Feelings are always real

​So the way a baby's brain develops - when a baby is born they are all feelings. No baby comes into the world asking what's for dinner. But they will come into the world with a feeling that is hunger.

A baby doesn't know it's hunger. That part of the brain isn't there yet. They just know it feels bad. So they cry.

Hunger is one of the very first feelings a baby experiences and expresses. Sometimes quite loudly. Sometimes at inconvenient times.

But for a mom or a caregiver, it's their first chance to help a human navigate their feelings.

I don't know of many moms who scold the baby for crying - they don't try to correct the feeling in that moment. It's just a baby. Most caregivers understand the nature of these feelings. So they meet the baby there. They meet them there to understand their struggle. And by understanding the struggle, they are better equipped to provide care.

A baby's brain starts to develop in response to this pattern. Feelings arise. Someone shows up to meet the baby in the feelings - not with judgment but with nurture and compassion. Nurture and compassion become the fertile growing grounds for relationship. For communication. For learning.

For love.

Too often, for a host of reasons, as the baby grows, caregivers can grow impatient with the dance - this dance of feelings and nurturing. The only dance a baby's brain has ever known. Caregivers arrive into feelings wanting to fix the feelings and not understand them. They want a child to manage their feelings, not express them.

Where as at one time the feelings were necessary to understanding a baby and their needs, they were critical for a loving relationship, feelings are suddenly perceived as something that stands in the way.

Feelings are a hurdle. An obstacle.

A child's brain has a very difficult time responding to this new dance. A child suddenly has to start judging their own feelings. Is this one real. Is this one good or bad, right or wrong. If they can express the right feelings, the relationship will go beter. Because every child is longing for a better relationship.

Every child is longing love.

For a child, this gets exhausting. Many children will do away with feelings all together. They will find ways to numb them. Others will simply pick one and go with it - often sadness or anger.

Alot of children will carry this dance into adult relationships. Feelings are obstacles to a better relationship, so they refuse to have them, or they pick one and go with it.

The beautiful thing is - the hope - the wiring of that original dance remains in us all. To some degree, whether we know it or not, we are all waiting for someone to meet us in the feelings, to understand them - not correct them.

When someone does, it's a beautiful thing - to return to that first dance. The baby dance. A dance we somehow never forget.

Too many of us are missing that chance.

We miss it when we judge feelings without trying to understand them.

We miss it when we try to circumvent each others' feelings instead of diving into them.

We miss it when we decide feelings hide a human and not introduce them.

No matter how hard we try, though, feelings are real. And it's vital to us all to understand that when we relate to one another.

Not just to our children. But to one another. It's the dance we were all wired for.

It's love.