thinking that.

C: Yeah.

M: And that's where it went.

C: Yeah.

So acceptance, I think what acceptance does is it gives you space.

M: Yes.

C: And what it means is not that you necessarily think that what's going on is great, but it is that sense of this is what's happening now.

This situation is as it is, rather than leaping in with, "I need to sort this out!"

So it's kind of coming with a level of calm.

And what that does is that gives you space to then be curious about, okay, so what is it that's behind this?

M: Yeah.

C: What might be going on here? What is it that this person is needing?

M: Yeah.

C: That is kind of causing this to happen, which enables you to actually see what's going on in a way that you don't if your immediate thought is children shouldn't be leaping in puddles.

M: Yeah.

C: I mean, I think children probably should be living in puddles much of the time.

That would be my judgment of that situation that quite often it's really helpful.

And I can see that that might have been seen as not the right thing, but actually for them in that moment, it really was.

M: Yeah.

C: Yeah.

And as a parent, I have often been in situations where there has not been that level of kind of acceptance and then curiosity.

So I remember on one occasion being in a meeting and it turned out that school had been writing down a whole pile of things that they were bothered about that were then announced in this meeting.

There was somebody from social services there.

So they listed all of these things that they were concerned about and they had made immediate judgments about all of them.

So for example, they had heard that one of my children, they'd got wind of the fact that one of my children slept on the floor some of the time and this was not appropriate or my son had gone to school without a coat and this was not appropriate.

And there were a whole list of these things.

M: Well, they're the sort of things that start ticking safeguarding boxes, aren't they?

C: They are.

But if they had sort of started with, ah, we hear that this child sleeps on the floor.

Hmm - I wonder what was going on.

Well, actually what was going on was that he was really, really struggling to go to sleep.

So what would happen is that the only way I could get him to go to sleep was to sit in the doorway of his bedroom whilst he did a whirling dervish thing often for an hour plus kind of bouncing off the walls because he couldn't, he simply physically couldn't calm down enough to lie down.

So I would just sit there and sit there and sit there and sit there and eventually he would bring his pillow and his duvet.

He'd put his pillow on my lap, climb under his duvet and fall asleep with his head on my lap.

And then I'd be in a position where I could sneak off and go.

And I did not think it was worth moving him.

M: No, absolutely not.

C: So there had been no curiosity.

So I was judged.

M: Just assuming he's sleeping on the floor cause he has no bed.

C: Yes.

M: That's what that, that's the way they probably went.

And similarly with the coat, they're thinking, well, why isn't he coming with a coat? He mustn't have a coat or it's neglect.

C: And what was happening in that instance is that we would be at the front door. He couldn't cope with me being in charge or issuing instructions, so we would be at the front door. I would offer him his coat. And if I said, would you put your coat on? "I am not putting my f-ing coat on.", "I'm not wearing that.", "I won't."

And so my choice would be, well, we either go to school without the coat or we don't get to school and we're like a hundred yards from the school gate.

So hypothermia is not going to set in, in the time that it takes to go to school.

And my judgment was actually, if I advise him that it might be sensible to wear a coat and then he doesn't wear one, then I can show empathy when he's cold later and say, Oh, I wonder what you could do next time.

M: A learning opportunity

C: Yes.

Because that was the most helpful way of playing.

Absolutely.

From their perspective, I had not provided a coat.

M: Yeah.

C: But those were situations where I was not receiving the acceptance and the curiosity that was needed for me or the empathy for how flipping difficult it might be.

M: You got them to school without a coat, but they got to school.

C: But my reason for giving that example is that I think we all know what it is like, whether it's at work or wherever we all know what it's like for us to be in a situation where we have done something or something has occurred and the response of somebody else is to simply judge that and then be really quite gnarly about the fact that they don't think things have gone the way that they think they ought to have done.

Whereas a moment of acceptance, ah, that's interesting and curiosity about what might be going on would get you a very different outcome.

M: Yes.

And that works, like I say, it works with our kids.

It definitely works with people we work with.

Somebody coming in to work and they seem to be in a really bad mood about something and then their reaction to you seems over the top.

That again, that's a great time to use pace to actually look and thinking, okay, what's going on here?

And perhaps giving them time, asking a few questions, exploring, using empathy to try and explore and do what's happening.

You know, perhaps they have had a really bad morning getting there.

