Marriage Under Pressure: Pediatric Trauma & The Emotional Fallout

When your 6-year-old son is facing brain surgery, the medical anxiety can completely consume you. In this episode of The Parent Tap, Women's Health Nurse Practitioner Constance Lewis breaks down the darkest realities of pediatric recovery and how to stop medical trauma from destroying your family's foundation.

We decode the critical difference between a bratty toddler tantrum and a complete nervous system overload. Constance explains how her daughter's severe meltdowns were actually a cry for emotional connection while navigating their son's severe seizure disorder, and she shares her exact blueprint for responding without standard punishments.

To solve this communication breakdown, Constance and her husband, a pediatric dentist, developed a visual, color-coded framework to help children process complex emotions. This system evolved into her essential children's books, Miles and the Colorful Capes of Feelings and Mariah and the Colorful Tutus of Feelings.

Link to Constance's Books & Resources: https://colorfulcapesoffeelings.com

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Transcript

The Darkest Moment: Waiting During Brain Surgery

SPEAKER_00 0:09

See you and we couldn't go back. And I'm like, there's a problem, there's a problem. I knew something was wrong, and I kept asking. They're hey, they're not ready to see you yet. They're not ready to see you. I'm like, there something is wrong. I knew, I just had a feeling. And they're like, oh, we just couldn't get his IV line flush. Okay, but why couldn't I come back?

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Constance Lewis, thank you for joining the show. I appreciate it. Constance, you and your husband are both in healthcare. You know the clinical side. But when your six-year-old son Miles was facing brain surgery, you were the mother, not the nurse. What is the darkest psychological reality of pediatric recovery that the hospital system completely fails to warn parents about?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yes, what a great question. Because as a nurse, I know when a patient goes in for surgery or is having a procedure or is actually in there. I've been in there before witnessing it this that okay, everything is going good. Oh, a little complication, but maybe it'll take a little bit longer. And when your own child is back there, the clock is ticking extremely slow. Like every second, every minute, every hour is just torture because you in your mind they go back and they have medicine and they go to sleep and and all those things, but you're like, well, this can happen and this can happen. And so I think healthcare providers don't necessarily explain to the parent you're gonna feel every second, every minute, every hour of this procedure until you can physically see your child, right? And he was taken up to the ICU after the surgery or getting updated as he's out, he's in recovery, or now he's in the ICU. But we were in the and waiting for him for at least over an hour in the waiting room for ICU and we couldn't go back. And I'm like, there's a problem, there's a problem. I knew something was wrong. And I kept asking, ready to see you? Yeah, they're not ready to see you. I'm like, something is wrong. I knew I just had a feeling. And they're like, oh, we just couldn't get his IV line flush. Okay, but why couldn't I come back and see my son for that? Like, that's something simple and ridiculous. But in their minds, they didn't really think, oh, she's panicking back there because she knows something is wrong. And I feel it. I'm a very internally, energetically feeling person with my children and I connect them like with them that way. And I just knew I think in medicine we have to realize when we're on that side of it, that these parents are counting every second and every minute and every hour, and just at least updating them and saying to them, like, he is fine, he is alive, he's doing beautiful, everything is happening perfectly. We just need a few more minutes to do A, B, or C. So I think that was one of the darkest moments sitting in that waiting room with my husband and my mom and my six-month, eight-month-old baby at the time, just like waiting and waiting, and an hour goes by. We're still not called back. We know he's in the room, and two hours goes by. Why aren't we in there? I feel like that was probably the hardest moment in my life. Um, going back to that.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Oh my goodness, that has to have felt like a lifetime. Like that just has to be an enormous amount of weight. And I putting myself in your shoes for just a second in my head, because I'm thinking about this. I have two toddlers right now. How incredibly tough that must have been. And but I'm sure it also gave you a better perspective on the communication aspects you need to have in that profession, right? Because on the other side of that, there are real parents, right? And maybe that really just it just feels like it maybe have given you a little bit of a perspective shift, or maybe just like opening up to like what parents actually need, because I could feel how the updates or not letting you go back would just be like the worst thing in the world.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Yeah, because you just want to see your child at that point, like after brain surgery, for goodness sakes. And brought it so now what happened post that is that I help other moms and dads when their their child is going through some sort of procedure situation or medical condition. I'm able to even just calm them in the moment. Okay, this is what's probably happening and this is what we see, and just giving them some relief in the moment. I think that that's my education and my learning journey that came out of that. And for my husband, he does surgeries once a month for dental surgery on children. For him, the same thing. Sometimes it takes them forever to get the kid intubated or whatever the complication is, he's like, Oh, I need to just make sure I'm updating them very regularly so that they're not feeling that scare.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Yeah, that anxiety has to just be overwhelming for those parents. So parents watching this dealing with their own kids' chronic illnesses or maybe similar situations to what you just explained. How do you

Stopping Medical Anxiety From Consuming You

SPEAKER_01 4:40

stop the medical anxiety from completely consuming your identity as a parent?

