When Your Kid Begs to Be Rescued
How I handled a difficult Sunday night phone call.
Today I’m going to share the story of something that happened this weekend with my 8-year-old. I’m doing this because I know, from your feedback, that you like it when I share how I think through and manage challenging parenting situations.
HOWEVER.
It’s crucial that you also know that 1) Every kid is different, and what works or makes sense for my kid may not work or make sense for yours, and 2) There is no “one right way” to handle a situation as a parent. Not even close. There are many constructive ways to handle every parenting situation.
Still, I know specific vignettes can be helpful, so here goes. Here’s what I did when my 8-year-old begged me to pick her up from a birthday slumber party.
This past Sunday — Monday was a school holiday — both of my kids attended slumber parties. (Those nights are rare parenting gems.) My son went to a close friend’s house. My daughter attended a party hosted by a girl on her soccer team, whom she had met for the first time just over a month ago when she joined the team.
The birthday girl, who is lovely and whom I’ll call Eve, is a grade above my daughter and attends a different school. For her party, there was a large (30+ kids, I think?) afternoon/evening celebration and then anyone who wanted to could sleep over. My daughter REALLY wanted to stay over, so I said yes, okay, sure. But part of me worried on her behalf, for several reasons.
First, my daughter has never been a party person. She has always preferred small, intimate get-togethers with people she knows well. At big parties, she is often slow to warm up and feels socially overwhelmed (and has been known to hide behind plants). I wasn’t sure if she would know anyone at this party very well, and the slumber party aspect made me nervous too — she hasn’t attended many sleepovers, and she was going to be among the youngest (if not the youngest) kid there.
But I bit my tongue and said sure, she could sleep over if she wanted to. One of many tough things about being a parent is that although you know your child’s temperament and past experiences very well, you also have to recognize that kids are always changing and that it’s easy to underestimate what they can handle.
When we drove to the party at 4pm — her house was 25 minutes away from our house — a handful of other girls were arriving at the same time. I could tell that my daughter didn’t recognize anyone, and she had a deer-in-headlights look of terror on her face. Nevertheless, she bravely said goodbye to me and walked inside with her sleeping bag and pillow, and I got back in the car thinking Oh boy, I hope this goes okay. The girl’s mom, who is also my daughter’s soccer coach, reassured me that she would text or call if there were any problems.
Fast forward to 9:15pm, and lo and behold, my phone rang. Cue all the feelings of panic. It was the mom, and she told me that my daughter was upset. My daughter had announced that she wanted to go to bed and then tried to sleep on the downstairs couch, but the other girls were still up and running around. Frustrated and tired, my daughter started sobbing and asking to go home. The mom said she’d suggested that my daughter go upstairs and sleep in Eve’s empty bedroom, but my daughter had declined. Then, the mom called me.
I asked the mom if I could talk to my daughter on the phone. I could immediately tell from my kid’s voice that she was exhausted. She was bawling and saying “Can you come get me Mommy? I just want to go to home and go to sleep.” My heart melted into a puddle. I wanted to drop everything and jump in my car and drive 80 the whole way so I could bring her back home and hold her and tell her everything was okay.
But as I tried to compose myself and tap into my rational brain, I recognized several things. First, picking her up wouldn’t solve the immediate problem. My daughter was tired and desperately wanted to go to sleep, but if I drove to pick her up, it would be a full hour before she would be able to climb into her own bed. Put another way, what she was asking for wasn’t actually a great solution to the problem at hand. I also sensed that she wasn’t having a terrible time at the party — she wasn’t saying “I’m not having fun” or “The girls aren’t being nice to me,” and nothing about the conversation made me worry about her well-being. It was just that she was tired, and she wanted to go to sleep.
I also realized that there was potential here for resilience-building. It might be possible to problem-solve and help my daughter through the situation, rather than rescue her from the situation, and that could be powerful and have ramifications for the future. My daughter had stepped outside her comfort zone to attend this party, and I was proud of her for that. If we could solve her issues so she could get through it and maybe even look back on it fondly, that would be empowering, and she’d be more likely to step outside her comfort zone again in the future.
On the flip side, if I drove to get her, the experience could be deflating. My daughter might think, I tried to go to a sleepover but couldn’t handle it and Mom had to get me. Maybe I should stop going to sleepovers/birthday parties/scary things altogether. As parents, we often focus more on the short-term problems (our kids’ feelings in the moment, and how uncomfortable they make us) at the expense of longer-term problems (not letting kids experience discomfort, which undermines their resilience).