For instance, for me, I think I use curiosity a lot when I'm driving. I don't get road rage. I think I go the opposite way than going, oh, they must be having a bad day if they're doing what they're doing or perhaps they're in a rush. I do that quite automatically in a sense, giving them excuses for perhaps what might be perceived as bad driving and may provoke road rage from other drivers.

But I think I am a naturally curious person anyway, so I'm doing that all the time.

And then going back to acceptance, when you understand why children or adults do what they do, it's that accepting this is how it is doesn't mean you therefore stay in that place or allow them to stay in that place.

It's like you say, it's that exception for that moment, right?

This is how it is.

It's not making excuses.

It's understanding what's behind the behaviour.

And then later, sometimes you can't deal with it there and then. It may be later that you come back to it and talk about it with your child. Because if you try and talk about it there and then, it's probably going to inflame the situation.

And that's where we talk about strike while the iron is cold is wait until everyone's calm to perhaps talk about it and get to understand it more and help the child understand it more.

C: Yeah.

I had a conversation this week, this is really striking while the iron is cold like a year later.

M: Oh, okay.

C: And I was having a conversation this week with one of my two about the fact that a year ago when we were at the festival we were at last week, he made up quite a number of things.

And I just had a conversation with him about, well, I wonder what that was about.

And he was able to talk about the fact that that's a behaviour that he tends to engage in when he's feeling really low.

So when he's feeling really low, he might make stories up because he thinks, I said, well, what is it? And we had a bit of an explore and he was able to come to the conclusion that he might do that particular thing because he's feeling low and he might think that it will help him to feel better. And then he discovers that it doesn't.

But that was a conversation that we were able to have really quite a significant time later.

One of the things that I have noticed in terms of my own interaction with my children is that if I exhibit this level of acceptance, this is as it is, they then feel safe to talk about what's going on for them in the middle of it.

So it doesn't have to be terribly heated.

You can have this kind of exploratory, curious, well, I wonder what's going on. I wonder what might have helped you. I wonder what I could have done to help. I wonder what might help you next time.

So you might have gone and done this thing that you think will make you feel better and it hasn't. So let's think together about what we might do on another occasion.

M: And I think something we talked about in the course actually, we can use pace on ourselves. And actually sometimes by modelling that we're helping our children to start using pace on themselves.

So sometimes we need to say out loud what our thought processes are to help them to understand what's happening rather than us just accepting curious empathy. We've dealt with it in our head. It actually doesn't help our children to understand the process.

But if we actually do it with ourselves, but it is like that talking out loud as we're doing it somehow. And if we react to something in not a good way, actually then talking about it with the child can be really useful and apologising.

And I think sometimes as parents, we have to work on saying sorry to our children, saying actually the way I reacted wasn't good. I shouldn't have done it that way. A better way would have been like this. And we call it like restore and repair. It's time to help repair the relationship.

Again, it's going back to our relationship. How is this interaction, how is this conversation going to build and improve our relationship rather than make it suffer or sever the relationship?

C: Yeah.

It's interesting because I quite often have conversations with my two where I've said, oh, I was really grumpy this morning. I think that's probably because I was worried about this thing and I haven't had enough sleep.

And then my youngest in particular is very good at saying, oh no, don't worry. Don't worry, mum. I completely get it. I know what that feels like.

So there's been a modelling, which means that we give grace to one another actually.

M: Yeah. And I think it's not a quick fix.

C: No, it's not.

M: And when I look at your relationship with your boys, I can see how that's developed over the, because we've known each other quite a long time.

I can see how that's developed. And I'm hearing your boys coming back with stuff that is like, is coming out of your mouth. It's like, I know where they've got that from.

And that's great. That's absolutely how it should be that they're becoming more mature. They're able to regulate their own emotions and talk about it, which I think is amazing.

C: Yeah.

It's not a quick fix, but I do think that from the word go, when I started using PACE, it definitely takes the heat out of a situation.

So you might not see immediate results, but what you do see is a lack of kind of the escalation that you would otherwise get.

So if you take my puddle example, if I had tried to drag the kids out of the puddle before they were ready to come home, they wouldn't be reregulated at that point.

I would end up shouting at them probably, or speaking sternly about the fact that we don't jump in puddles and get ourselves covered in mud, but they would not have been emotionally in a position to respond to that.

So we would have had the most almighty row and shoutiness on the way home.