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Yeah, that is really hard. And I'm still trying to learn this, even post everything, even post no seizures for almost two years. I mean, he had his brain surgery two years ago in May. And so still the trauma and the anxiety comes up inside, and I think it's just really hard. And what's helped me is just staying grounded and present through nature or meditation. Honestly, if I have to be really truly honest with you, in those moments in the hospital when I was losing it while I was waiting for him in surgery, my husband and I were like, let's just go outside. And we would go out to the beautiful campus and I would touch the trees and I would put my feet in the grass and I would look up to the sky and I would just take deep breaths. Something that would ground me in the moment that gave me some tangibility through touch, but also senses of smelling and sight through seeing beautiful skies and just through meditation and prayer of whoever you believe in, whether the creator, God, whatever you believe in, just like some sort of using those senses that we have in our human body to really calm my nervous system. And I still have to do it even today, thinking about the nights he would with a morning he woke up and he was seizing and he wasn't breathing and we had to call 911. There's all these situations that my mind keeps going back to sometimes, and it triggers that response, and I just go outside or I do something that makes me feel connected again to my body.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Sure, yeah, it could totally consume you. And even as a parent, kids are not going through that. My anxiety can put that situation in my or that scenario in my head, and I can I can run through a million what if possibilities for some reason. And so I think that's a great tip and strategy for parents is like get outside, go for a walk, like whatever you need to do to get out of your head, because when you're in that space, it's just it's it's it's a spiral. So self-destructive, yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

It is, and being not only a mom, and not that dads don't do this too, but but also being a nurse, I I've seen a lot of really not great things happen. And so my mind automatically just goes to the worst scenario you could ever imagine in any situation, like which is death, obviously, for a parent from a child. And so it's like, how do you stop that spiral, which is really hard to do in the moment, is because really you have to catch yourself in it.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm I'm wired the same way, so it's always worst case scenario in my head because I'm really trying to, I think deep down I'm really trying to just prevent that. And so I'm thinking like, okay, if this is worst case scenario, how do we like how do we put the safeguards on this? And really, obviously, some of this stuff is out of our control, which it makes it even harder. It's just I mean, your strain through all of this is really just gonna be so inspirational, I think, for everyone listening and going through something similar now or maybe even in the future, because you never know what life life's gonna throw at us. So while you were dealing with the seizures and surgeries, your middle daughter Mariah was having severe emotional meltdowns. Yeah. So most parents see a kid screaming and assume it's a discipline issue. You realized it was a nervous system issue. So, what is the

Tantrums vs. Nervous System Overload

SPEAKER_01 7:56

exact difference between a bratty tantrum and a nervous system overload?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

