5. Universal Truth No. 3: All Children Must Express Their Feelings
The animated film Inside Out tells the story of an eleven-year-old girl struggling with depression after moving away from her childhood home. Inside her head, where most of the movie is set, five animated emotions—Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust—try desperately to “fix” her mood.
At one point, the girl’s imaginary friend, Bing Bong, is overcome by paralyzing depression himself. Joy tries her best to pull him out of his funk with her endless optimism. But it is Sadness who gets Bing Bong moving again.
Afterward, Joy asks incredulously, “How did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Sadness replies. “He was sad, so I listened . . .”
The moral, lost on no one, was this: Unless we’re allowed to express our negative emotions, we can’t move on from the things that caused them. “Stopping a child from fully expressing his feelings does not stop the feelings,” wrote Naomi Aldort in Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves. “It only stops the expression.”
In short, sometimes sadness is the answer.
Negative Feelings Are a Fact of Life
Many parents treat negative feelings as though they are things to be limited, controlled, hidden, or soothed away.
We know intellectually that sadness and anger are healthy emotions, but we’ve been raised to believe that children’s expressions of those emotions have to be constrained within socially acceptable bounds. So we end up trying to hold off or quiet any feeling that is too extreme. We might say, “Mommy loves you even when you’re angry” or “It’s okay to be sad,” but our reactions to unpleasant expressions of anger or sadness communicate to our kids that it’s decidedly not okay to feel that way.
We correct. We compare. We deny. We disagree. We question. We advise. We shame. We criticize. We punish. The list of what we call “feeling blockers” goes on and on.
And it’s little wonder! We adults run into them just as often as kids do.
“Notice,” Dorothy Corkille Briggs writes in Your Child’s Self-Esteem, “when you voice a negative emotion how often you run into reasons, logic, judgment, advice, reassurance, or denial. Despite the fact that negative feelings are a fact of life, far too many of us have been taught that we shouldn’t have them.”
We don’t block our kids’ feelings out of malice. Sometimes we deem our children’s displays of negative emotions as inappropriate, disrespectful, or exaggerated. We believe it is our duty to set our kids straight and to teach them to package their emotions in a more acceptable way or to point out when they are making a big deal out of nothing.
“I understand that you’re mad . . . but it’s time to move on now.” Or “I know you are sad . . . but it’s not okay to talk to me that way.”
Other times we simply want to make our kids feel better. Like Joy in Inside Out, we fly into “fix-it” mode, trying to soothe kids’ feelings away or shouldering the responsibility of making them happy again.
When they are depressed because they are being treated badly by their peers, we might say, “Tell me if that happens again, and I’ll take care of it.” When a teacher makes them feel bad about their grades, we might respond, “You are very good at math! You just need more practice.”
And then there are the less-altruistic reasons for shutting kids down: Our kids are taking their angst out on us, and we’re just not in the mood for it. “That’s enough now,” we might insist. “You’ve complained enough,” “You’ve whined enough,” “You’ve cried enough,” “You’re out of bounds,” “It’s time to calm down,” “You have no good reason to be mad,” “Mommy is starting to feel annoyed,” and/or “Daddy doesn’t have time to deal with this today.”
Whatever our motives, we often wind up repressing healthy feelings and unwittingly interfering with our kids’ emotional well-being.
If any of this hits close to home, you’re not alone.
And it’s not your fault.
Our culture is famously bad at handling feelings constructively, and few of us have been taught how to support and encourage other people’s emotions. But it’s time to make a shift. It’s time to become aware of all those feeling blockers we lay down for our kids—and for ourselves—and throw them out for good.
Fifty “Feeling Blockers” We’re All Guilty of Using
Feeling blockers are knee-jerk reactions that essentially dismiss the feelings of others. They shut down communication and push kids away from us—driving them toward stress, dysregulation, and ultimately, worse behavior. When children are perched on the edge of the zone, feeling blockers are likely to push them over the edge.
We rarely use feeling blockers on purpose, but, boy, do we use them a lot.
Check out this list of fifty of the most common feeling blockers in our culture. Mark the ones you have used in the past.
1. Advice: “You should alter your walk home so you can avoid her.”
2. Assumptions: “Of course you got a C on your test; you didn’t study.”
3. Asking why?: “Why didn’t you just call me if you knew that I had forgotten to pick you up?” (Click for more about why to avoid “Why?”)