M: Probably ran off just to escalate it even further. And it would have taken hours to try and get them calm enough for bed. There would have been a really horrible end to the day.

C: Yeah.

Whereas actually what ran its course was that they did their jumping in the puddle till the point when they were ready to, well, it would have been until the point they were ready to come home if they hadn't been shouted at by somebody else.

But then we departed, but they had had a significant amount of time to reregulate and things were calmer than they would have been if I'd immediately leapt into that situation and been judgmental.

So I think that although it's not a quick fix, it is definitely something which keeps things calmer and limits the amount of escalation that you get.

M: Yeah.

And if you know your child is going to jump in muddy puddles, you learn to either take clothing that doesn't matter if they get wet or you have waterproof trousers and wellingtons.

Because some children do need that. And my youngest in particular is still always gets really dirty. So you think, well, actually be prepared.

So actually then it takes the heat off what they're actually needing to do anyway.

And it makes you more relaxed. And they think, well, the washing machine will do its work later.

C: Yeah.

M: Or the bin will.

C: Buy cheap.

M: Absolutely.

C: But you're talking about kind of acceptance and curiosity for ourselves.

So if I was wound up by them jumping in muddy puddles, then I think there would have been a piece of work to do with myself that says, okay, I am feeling really wound up by this.

I don't need to tell myself up for being wound up by it.

I just need to allow some space for my emotions to be preferably without shouting at anybody else, but come on. I am feeling really, really stressed by this. I wonder what that's about.

And it may be that the teacher who came and shouted at them, it may be that she came from a childhood situation where being clean and being neat was very, very important.

M: Yeah.

C: And so seeing children really muddy and dirty was difficult for her.

There've been lots of situations in my parenting journey where I've been wound up by things, but also in other contexts.

So I know that I get quite tense around people who are kind of male authority figure type folks, much less than I used to.

But I know that that's something that happens to me. There are sort of tendrils from that, that go back into my history and my childhood, which means that my self-esteem kind of takes a bit of a dive in those situations.

There are things that people can say and ways that people can approach stuff that make me feel a bit crap actually.

But I know that that's going on so I can have empathy for myself in that situation. And I can give myself a bit of warmth and acceptance that helps me to feel better and to respond better.

M: Yeah.

C: Because the temptation otherwise is that you see a response in yourself and your immediate response to that is to tell yourself off.

So I should not be feeling like this, which I think sometimes for people of faith, if you've got a set of standards that you think you ought to be adhering to, it's very easy to kind of leap in and be very judgy of yourself actually.

M: And it's pushing down those emotions, isn't it?

And it's going back to acceptance.

The way you feel is the way you feel.

C: Yeah.

You don't have to push the emotions down.

M: There isn't a good or bad to it, it's the way you feel.

So it's accepting that.

Then go into the curiosity like you were saying, well actually, hold on a minute.

Why have I just reacted like that to that situation? What was it about that situation?

I think it really helps as parents, as human beings to be self-aware. And I think some people are better at it than others.

Some people are too good at it. I'll say that's a negative in that it's a bit of navel gazing and therefore don't actually ever move on from that. Because actually when you're becoming self-aware, accepting, being curious about it, have an empathy for yourself, then thinking, hold on, how can we change the situation for the better in the future?

Is there anything about the situation that I can do?

Going back to the children and thinking about your boys in the school fair, it may be that you think, well next time the school fairs on you're thinking, actually, do we go?

C: Absolutely.

Yeah.

M: And as parents of kids with special needs, sometimes you have to think, actually that situation is putting them completely out of their comfort zone.

Everyone's going to get wound up.

There may not be a muddy puddle for them to be able to help regulate themselves again.

It's all going to end in tears. Why do I need to put myself through it? And why do I need to put my children through it?

So sometimes there is that acceptance. These are our kids' needs and some things just aren't worth the effort.

As much as you can put in place, I've had ear defenders and go right at the beginning or right at the end to try and limit things. And we've done that sort of thing with my girls in the past.

That sometimes it's actually, we know it's not going to work. So why put everyone through it?

And that is hard to accept that sometimes because I know for myself and for other parents, sometimes you try and force yourself into situations because families do this.

Therefore we will do this.

And actually, why?

C: Yeah.

M: Why put yourself through it?

So it's learning to accept your child's needs, your family's needs, and yes, changing your life to suit that, to take the pressure off.

C: Yeah.