I really own this question because it actually took me a really long time to understand that's what was happening with her. And I was like, oh, this is God, I'd love her and her if she ever listens to this episode in her life. Like, I that I thought, like, why is she, why does she need this attention? She's be and I was that same child growing up. I was wanted to be the center of attention. I was like, me, me, me, it's about me. And why aren't you paying attention to me? So I saw that in her, and I'm like, oh, she's gonna be like that. And isn't that so annoying? I was so annoying because I looked back on videos of myself and I'm like, I'm so annoying. Like, come on, get it together. And so then I realized, holy moly, this this poor child. And even to this day, her asking for help with her emotions and her nervous system always shows up in a defiance or a tantrum. It just happened this morning where she didn't want to go to school and she was like, I'm not putting on my clothes and I'm not getting dressed. I'm like, what is happening? And then she's like, I have a test today. Finally, it came out. And she's in kindergarten. And the teacher's like, I hate saying it's a test. It's like a whole thing, but it's like, oh my gosh, like there's a reason for her. And she doesn't tell you where my son is like, I feel like this, and this is how I feel, and this is why I feel this way. And hers is like, oh, guess what? You gotta figure it out on your own. And then so you're right. I think I honestly believe that in most situations, I would say 80%. I don't have a study on this, but 80% of children that have these big emotional outbursts or big tantrums is something that need that's not being met at the physical level or the emotional level. And for her, it was I just had a newborn baby that was constantly on me, breastfeeding, and and that attention. Obviously, you have to give a newborn. And then I had this child who was having seizures every 10 to 14 days and having brain surgery, and she was just kind of caught in the middle. And it was, we were trying to give her the attention that she needed, but we were really just missing that emotional piece behind it because we didn't think we thought, oh, she's only three and three years old. There's not what can she even know about brain surgery and seizures? But really, it affected her tremendously. She felt our energy and she saw our worry and our stress. And and I think that once I realized that, it was like, oh, boom, mind blown. Let's try to go back and figure out how we can recover, repair, assist, help. And so that's been a learning journey as well. And so I think for a parent, instead of being annoyed like me or frustrated, just get curious. I say this all the time, get curious. Why do you first before you and it's hard before you have a strong emotion towards your child's tantrum or bow burst, get curious? Why are they acting like this? Is it a physical need that's not being met? Are they tired? Are they hungry? Are they overstimulated? Or is it an emotional need that's not being met? Did they was somebody mean to them at school and then they're coming home and you didn't know about that? And there's always usually an underlying reason that I think you could really go into before stressing yourself out by thinking, what is wrong with my kid and why are they a brat or having a tantrum, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yeah, absolutely. Any parent and having those at the same time, yeah, that middle child, I could see how they would feel like they're they're not getting as much mom or dad time or whatever. And so, yeah, I sometimes can see that in my daughter too, who's four, because we have a one-year-old, and the attention obviously shifted towards him for the last year and a half mostly because he's a baby. And so he needs it. He needs his milk and diaper every hour and all that stuff. And yeah, there's times where she acts out and we're just like, what is going on? And then yeah, I think getting down to the root of it, the underlying reason before reacting. I just had a sci child psychologist on yesterday, and so we talked about basically this whole thing. And it so it gives me like a great uh reminder of like what before I react, like try to think about like like you said, what's going on, what happened at school today, or what is she needing that she's not getting?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

And I think that if we go at a go at it at that approach, we're not just uh sending them to timeout or yelling at them.

How to Respond Without Punishing

SPEAKER_01 12:00

And that leads me into my next question. So instead of doing those standard punishments, like go to timeout or kind of raising your voice, what else, what else can we do? And then what damage are we actually doing to our kids if we we kind of apply those standard punishments to the to our child that just is kind of needing our attention?

SPEAKER_00 12:18

It's it's hard in the moment as a parent, obviously, because you just get overwhelmed and frustrated. And the natural tendency of a lot of people is to just like lose your ish or or yell or struggle or just like what is wrong with you? So it's it's I don't want anybody to feel guilty if if you've done that, because I've done that multiple times. But what my husband and I really try to do is we try to just get down on their level and and not use a lot of words. Because when a child is having a hard time, they aren't gonna hear you. They're not gonna hear anything really that you're saying. So I think just being in the moment with them and getting down on their level, and just I just do some deep breathing. I just take big, loud, aggressive, deep breaths because a lot of times, and sometimes they'll look over and they'll see me do that, and sometimes they'll model that and start to come down, and sometimes they won't. And that's okay. And I really try, it's rare that I raise my voice because I do understand that that's not going to get anywhere and it's just gonna make us both frustrated. So I really just kind of go inward and I think what, and it's actually you think of it in a way of maybe it's being selfish, but I think of it in a way of controlling my own nervous system, but I don't make it about them, I make it about how can I calm myself in this moment. And I go inward and I say, you need to take a deep breath. You need to sit on the floor. What can you do? And when you kind of put it back on yourself and not directly at them, on them, there's no projection of energy at them that pulls that energy away and they tend to deal with their own situation, but you're there, you're present with them, you're not leaving them alone to deal with their situation, but you're just not feeding into that energy. That's what we tend to do. And do I think that we damage our children? I think that long-term punishment of negative consequences over a long period of time can generate certain qualities in a child as an adult, but I don't think it's necessarily damaging. And I think the recovery is what is the most important thing because we are human and we are gonna really mess up a lot, and I do all the time. I'm just like, oh, I wish I wouldn't have said that that way. And but it's the recovery is where you're gonna really make up for that. So the incident happened. How can you recover? You you say sorry, don't be afraid to say sorry to your child. That's a really big one. That build that connection. And we do it through a lot of times through art and color, and that's where the book really came is that anytime we have a disagreement, the siblings have a disagreement, or we have a disagreement, or there's a tension, or whatever, we'll go back to art and play and color because you don't have to have used words for that, and you can just sit next to each other and you can say, Let's create a beautiful picture, or how do you feel together and let's draw it out, or some sort of play or art and color that really brings the connection back to play, and then later you can type say, Hey, I really I'm sorry for yelling, or I'm sorry for saying that in the moment mommy was feeling like this, and and show it with a picture and with with words and or play-doh, or anything that you can do with play with children is is what we do in our house.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

