How do you react when your child is upset? Do you always try to cheer them up?
Psychotherapist Amy Morin says that parents shouldn’t try to fix their children’s emotions and feelings. Instead, you should offer support while letting them know that it’s okay to feel upset.
Here’s why parents need to allow their children to feel upset sometimes.
Mentally Strong Parents Don’t “Fix” Their Children’s Emotions
A temptation Morin warns against is the urge to cheer up your child whenever they feel sad or hurt. This is important because, much like children need to learn how to cope with physical pain and risk, they also need to develop the skills to handle their painful feelings. Therefore, it’s important to let them experience and learn to cope with a wide variety of emotions, from frustration and embarrassment to boredom to grief.
So, instead of trying to make your child feel better right away, the author suggests offering validation and support when they’re struggling. Let your child know that it’s OK to feel what they’re feeling, and that you’re there to help them through it—but not to fix the problem or to somehow make the pain go away.
(Shortform note: What Morin describes here is often called co-regulation. This is a parenting strategy where you help your child regulate big emotions using skills like soothing words and gentle touches, and offering suggestions such as taking a snack break. Your child will internalize those emotional management skills over time, so eventually they’ll no longer need an adult’s help to regulate their feelings. However, co-regulation is challenging; it requires you to stay calm while your child is upset, and there will be times when you have trouble regulating your own emotions, let alone your child’s. That’s why it takes a great deal of mental strength to practice this strategy consistently.)
What to Do Instead: Build Skills and Offer Support
What does it mean to help your child with their feelings but not to make them feel better? To illustrate this concept, here are three suggestions that Morin offers about how to help your child when they’re upset, and prepare them to deal with their own emotions when you’re not there.
1. Build your child’s emotional vocabulary. Encourage your child to talk about what they’re feeling. Get specific: for instance, are they sad or just disappointed? Are they actually angry, or would it be more appropriate to say they’re annoyed or frustrated? Morin adds that the most effective way to do this is to talk about your own feelings in the same way, so your child will learn new vocabulary and understand that it’s OK to discuss their feelings with you.
(Shortform note: In Atlas of the Heart, social worker Brené Brown says that people feel dozens of different emotions, but many of us can only recognize three of them: happiness, sadness, and anger. Brown says that this lack of vocabulary stops us from being able to understand our feelings and share them with each other, which leaves us isolated and depressed. To help people overcome that obstacle, Brown names and defines numerous emotions that people might feel about themselves (such as shame, confidence, and happiness), about each other (like anger, empathy, and vulnerability), and about things that happen (such as anxiety or boredom).)
2. Coach your child on appropriate ways to handle their feelings. All emotions are valid, but that doesn’t mean all behaviors are valid. For instance, it’s common for an angry child to throw a temper tantrum—they scream, cry, break things, and so on. In this case, your role as a parent isn’t to stop them from being angry, but rather to teach anger management skills like talking to someone, writing about their feelings, or finding a safe outlet for their anger such as a punching bag or pillow.
3. Come up with ways your child can influence their own emotions. You can’t manage your child’s emotions for them—however, finding ways they can make themselves feel better is helpful. Everybody is different, so Morin says you’ll have to work together with your child on this one: Brainstorm things your child can do when they need to calm down, cheer up, or otherwise regain control of their feelings.
| Children Can Regulate Feelings by Accepting Them While Morin suggests teaching your child ways to take control of their feelings, psychologist Tara Brach takes a different approach to managing difficult emotions. In Radical Acceptance, Brach says it’s impossible to fully control your feelings, but you can ensure they don’t control you. You can maintain control of yourself by accepting all of your moment-to-moment thoughts and emotions—the titular Radical Acceptance—but also recognizing that you don’t need to act on what you think or feel. This practice has two key components: recognition, which means clearly understanding your inner experiences, and compassion, which means responding to those experiences with kindness and love rather than with judgment and harsh self-criticism. In this way, you can understand that negative thoughts and feelings are merely passing experiences, and not problems that must be immediately fixed. One effective way to build these skills is to practice mindfulness meditation with your child. You and your child can sit comfortably, breathe deeply, and pay close attention to what you each think and feel. Do so without judgment: For instance, if you realize that you’re feeling angry about something, just accept that feeling for what it is instead of berating yourself or trying to make it go away. Practicing mindfulness meditation for just a few minutes each day can help your child (and you) develop self-awareness and self-control. |