Festivals and special events, I think are a really prime example of that.

That you might have a model of what Christmas should look like, and it should be very exciting. And there'll be many presents and lots of things going on.

And part of the acceptance for me has been knowing that my boys are not going to cope with, for example, going and seeing my family actually on Christmas day.

So we've not done that for years. We've kept things really, really simple. So it's much better if we were in our own home. It's much better if Christmas is not particularly exciting.

M: Yes.

C: So the special thing that I've done at Christmas for my kids quite often is that I've said, okay, so it's Christmas day.

So what would you like to eat on Christmas day?

I do not need to cook a turkey dinner with all of the stuff.

M: If they're not going to eat it, there is no point.

Going on from that, one of my girls does not like surprises.

C: Yeah.

M: So it took me a little while to click that that was what was going on.

And it was the idea that presents were opened and then thrown aside.

And you're like, that looks really ungrateful and really rude. But actually I had to then put myself in that situation. How does it feel? What's going on when someone gives you a present? And the anxiety of opening a present and then having to pretend you like it, or is it going to be something I like or not actually makes me quite anxious. I don't throw it to one side, because I'm better trained than that, but because I'm an adult. But that was what was going through one of my girls' minds.

That's when I was being curious about it.

So now, generally, she knows what she's going to get.

We do wrap them. I've heard of other people who say, actually, we don't even bother wrapping them anymore. We do wrap them, but she knows what she's getting. There may be one little something in there that she doesn't know, but the majority is something we've planned together.

And that made a huge difference.

C: Yeah.

So my youngest also doesn't like surprises.

So he needs to know what's going to happen in a film before he'll be comfortable with it, particularly if there's an element of stress.

Well, we used to read books together.

And I remember we started reading a set of spy books for kids, Alex Ryder.

M: Oh yeah.

Yeah.

C: We started reading the Alex Ryder books and there were about 14 of them.

So I was able to say to him during the first one that we read that, well, we know he's not going to die in this.

M: Yes, because there are other books.

Saying that, I tell myself things like that when I'm watching a film. I'm thinking they are the main character. They can't die.

C: So it's okay.

I don't have to be quite so stressed.

M: Yes.

C: But he also wants to know what he's going to get. For his birthday. I think, such a shame you've spoiled the surprise, but I know him because I've been curious.

And I think, I think we are endlessly interesting as human beings, aren't we?

So one of the things that I've noticed is that in my parenting, even now, even though my kids came home, I'm trying to count how many years, it's 13 years ago now, even though it's been all that time, I am still learning about them just as I'm still learning about myself.

So I'm still getting to know them.

So the curiosity is a gift that keeps giving actually.

M: Yeah.

Because they do change.

And it's like, it's well with parenting of any children, you think you've got it cracked. And then they, something else pops up.

C: Adolescence pops up or something.

M: Yes. Hormones.

Hormones. Thank you very much.

You know, but with that, there is some maturity as well.

So things can get better, and worse at the same time in different areas.

We as adults, hopefully are always growing in what we're doing. We might be getting better at some things and then think actually, why am I doing that?

Actually, I'm going to ditch that because what am I doing that?

As you get older, I think you do that.

You think, well, actually I'm doing all these things, but actually I can ditch a few.

C: It's that non-judgmental acceptance that kind of gets you there.

And I think it's really interesting that we see Jesus following this pattern quite often in the gospels.

So a classic example for me is the occasion when the four friends come to Jesus's house and they open the roof.

M: Yes.

Which opens a lot of problems for me.

C: Yes.

M: What a mess.

C: Yes, absolutely.

But they open the roof in order to lower the structure.

Now, if you were being judgmental in that situation, your immediate thought would be the roof. The roof.

M: Yes.

C: I mean, I think there were lots of situations where this would happen. You would need to send some of the bigger fishermen to sort out the people on the roof. "We do not have people breaking roofs in the middle of meetings".

But actually there was a level of acceptance of this is what's happening that Jesus needed to exhibit in order to get to the point where he's looking at these people.

And there had to have been a level of curiosity because what the gospel tells us is that he saw their faith.

He didn't see their shovels and their vandalism tendencies. He saw their faith.

So there had to have been.

M: He saw their motive.

C: Yes. But you need to have been in a space of acceptance of awe and curiosity.

M: For them to make that much effort to get their friend in front of Jesus.

Why do they need to do that?