4. Blame: “This is all your fault.”
5. Clichés: “Kids will be kids.”
6. Comparisons: “If you studied every day like your sister, you would have an A in math, too.”
7. Correcting: “That’s not how it happened. What happened is . . .”
8. Creating fear: “If you ever throw your toys again at your brother, you are going to get it.”
9. Criticism: “The color of that dress you chose is not flattering on you.”
10. Demands: “Calm down!” or “Apologize to your brother.”
11. Denial: “You’re not hungry, you just ate.”
12. Diagnosing: “You’re just tired.”
13. Disagreeing: “No, she wasn’t being mean. You misunderstood.”
14. Distraction: “Don’t cry! Don’t cry! Let’s go in the kitchen and get a cookie!”
15. Enmeshment: “That happened to me once. I was so mad . . .”
16. Forcing a “teachable moment”: “What did you learn from this?”
17. Generalizing with “never” and “always”: “You always make such a big deal out of doing your chores.”
18. Guilt: “I can’t believe you don’t have time for a family meal. You seem to have plenty of time for your friends.”
19. Humiliation: “I am so disappointed in you for getting in trouble at school. I’m going to go down there and sit in that class with you for one week to make sure you stay out of trouble!”
20. “I know”/“I understand”: “I understand just how you feel.”
21. If-then statements: “If you don’t stop begging me for a playdate, then I’m not going to give you a playdate at all.”
22. Ignoring: Withdrawing attention, shutting down, leaving the room.
23. Interrogation: “What did you do this time? How did this happen?”
24. Interrupting: “Stop talking, and listen to what I’m telling you.”
25. Judgment: “That girl is so obnoxious!”
26. Lecturing: “You have got to take school more seriously. If you’re going to be successful, you need to . . .”
27. Logic: “Study harder, and you will get a better grade.”
28. Praise: “Look, you got all As! I bet you’re the smartest kid in the class. I’m so proud of you.”
29. Minimizing: “Oh, it’s nothing, you’re all right.”
30. Moralizing: “A nice girl wouldn’t use that language.”
31. Name-calling: “How can you be so stupid to forget your dance shoes again?”
32. Negative predictions: “Do you really want to do a sleepover tonight? You might end up fighting with your friends.”
33. Non-apology (aka apologizing for another’s feelings): “I’m sorry you’re disappointed . . .” or “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
34. Offering the silver lining: “Look at it this way; at least you won’t have to . . .”
35. One-upmanship: “Big deal! When I was your age, I had it so much worse than you do.”
36. Pity: “Oh, you poor thing! That teacher at school shouldn’t be picking on you like that.”
37. Playing the martyr: “I do so much for you, and you never appreciate it.”
38. Pollyanna approach: “Nothing bad is ever going to happen to you.”
39. Problem-solving: “You’re bored? You have so many games and puzzles. Why don’t you go get that new art set out and paint?”
40. Punishing: “You are grounded for one week and no cell phone for two weeks!”
41. Rescuing: “I’ll go down to the field and talk to your coach tomorrow.”
42. Sarcasm: “Student of the week? What magic did you pull to make that happen?”
43. Scolding: “How many times do I have to tell you to stop doing that?”
44. Shame: “I am so embarrassed. You know better than to talk to your grandmother that way.”
45. “The But”: “I see how angry you are . . . but you can’t talk to me that way.”
46. Taking sides: “This is just like your brother to do this to you.”
47. Threats: “I’m going to count to three!”
48. Time’s up: “You’ve been mad about that for long enough.”
49. Told-you-so: “I told you not to get your hopes up.”
50. Worst-case scenario: “There is no way you and your friends are driving to San Francisco for the weekend. You could die in a car accident!”
Make no mistake: When your child is expressing negative emotions, simply refraining from feeling blockers is a huge step in the right direction and may help keep her from sliding out of the zone. Of course, it may take a concerted effort on your part to unplug from your rote reactions, but the benefit is well worth the effort.
Fools Rush in . . . with Advice
Advice often seems to have a soothing aspect to it. “Let me help you solve your problems so you don’t have to feel sad or confused or frustrated anymore.” But advice often deprives kids of the ability to make themselves feel better. So cut the advice—or at least hold off on it. If you really think you have a solution or want to brainstorm one, wait awhile. In Your Child’s Self-Esteem, Briggs suggested waiting for “thirty minutes at least” or even talking about it the next day. And in Between Parent & Teenager, Haim Ginott asked parents to render “emotional first aid” before trying to solve any problem. The child’s behavior may merit a response, said Ginott, an Israeli-American psychologist who pioneered new techniques for communicating with children in the 1950s and ’60s, but first the child must be fully heard. “The temptation,” Ginott wrote, “to teach a child a lesson in that moment should be resisted.”
ParentShift Assignment: Sleuthing for Blockers
An effective way to eliminate feeling blockers from your conflicts is to get your kids involved. Go over the list of feeling blockers with them, and then ask them to help you identify them when they come up. Kids are eager to help you learn, and this is a lesson they’ll be glad you did.
