This is one of the most important parenting skills to have. You can set your child up for a life of emotional stability by learning effective parenting skills such as validating feelings.
How to Validate your Child’s Feelings
Let’s say your child comes home from school and says to you “Emma was mean to me today.”. This is your child reaching out to you to share an emotional event that they may be struggling to process. They are turning to you for emotional support, not problem solving. We are emotional creatures before thinking creatures, and this process of humanity is very obvious when we look at how children’s emotions develop.
You may want to say back, “Maybe she was just in a bad mood”, or “I’m sure it will be better tomorrow”. These responses dismiss your child’s feelings and deprives your child of a developmental emotional learning experience. It also leaves them alone in their feelings and they have no idea what to do with their feelings. If they don’t know what to do with their feelings, they grow, and grow, and your child feels even more alone.
Lean-In with Curiosity and Compassion
So instead, when you child shares a difficult experience from their day, think to your self – this is a moment of development and connection with my child. And lean in with curiosity and compassion, and ask, “So what happened? How did that make you feel?”. When they share more, say something empathic like, “That sounds difficult. I hear your upset”. I get it”.
What you are doing here is connecting with your child. You are sending the message – you are not alone. I am right here with you and I care about you.
How to Foster Healthy Emotional Development
After giving compassion and empathy, there is a very simple question to ask. “Do we need to do anything about it, or do we just need to help you with your feelings?”. (Note – I use WE here because your young elementary age child is still dependent on you and needs your help to teach important life lessons).
That question is so important. You are fostering healthy emotional development by identifying 1) Does she just need emotional soothing or 2) Does he need problem solving. If it is just soothing, great. A lesson on trust, connection, and coping skills just happened. If it’s problem solving – great! An additional life lesson on meeting her needs just happened.
If your response is consistent like this, throughout your child’s elementary years, your child will enter middle school with the necessary emotional intelligence and skills to get through it well.
If you find yourself too overwhelmed to even notice these emotional development opportunities, or you aren’t emotionally regulated yourself to know what to do, reach out to us. We provide individual counseling for kids, family therapy, and we also work with parents to help them learn new ways of emotional development and regulation.
Call or text 732-266-8994 or email us at info@thrivecounselingnj.com.