C: So he saw that and then was able to respond with empathy. And because of their faith, their mate got healed. So there's all of those things. There's all of those things going on in that moment.

And the other moment that really strikes me is when the woman came with a bottle of perfume and broke it over his feet and anointed his feet and was there weeping. Well, that was not a socially acceptable thing to be doing - on lots of levels,

M: the waste of perfume and the woman touching him are just the starts, aren't they?

C: Yes. The fact that she's gate crashed something.

M: And she wasn't a well-respected woman.

C: No. And Jesus wasn't even in his own house, I don't think. And he was at somebody else's house.

So there's a whole pile of things where there could have been judgment.

But actually there is a level of acceptance and welcome, in fact. In both of those instances, there is a real deep level of divine welcome.

M: And it's getting to the heart of the matter.

It's ignoring the periphery and what might be right in your face and actually going, what's the heart of the matter? And literally is what our hearts, their hearts in those situations, what is going on? And that curiosity, that acceptance, that curiosity really helps to get to the heart of the matter.

What is most important at this point?

C: Absolutely.

Seeing those stories, seeing the way that Jesus responds to people and knowing actually, having walked with Jesus for lots and lots of years now, I know that that is the way that God responds to us.

So that there is a level of, it is safe to come with our stuff and whatever's going on with us to God, because there is that level of acceptance and welcome and love. And obviously, God is more concerned about what's going on underneath that than the surface.

M: And again, he doesn't leave us in that place as well.

He gets right to the heart of the matter, acceptance, the curiosity, he gets right to the heart of it, and then helps us accept ourselves and move on. We don't get stuck in that place.

And I think sometimes we can feel stuck in a place, I feel, when we've done the acceptance, we've done the curiosity, and we've done the empathy, but actually there's a future.

There's more to life than that moment or that issue.

And I think sometimes, going back to parenting of our kids with special needs, that we can get stuck in our kids' behaviors and we understand why they do what they do. We can accept that that's who they are and we can have empathy, but it seems to just keep recurring and it's like a bottomless pit somehow. It can be quite exhausting.

C: It can be.

I do think it's worth pointing out that empathy is much more meant to be an alarm system, which tells us that there is something going on. It helps to create that point of connection between us and somebody else.

I did a podcast with Siobhan Horton a little while ago now, so if you want to look it up, it was on the 22nd of December and it's episode 38.

And there we looked at the difference between compassion and empathy. And actually empathy is the kind of the immediate thing that happens. It's that point of connection that helps you to understand somebody else.

But because empathy alerts us to somebody else's pain, it's not a place where we want to stay, where we can't stay there sustainably.

So the healthy thing to happen is that we notice the empathy and we have that moment of connection with somebody, which is the thing which helps them to feel understood, and then we allow that to kind of evolve into active compassion, which is sustaining because compassion is about giving love. And when you are giving practical love and support to somebody, that is kind of self-sustaining because you get that sense of offering love, which releases all kinds of happy hormones.

Whereas empathy is actually about connecting with somebody's pain. So you don't want to stay in the empathy. You want to move from empathy to compassion.

But that's a very crude overview if you want to look at that. I explored much more deeply with Siobhan in that episode, so I would highly recommend that.

Sometimes there is a long journey that's going on. So sometimes what's happening is that actually there is a slow change, but the surface that we would like to see shifting quickly isn't. But there's stuff going on more deeply within.

M: And that's where we go back to the relationship. Actually, is this helping to strengthen our relationship with our children, with ourselves, with our partners, with God? Or is it actually going to take us further away?

And I think sometimes I have to look at what's happening as long-term gains, not necessarily short-term gains.

And for who?

C: Yeah.

M: Because actually for your boys in that puddle, you could have joined the teacher at shouting at them and getting them out so that you looked like you were in control parent in front of the teacher.

Because sometimes we do that to save face in front of people. But actually that's not going to help our relationship with our kids.

C: No.

M: And actually long term, it's not going to help at all.

C: No.

M: But I think a lot of parents, especially with kids' special needs, where behaviours may be interesting, big inverted commas, can get sucked into, I need to do what is socially acceptable to save face somehow.

C: Yes.

So it's that fear of other people's non-acceptance and other people's judgement that then can push us to do things that otherwise we wouldn't do.

Or the influence of other people means that we are judging ourselves without having a moment to be accepting and curious about what's going on for us.