I love that because my my child is so she's so into that and the imagery of just like drawing out your emotions or constructing that through play-doh or whatever that they do as kids. She likes the magnetiles. I guess we could we could do something like that and just talk about it while we're building, right? Yeah. And get on their level and get down one-on-one and and really talk about our apologies. Because I know that as a parent, like I you were talking through that, raising your voice. I'm like, oh my god, like how many times have I done that in the last we had a one-year-old and we moved, and so we had a lot of stress last year and just like obviously a lot of regret there, but it's also like a great reflecting point and also a chance for us to smooth things over. And she's already bringing up like the Lego store this weekend. I'm like, oh man, I gotta make it up to her somehow because like this week has just been crazy and easy. That's that's kind of our thing is we we try to take our daughter out one-on-one, whether it's the store or whether it's the mall or car wash, she likes the car wash, so it's like something simple like that is just like and she she thinks she's so special when she gets the coffee dates with mom or the car wash with dad. It's it's just like, oh she feels special because it's it's just that one-on-one time with with the parent. And so she feels like she's getting what she needs at that point, maybe. I want to talk about briefly, and I don't want to like uh how did that affect your marriage with your husband like going through all that stress and pressure? Because I know when that happens, just personally for my own marriage, the seams start to start to show under that immense pressure. So I just want to know like, was there actual

Protecting Your Marriage Under Pressure

SPEAKER_01 16:47

like did you guys actually feel like you were at your breaking point at one point? And then also, like, how did it affect your your marriage overall?

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Yeah, I love that question because I don't think everybody's really asked me about that question, but how did I not crumble? And honestly, I did because I believe fully in allowing those emotions to come up and come through and release. And although I was living in a state of fight or flight for two years, when's the next seizure? When's the next seizure? And my nervous system got so overloaded. And so for the last two years, it's really just been about nervous system reset for me, and that's through personal self-growth. But I just allowed myself to really truly feel the feelings when at a point in time when I felt safe to do so with my husband or with myself or with my mother or with a friend because in the moment I was staying strong for my child and what was going through, and you just kind of that's a fight or flight situation where most parents just like they're going, going, going, and then there is going to be a point where you will crumble. And at that point, that's when you need to allow yourself to do so with full release and full walkthrough of those emotions. And then I think also, honestly, if I were to be truly deep, full and honest about that, having a newborn baby with all its love and joy really helped me stay afloat through this time. I think that Micah was born at the perfect timing for when I was going through this with Miles because he was the happiest, chillest baby. And the smiles, the love, the joy that he brought to our family, even with two Mariah and to Miles because they were so in love with him, really is what helped all of us kind of feel deeply and love more and be more grateful and just really get through that time. And for the second question, is that Andre and I have had a lot of challenges in our marriage because of infertility. It took us six years to get pregnant, and and that was rocky, shaking life, changing in our relationship and our growth. So we had that already as a challenge that we've kind of had to come through. And then also as having each child after that child comes, there's a regrowth of a marriage. And so I feel that the way that we had to really kind of reconnect and understand each other through communication was he had to understand that I had such PTSD and such anxiety about anything that happened to Miles, and I would say to him, Something is wrong and something is wrong. And he's the calm one. And he's like like tries to look at it very calmly, but then he had to realize I have to actually listen to her because something really is wrong, or is there something really wrong? It's always kind of uh the yen and yang of of both of our anxieties, and it tends to be more calm, and I'm the more anxious one, but then we really had to sit down and talk through our feelings about it because he's like, I don't understand why you keep flipping out about little things now with Miles, and I'm like, This is why, right? And then and then I'm like, why aren't you making it's a big deal and you're acting like it's not, right? Why? And so we really just sat down with a journal, and we actually still are doing this even now. We'll journal at nighttime before we go to sleep at least three or four times a week, things that are on our minds, and then sometimes we'll share that with each other. And I think sometimes writing it on paper is easier than saying it to the person we find sometimes, even though he's a love of my life, my soulmate, I can tell him anything. So we would write each other letters or we would just sit down and have conversations about it. And I think that's really important for parents to do who have any scary situation with the child or just within themselves is really the communication and coming back to the love that you had originally, because that's what's gonna carry you through.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah, I appreciate your answer there and and the authenticity of actually acknowledging that humans, we do ultimately have days or it just feels like it's hard to press on. And yeah, and also how you got through that and kept your marriage intact, and it seems like you even regrew it throughout throughout all this. And so there's something beautiful about that where it just feels like no matter what life throws at you, you can bounce back from it, you can be even stronger and you and you can grow your relationships with those that matter most to you. And I think that for me that's just real because I think as all parents, we can on some level relate to what you're going through. Obviously, like it's it's probably not the same, but it's also like we we understand the stress, we understand the pressure, anxieties, uh relationship dynamics. So I think some of it does apply, at least in my space, I I can understand a little bit of what you're of what you're talking about. So I appreciate that explanation. And so you didn't just survive this, you built a complete system

