We were on our way somewhere with Gabriel in the pushchair and his baby sister in the carrier when he suddenly started crying.
So I stopped.
He was completely upset and could no longer really explain what was wrong. He cried and simply kept repeating:
The problem was that we genuinely had to keep going. When a child is too overwhelmed to hear our explanations, adding more explanations does not necessarily help.
I could have explained why. Where we were going. Why we could not stay there.
But in that moment, I could see that my explanations were going nowhere.
So I made up something ridiculous.
He looked at me.
And since I had managed to catch his attention for two seconds, I carried on.
It was obviously not an ordinary unicorn.
It was slightly prickly, with a glittery mane and a horn that fired lasers.
And this unicorn was absolutely determined to take us where we needed to go.
The more ridiculous the story became, the more something shifted.
Gabriel was still crying, but he was listening.
Then the crying became less frequent.
And finally:
So I did.
I added increasingly unlikely details. The unicorn became completely absurd.
And Gabriel began to smile.
A few minutes later, we were still moving in exactly the same direction.
The boundary had not changed.
But we were no longer fighting each other.
We were in the same story.
When explanations stop working
I do not know exactly what had upset him so much that day.
And I was not trying to make the feeling disappear with a story.
I simply sensed that my explanations could no longer reach him.
But play still could.
The first mention of the “magic unicorn” created a tiny hesitation in the middle of the tears.
Then a “why?”
Then curiosity about what came next.
Little by little, curiosity made a little room beside the emotion.
And that was enough to reconnect us.
Stepping into their world for a few minutes
That day, I did not need to convince Gabriel so we could keep moving.
I could simply step into his world for a few minutes.
It certainly will not work every time. But that time, play helped us move through the moment differently without turning the limit into a power struggle.
All thanks to a unicorn that fired lasers.
