Supporting Children’s Emotional Development… Starts With Accepting Their Feelings

By Dr. Jaime Marrus

Recently, many parents that I work with (either independently or in conjunction with working with their children), have asked me for “parenting strategies.” My first instinct is to reassure them: “You are wonderful parents!” (as this undoubtedly applies to the families with whom I currently work). First and foremost, my goal is to empower them to feel confident in their own techniques and relationships with their children. They often smile and look a bit embarrassed, and say something like, “Well, thank you, but… maybe there are strategies to help me be better.” I am so touched to be in a position in which parents turn to me (not yet a parent myself) in these moments to glean information and suggestions to promote more effective interactions in their own homes.

So, I have taken some time to reflect on more concrete “strategies” and conceptualizations to impart upon parents, and began combing through my dusty bookshelf that I should remember to consult with more regularly.

While there are a seemingly infinite number of wonderful resources that I could “assign” parents to read, I view it as my job to scour these resources myself in order to share the “take home (literally) points” with clients– “THP’s,” as an old professor of mine called them.

In the rest of this post and those that follow in the coming months in this Parenting Practices series, I will provide you with some bullet-point strategies to consider and practice in your own home. You can find resources at the end for further reading.

This month’s strategy: Accept your children’s feelings!

Ideally, everyone (including and especially children) wants their feelings to be recognized and heard.  However, as a parent you may find yourself, now that you think about it, “denying” your child’s feelings from time to time.  The renowned book, How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk, include some great examples.  The authors, Faber and Mazlish discuss how natural it is for us to respond to something as straightforward as “Mom, I’m hot, I want to take off my sweater.” with “It’s cold in here, keep it on.” The same tendency is often true for emotional expressions.  For example, “I hate the new baby!” is likely (and even understandably) met with “No, you don’t! Don’t say such a thing, that’s not nice, you don’t mean it.”  But, let’s think about what we are really communicating here with such responses. The broader message that is likely unintentionally communicated may be a denial of the possibility that children just may have different feelings from us, the adults. So, the first step to accepting our children’s feelings is to accept them as they are- and that they may be (or are even likely to be) different from our own.

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To practice this technique, take some time to consider how you can respond to your child in an accepting way in the following scenarios (as you may encounter them in the not-so-distant future). I included examples of some accepting parent responses:

1.         Child: I hate school!  I am terrible at math.

           Parent: Wow, you are feeling terribly about math and school right now.  I wonder why.

2.         Child: My big sister is the meanest in the whole world!

            Parent: Wow, she is so mean?  What happened?

3.         Child: (crying, tantruming) I don’t want to leave the playground!

            Parent: Yes, I know how hard it is to leave the (slide, swings, friends, etc).

Take some time to recognize opportunities to accept your child’s feelings, rather than (likely accidentally) deny them. This is a great first step in attuning to your child and setting yourself up for additional techniques to build emotional connections and understanding in your child.

Stay tuned for next month’s post in the Parenting Practices series on validation

References:

Faber, A. & Mazlish, E. (2012) How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. New York, NY: Scribner

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