The Colorful Capes Book System

SPEAKER_01 21:29

to fix it, which led to your book, CAPES. On this show, we deal in action actionable systems. So explain the color-coded cape concept. What did the different colors actually represent in a child's brain?

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Great question. When I had a dream that I was meant to write a book, a children's book out of nowhere. And I wanted to take this purpose, this journey that I had learned, and turn it into something that could help others. My husband and I, and we thought, but not only just help parents, but help kids, help both, right? Because there's two people that there was the parent parental team, and then there was the child. And so we thought if we could do something, what would be the best way? And a lot of children love books, and and parents love reading books to their children, and they're like, oh, there's a there's a theme in this and there's a lesson in this. This is why I read the book to my kid. It's like a double whammy of getting two good things. And so we thought, how can we create this idea? And the idea came that these emotions should be felt, and there's a lot of emotions that come up in kids. And I think as adults, we tend to kind of brush the emotions off, or we kind of push them aside, or stuff them down, or not really deal with them because we just we're living in a fast-paced life, or we've been taught to do that as children. And children tend to have those emotions, but we see them as like those things as negative or weak, I guess, sometimes, and why do they have all these emotions? But we wanted to really bring that to light as an it's okay to have these feelings, and adults should have them too. There's constructive ways to express them, but yes, we want to have these feelings, and so if you don't have words and you can't really say how you feel, which even sometimes adults can't too, honestly, because they're confused inside, is if you pick a color that makes that resonates with how you feel, because children love color and they love brightness, and color resonates with people and feelings. If you look at a painting and it's black and dark and and blue, and how does that make you feel? Or if you look at a painting and it's colorful and bright and yellow, but makes the in and it might not be the way that other people feel that, right? So we thought if we can bring color to a book and feelings and colors and emotions together, that that was a really great idea for kids and parents. And we just used our son and his love of dressing up as a superhero and capes as the foundation, whereas Mariah's is tutus, and we allowed him to pick the colors of the of the the capes and what so we essentially I picked the emotion that would go along with the story, and I said, This is the emotion in the story, give me a color that this emotion represents, and he did that, and so that's how the book was made, and and same with Mariah. We allowed her to pick her colors and and what felt right to her and in that moment, and then that's how we connected the two so that parents can use colors for emotions as words as well as a parenting tool in their home.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

I love that, and I'll actually admire like that too. I usually dress in colors I feel, and it's kind of like I can totally connect with what you're saying. And Constance, thank you so much for not just sharing the trauma, but for actually giving us the blueprint to navigate through that. For everyone watching, the book is called and it's a mandatory tool if you are trying to decode your kids' nervous system.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

So the two books are on our website, Mariah and the Colorful, ww.colorfulcapes of feelings.com. And you can find everything there. The books, you can find we have free parenting resources and tool kits there. We even have a teacher lesson plan there. Getting ready to have one for Mariah's book, and lots of great information there. And then I have a Instagram page, although I am not very good at it. I'm getting better at it, but it's there. If that's your jam, you're an Instagram person, it's colorful underscore books feelings dot books. And you'll find me, it's there.