So you kind of think, oh, if they're thinking I'm doing a crap job of this, then I must be doing a crap job.

M: Yes.

C: So I need to do something different without taking the time to kind of think, okay, so what might be going on?

And what's going on for the person who's being judgemental?

Well, probably there could be a number of things, but quite possibly they've had kids who responded well to the way that they parented.

Or there might be things that are really winding them up.

So our kids spent some time with somebody, this was a number of years ago, and they'd gone to be looked after for a couple of nights.

And this person found their language really, really difficult to cope with.

And they'd spent time with her before, but I think they had become comfortable enough
M: to be themselves.

C: Yes. Yes. They weren't kind of frozen, emotionally frozen. They weren't masking. No, they weren't doing any of those things.

And she really found that incredibly challenging.

And I could see when she came back with them, that she was absolutely harried by the whole thing. It had been really traumatic for her.

So there was something going on for her, which actually was deeply unhelpful.

For her, for them, for me.

But she has her own story.

So everybody that we meet has got their own story.

M: Yes. Which therefore gives us more empathy for those people, perhaps that can be seen to be criticising or telling us we're not doing it right.

C: Yes. I have to remember sometimes that the reason I have the level of insight that I do is because of the journey that I've been on.

And if I went back 20 years, I didn't have that level of understanding either.

M: No.

C: I had a whole set of beliefs about how parenting worked.

M: And then you became a parent.

C: Yes.

M: I think there's a lot of us like that.

C: Definitely.

M: I remember seeing children in supermarkets having tantrums and thinking, goodness me, can't they control their child or whatever.

Whereas now I think, well, that child's having a really bad time.

So I often just try and catch the eye of the mum, give them some moral support.

Because often they just need to stand and wait it out sometimes.

Or they need to get on the floor with the child or whatever, because we don't know what's happening.

So I feel a lot more empathy for parents in that situation than I thought I was quite empathetic, but I wasn't as empathetic as I feel perhaps now.

And I'm always thinking, what's the backstory? What's going on?

If you see a two year old having a tantrum, you think, well, that's part of the cause.

But if they're bigger, I'm sort of thinking it's like,

C: what's going on?

There'll be something going on.

And this is difficult anyway.

Oh, and it is such a gift when you're out and about and you occasionally meet people who have that level of empathy.

There was an occasion when we were in a phase of school refusal and I was trying to get one of mine to school and I'd managed to get him in the car.

And then we were driving along the road towards some traffic lights and we had stopped briefly.

And then he basically opened the car door and stuck his legs out.

So we're stuck at these traffic lights and I'm thinking, oh no.

And I saw somebody catch my eye and I averted my gaze because I just thought, oh no.

We were stuck. I mean, we were stuck for quite a little while because he was not going to put his legs back in and I couldn't, like I can't drive the car with your legs sticking out.

She went and she parked up and she came and found us and came and had a chat with my son and offered him a shiny pound coin if he would put his legs in, put his seatbelt on for mum.

And because she was new and it was a bit of surprise and she was gentle, he actually complied, offered money.

Yes, he complied.

I wouldn't have managed to get that response, but sometimes somebody else will.

And I can't tell you how grateful I was that somebody had seen us, had not judged me or us, had accepted the situation, had obviously been curious about it enough to stop her car, to walk around and to interact, which is really, really precious.

And as we were driving off, she said it transpired that she had a couple of kids with autism.

So she understood it. She absolutely got it.

And what she'd done might not have worked.

M: No.

C: But the fact that she had non-judgmentally come,

M: it was supportive of you.And that perhaps would have helped reset the situation anyway, because you felt seen. You were seen, weren't you?

C: Yes.

Which is so important.

It is.

M: It is.

C: And that is what God gives us.

M: Yeah.

C: That sense of being seen.

M: Yeah.

C: And accepted, not just in the moment, but also fundamentally as people, which is the other end of the acceptance.

It's not just about being accepted in this moment with what's happening. It's also that deep sense of belonging and acceptance that I think is deeply precious.

And quite often, particularly if we have children who've experienced early life trauma, for whatever reason, quite often they have a sense of shame about who they are.

M: Yeah. And very low self-esteem.

C: Yes. Yeah. And the gentle slow work of personal acceptance will gradually heal and shift that.

M: Yes.

C: And that is what God offers us.

M: Yeah. And the healing of past relationships, thinking of our children and the broken relationships that they have, is the reason why they are who they are.