I knew, too, that there was science backing up this idea. For instance, research shows that kids have mixed feelings about their parents’ meddling and rescuing — on the one hand, kids know we do it because we care, but on the other hand, kids say that it makes them feel incompetent. Some research suggests that children of over-involved parents — such as those who constantly rescue their kids from challenges — suffer more mental health struggles in early adulthood, in part because they haven’t been given much of an opportunity to learn how to cope with challenging situations. When we always save our kids when they are upset or facing a challenge, we send them the message that they can’t handle it or they shouldn’t have to handle it. We also rob them of the opportunity to figure out how to handle it, and to come out the other side realizing that they did, in fact, successfully handle it.
There was, of course, another possibility: I would convince her to stay, and she would have a horrible experience and never want to attend a sleepover again and possibly lose trust in me. This was a scary possibility! I did not want this to happen! Given that her feelings seemed to revolve around wanting to sleep, and not how the party was going otherwise, I thought this was unlikely. Still, the fact was that every choice came with potential risks. Rescuing her posed risks, and not rescuing her posed risks. This was not an easy decision.
Based on my quick assessments, I decided to try to problem-solve with her — although I knew that a lot hinged on how the conversation went. Here’s a rough transcript of what was said as I remember it:
Me: Sweetie, I hear that you are tired and you want me to get you. And I can. But I also wonder if we can find another solution. Eve’s mom said you don’t want to sleep in the upstairs bedroom. Why is that?
8yo: I just don’t want to. [Note that my daughter is a bit of a germophobe — thanks, Covid! — so I suspected she was nervous about sleeping under someone else’s used covers.]
Me: Well, you don’t have to sleep under her covers. You could sleep in your sleeping bag on top of the bed, but then at least it would be quiet and you could go to sleep.
8yo: Oh. I guess.
Me: Do you think you could try that? Try going to sleep in the bedroom and see if you can fall asleep? And if you can’t, you can let Eve’s mom know and I can come get you.
8yo: Okay. Okay mommy, yes. You don’t have to get me. I’ll try to do that.
Me: I love you sweetie, and I’ll see you in the morning, okay? Can you pass the phone back to Eve’s mom?
8yo: Okay mommy, I love you.
I was pleased that she seemed open to my suggestion — it felt like I’d made the right choice. I then chatted briefly with the mom and explained our plan and told her that I could absolutely drive over to get her if this didn’t work out. She agreed.
Still, after we hung up, I’ll be perfectly honest: I started having panicky mom guilt feelings. Did I only convince her to stay so that I didn’t have to drive there? Was I being a lazy and terrible mom? But took some deep breaths. I knew, deep down, that if the upstairs bedroom solution worked, it would help my daughter sleep more, and, assuming she was otherwise having fun, she could ultimately have a positive sleepover experience. She would be rewarded for having stepped outside of her comfort zone.
A few minutes later I got an update via text from the mom. My daughter was in the upstairs bed with the door closed and seemed totally fine. I reiterated to the mom to please call me if there were any more issues and I could drive over immediately to get her. But alas, thank goodness, I didn’t hear anything from her after that.
When I picked my daughter up on Monday morning, she was happy, seemed rested, and she said she had a great time. I told her I was proud of her for staying, and she said she was glad she had because the morning was really fun.
Now, when I zoom out and think about the situation, I am struck by the realization that parenting is really hard in part because our instincts often conflict. Some instincts were telling me she was okay, and she could get through this, and that doing so would be good for her. Other instincts were yelling at me to rescue her and that I was being a bad mom for not jumping in the car immediately.
It can be very hard to know which of those voices to listen to in the moment. I had the benefit of having read a lot about resilience, and I felt fairly confident that sleep was the central issue, and not something else (i.e. she was not being bullied or mistreated in any way — if I’d gotten the sense she was, I’m quite sure I would have jumped in the car immediately). Still, if you get nothing else from this anecdote, remember that even people who have written parenting books are constantly second-guessing themselves and wondering if they’re making the right call. Parenting is the hardest job in the world.
Related posts:
Do you ever feel anxious after a couple of drinks? In last week’s Well newsletter for The New York Times, I explored the science behind “hang-xiety.” Read it here.
I just learned from my publisher that my paperback is going into a second printing! I’m so excited!
Thanks for sharing this! I love these real-life scenarios. My “rescue” instinct as a mother is strong, so it’s helpful to play out something like this. Such a good reminder that so much of parenting is detective work! The problem that presents is often not the *actual* problem, and it takes so much patience and groundedness and knowing of our individual kid to dig down to that root level.