This is something that my T and I were just recently talking about.

When I was 4, I stopped walking. I crawled everywhere and said my legs didn't work. My parents had to take me to the doctor, and when the doctor said I was fine, I had to walk out of there.

This was shortly after I had started being SA by a family "friend".

T was saying how I was CLEARLY trying to say "something is wrong, somebody help me", but living in an abusive home, I was too scared to speak up. Crawling was all my 4 y/o self could come up with.

I have these little cards that I ordered online, and each one has a gentle reminder on it about parenting our children with respect. One of the cards says "Listen...what is your child trying to tell you?". T loves it.

I always try to pay attention to the message behind what my kids are saying/doing. Sometimes I think they're just not mature enough yet to know how to express their wants/needs with words. I am literally teaching them how to use words to express themselves. So, for example, my youngest son is sometimes sleepy at bedtime and wants me to brush his teeth for him. He used to wander around saying "I'm too TIRED to brush my teeth" and sort of moaning and groaning. Once I figured out what was going on, I told him that he can just ask me to brush his teeth for him, and I will. Now, he simply says "Mom, will you brush my teeth?" and I do it. He says what he needs and his needs are met. It's a little thing, but I'm hoping if they can learn it with lots and lots of little things, they'll have the skills they need when big things come up.

I've ONLY started doing this since being in therapy, because before I was in therapy, I literally had no idea how to express my needs or ask to have them met. Or even to identify them, really. Learning to ask to have my needs met is really one of the greatest gifts therapy has given me...I'm so glad my kids can learn this as children.