C: Yeah.

M: But the healing comes within relationship, in new relationships, relationship with their, for us, for our adopted kids, for their adoptive parents and the people around them.

That's where the healing comes from.

So in a sense, the difficulties come from not good relationships, but the healing has to come from relationship.

C: Absolutely it does. Absolutely it does.

And that's what we are offered by God, which is incredible.

M: Yeah.

C: There's a bit in Ephesians where we're told that we were chosen before the foundation of the world.

What that reminds me is that I don't need to do anything to be accepted and to be welcomed and to know that I belong.

I didn't even need to exist.

So whenever I'm tempted to think...

M: That puts it into perspective, doesn't it?

C: It does. It does. Absolutely.

So when I'm tempted to think I'll be acceptable if I've read my Bible more, or if I'm praying more, if I'm being a bit more enthusiastic, or I'm serving the community more, if I just get my act together, no, I'm already welcome.

M: Yes.

It's all about going back to relationship, that God wanted a relationship with us.

And that's why we've got free will. And people say, "Well, why didn't he just make us do what we should be doing?" It's because he wanted a relationship with us.

And out of that relationship come all those things that you just mentioned, that we want to learn more about God. So we want to read the Bible. We want to pray because we want to learn. We want to build our relationship with God.

So all those good works come out of our relationship with God, but they don't make our relationship with God.

C: No.

And if, as a spiritual director, I am quite often working with people who are going through a season where some of those things just aren't working for them for some reason, there is something about what's happening, it might be that they're going through a phase where reading the Bible is just incredibly painful.

It might be triggering stuff.

And if you kind of think, "Well, my relationship with God is dependent on this thing."

M: Yeah, that's going to make it even worse, isn't it?

C: That's not going to help.

Whereas actually, if you can say, "I can lay that down because I know I'm already accepted and loved."

There'll be time to come back to that.

But in this moment, when it's not helping, I don't need to try and push through. I can know that I am welcomed and accepted. And there will be other ways to connect with the divine. It doesn't have to be this one just now.

And gradually, what happens for us is that we continue as we grow in that sense of belonging and acceptance and being held in the love of God just as we are, then we do, as you say, we do grow.

M: Yeah, we grow and we want to do things out of that relationship, not to make that relationship.

C: Yes, which is completely different.

M: Yes, it's completely different.

And then you don't then have the guilt that you're not doing stuff, but out of relation to any relationship, you want to do stuff for each other, because that's part of a healthy relationship.

C: Yes, yeah.

M: And it's not one, well, in a sense, our relationship with God is hugely one-sided in one sense, because God is God.

And He loves us that much that actually there's nothing we can do to make Him love us anymore.

So it is one-sided in that sense.

But it is a relationship and relationship goes both ways.

And so important for everything, for us with God, for us with our partners, with our kids, people we bump into in the street, relationships are life to us as humans.

C: Yeah.

In my spiritual life over the years, what's been really precious is that the thing that has grown is that sense that I am accepted completely as I am.

M: Yeah.

C: And that sense that God doesn't just love me because He's contractually obliged. But there is a real welcome and an inclusion.

If you think about the trinity of God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, that that is an eternal community of love into which we are invited.

So when Jesus uses the metaphor of being married to His people, effectively we are being welcomed and invited to be family within the love of the community of the trinity that has existed for all time.

And I can't think of a deeper sense of acceptance and belonging and inclusion than that, that that love that God has within God, that's been perfect and for always also has this kind of expansive welcoming us in, which is just immense and incredible.

I don't think we absolutely get to grips with the degree to which we are accepted and loved and included in this lifetime at all.

But the more that that truth settles within us, the more we are able to offer that acceptance to ourselves.

M: Yes. And to others.

C: And then to others. Yeah.

And to the people around us, because there isn't that sense that there is anything within us that will have us excluded. We are already included in, we are already welcome.

M: But beginning to understand that helps us to build our self-confidence in ourselves so that when we are being curious and accepting of our kids, we can be confident in the way we are parenting our kids.

Because sometimes, you know, your boys jumping in muddy puddles and you are allowing them to do that can be seen as permissive or not, you know, where are the borders, where are the consequences and all the rest of it.

But actually you understood because you've been curious and accepting of your kids, you understood what they needed at that point.

C: Yeah.

M: And therefore you had the confidence to allow them to do that.

