Kalki Koechlin talks parenting, therapy, and ‘pillow fights’

Mumbai (The Uttam Hindu): Actress Kalki Koechlin has stressed the importance of seeking support in parenting, sharing how therapy helped her and her partner navigate disagreements and better understand their child's needs.

Asked how her relationship with her partner Guy Hershberg evolved since becoming a parent, Kalki told IANS: “It's evolving all the time; it's still evolving. I think people don't emphasize enough how much parents need help and how parents should have access to that help. We're lucky enough, privileged enough, that we can afford a therapist or a psychologist.”

“There were times when we disagreed on how to raise our daughter, and we'd argue whether she needed to be punished in a certain way or face a specific consequence for a tantrum or whatever.”

(The Uttam Hindu):“We disagreed vehemently. Then, we went to see a child psychologist, and the child psychologist became the voice of our child, able to articulate what our child couldn't. It changed everything for us, especially during COVID, when we had to be teachers, parents, and everything else,” said the actress, who gave birth to her daughter Sappho in February 2020.

She talked about teaching children healthy emotional expression, such as channeling anger through activities like pillow fights, to foster early emotional regulation. Kalki went on to recall how her teenage brother was “really struggling.”

“I mean, at that time, my daughter had just been born, but I had my teenage brother staying with us, and we realized he was really struggling. One of the big tools our therapist gave us was a very simple one: the pillow fight,” added the actress.

“She said, 'If your kid is angry or frustrated—normally, a kid might come back from school with those feelings—and they want to throw something, or be rude, or hit, or bite, or be nasty to a sibling, you can say, ‘Okay, I see you have big feelings. Let's have it out with a pillow fight.’ And you set rules, like don't hit the face, or whatever. It just gets that energy out of them'.”

Kalki said they need self-regulation; they need to learn self-regulation.

“Most of the time, we just tell them, 'It's not nice. Don't be angry. Don't be aggressive. These are bad behaviors.' But actually, if they suppress it, they're still feeling that anger inside, and then it comes out in a random, unpredictable way,” said the actress, who has been an active supporter of the P&G Shiksha campaign.

She added, “So, allowing them to feel those big feelings, letting them be angry, but letting them channel it in a good way—like today, as an adult, you might go on a jog if you're feeling angry, thinking, 'I need to let the steam out,' right? You literally have to let the steam out and go on a jog. That self-regulation needs to be taught early on.”