C: Yeah, absolutely. And it's a very small example. I can tell you there have been, and we know that there have been many more, many more complicated, serious things.

I gave the example in the last conversation that we had of the day when my, one of my kids was hurling stones up at the window of the other and understanding that he was dysregulated and then being playful about that and finding a way of redirection.

M: Yes, yes.

C: Yeah.

And it is interesting the ripples that kind of come from our acceptance of what's going on with our kids or that woman who came to find us. I was just incredible. There was a deep acceptance there.

There was an occasion, and I don't know if I've shared this before, but there was an occasion when I was running a conference on a course that I'd written at a Christian retreat center.

I was doing it single-handed and because there was just me and the kids, I needed to take them with me. And we ended up in the situation where there's a group of kind of 40 or 50 people who I'm leading through this kind of week of retreat.

And my two boys who were behaving in ways that were not necessarily socially acceptable. And at one point, one of them was skimming stones through this open set of French windows onto a kind of a marble floor in the pool room.

I was like, "Oh my life."

And there was a guy sort of in his sixties, probably sat outside and I kind of thought, "Oh my goodness, I'm going to look like the most irresponsible parent."

But I knew that I needed to approach that, not with a, "Do not be throwing stones into the building."

But I needed to have some empathy and some curiosity and some acceptance of, "Okay, so this is what is helping my son at the moment." So let's redirect that."

And then we ended up both together throwing stones into a hedge that got a big field behind it. It wasn't going to harm anybody.

But what was interesting was that despite the fact that I was in that situation feeling very shamed in some ways by the fact that there were these people who were looking up to me as the
M: course leader.

C: Course leader, yes, but what was really interesting is that a few days later, he had a conversation with me and he spoke about just how helpful witnessing that scenario had been because his daughter and her husband had got some adopted kids who they were trying to work out how to parent them.

And he said that he'd been really judgmental of what had been going on.

But because he had seen me with mine and knew a little bit about their background and what was going on, it helped him to have a completely different view of what was going on within his own family, which is absolutely God's grace because that felt like a quite a hairy moment.

M: It's the swan going over the pond with the feet going really fast underneath, isn't it?

Trying to keep calm. I'm trying to salvage the situation while keeping control of what's going on.

It's hard work, isn't it?

Doing all that.

But what an amazing result and what a gift to his family.

He'd have gone back and said, "Oh, actually, I get it now."

C: And I can see why you're doing what you're doing.

And I have seen this work because it kind of did.

I had maintained a connection with my son, but that was starting with the acceptance of he's, for some reason, he's needing to hold.

M: Yes, he's needing your attention at that point, probably.

C: And there was a sensory need to kind of hold these stones.

So the sensory need is there.

If I'm accepting that, what can we, if I'm accepting that, I wonder if we can gently, in the context of an accepting warm relationship, redirect that.

And that turned out to be feasible.

Whereas if I had just tried to say, "Don't stop."

M: you'd have had rocks coming through the windows, they'd have got bigger.

C: Yes, absolutely.

And the whole thing would have escalated and it wouldn't have been successful.

M: Yeah, we've been there. It's having the confidence to do what we do to parent how our children need us to parent.

C: Yes. And you only understand what that is if you start from that perspective of you are loved and accepted and I am loved and accepted.

And that gives us the emotional mental space to say, "Okay, whatever's going on now is just what's going on now."

And then we can observe and see, so why is this person breaking the roof? Well, because they've got a friend who needs Jesus. Whereas if you start with the "Please do not allow the breaking of roofs." None of that would have happened.

M: Yeah.

C: I think we've probably covered that.

So thank you very much Margaret for your time today.

M: That's been really good.

C: Thank you.

M: It was great to actually chat about the things that we're doing all the time.

C: Yeah.

And if people are interested in finding out more about the course that we've been doing, then you can get in touch with me either through the Loved Called Gifted Facebook page or you could email it's lovedcalledgifted@gmail.com and we will be running more courses we think or you might want to know more about what we're up to.

All right.

M: Thank you very much.

C: Thank you.

Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Loved Called Gifted podcast.

If you'd like to get in touch, you can email lovedcalledgifted@gmail.com.

You can find a transcript of this podcast at lovedcalledgifted.com and that's also the place to go if you're interested in the Loved Called Gifted course or if you'd like to find out about spiritual direction or coaching.

Thank you for listening.