What Happens to Repressed Emotions?
When negative feelings are shamed or dismissed or their expression is thwarted, they accumulate, bit by bit, in our children’s psyches, creating a breeding ground for physical, behavioral, and developmental issues. Here are four common outcomes associated with repressed feelings:
1.They turn into negative behavior. A child whose expression of feelings is unwanted or unaccepted by her parents often takes this to mean that her feelings are “bad.” So she will hide them, masking them behind unrelated behavior. In her groundbreaking work, New Ways of Discipline, Dorothy Walter Baruch called this “changing form or changing target.” If a child doesn’t feel comfortable saying to her parents, for instance, “I hate what you made for dinner!” then she may change the form of her disgust and frustration—letting her feelings out in disguise. She might refuse to brush her teeth, for instance, or intentionally dawdle when you are in a hurry to get out the door. Or, alternatively, she might change the target, taking her disgust and frustration out on siblings, friends, teachers, pets, or others’ property—or even on herself.
2.They cause stress in the child. “When negative feelings are repressed,” Briggs wrote in Your Child’s Self-Esteem, “the body remains in a state of tension”—which can lead to all kinds of physical and psychological problems. Bottled-up emotions lead to stress, which, as we learned in the last chapter, cause physiological changes in the body. Children who stay in this state of tension and stress are at increased risk of hyperactivity, nail-biting, head-banging, exaggerated fears, anxiety, depression, weakened immune systems, vomiting, migraines, sleepwalking, chronic fatigue, and psychosomatic ailments. What’s more, chronic stress is the number-one cause of drug and alcohol addiction in adults and is associated with lower IQs. Briggs wrote, “Repression acts like a dam that can narrow the river of intelligence to a mere trickle.”
3.They create “model children.” All children have big feelings, especially when they feel the need for more power. It may come out in aggression, rudeness, or flat-out refusing to cooperate. But when parents are intolerant of these feelings or insensitive to their children’s underlying needs, kids can end up internalizing the pain and taking on the role of “obedient child.” As Baruch explained, shaming children for their emotional outbursts can make the child feel that she is “too bad” for her mother to tolerate without suffering. The child pushes down the resentment this invokes and becomes instead “a little angel” at home. “Very seldom,” Baruch wrote, “do we realize that too good is a disguise for being too bad.”
4.They teach kids to withhold information from their parents. If children believe their feelings are mishandled, they eventually stop sharing them. That may lead them to withhold information about things that scare them or make them nervous or cause them pain. They will lie to their parents, and stay quiet on matters that may affect their safety or mental health. The point is, denying feelings doesn’t mean kids no longer have feelings; it means the parents are no longer the first ones to hear about them. Indeed, they may not hear about them at all.
Some parents defend their attempts to downsize their kids’ big emotional displays because the “real world” does not approve of such things. But let’s rid ourselves of that “real world” cliché altogether. Children are real. Their feelings are real. School is real. College is real. Work is real. One aspect of the world is no more “real” than another, and no one aspect is mere preparation for the next. It’s time we treat family life as just as real and worthy of respect as any other part of our world.
As Haim Ginott wrote, “In an emotional situation, a parent’s response should be different from that of anyone else. A stranger speaks to the mind; a parent speaks to the heart.”
Feelings in Disguise: “Changing Form” or “Changing Target”
When a child doesn’t feel he can trust his parents with unwanted feelings, wrote Baruch, he may find ways to disguise them and to leak them out. He does this by changing the form of negative behavior or changing the target. Here are examples of each:
Changing Form
• Breaks agreements over electronics
• Engages in homework struggles
• Refuses to bathe
• Refuses to cooperate with chores
• Refuses to go to bed
• Throws tantrums
Changing Target
• Aggressive toward teachers, peers
• Bullies children at school
• Harms animals
• Hits siblings
• Hurts self
• Vandalizes property
Now, does this mean that all children who engage in homework struggles or refuse to bathe or throw tantrums are “changing form”? Of course not. Tantrums may be age-appropriate, and homework or bath-time struggles often are “systems problem.” Only you have the ability, based on the context of the behavior, to discern whether your child’s behavior is a “feeling” in disguise. The ParentShift Solutions Process in Part Three will help you do just that.
The Art of Empathy
There is only one surefire way to allow our children the full expression of their emotions regardless of our discomfort—empathy.
But what the heck is empathy, and how do we show it?
In a nutshell, empathy means understanding others from their own point of view.
“Another person enters your world,” Briggs wrote, “and proves that he understands your feelings by reflecting back your message. He temporarily sets aside his world to be with you.”
That “setting aside” thing? It’s huge.
Empathy: The emotional identification of the thoughts, feelings, or attitudes of another person; understanding someone from that person’s point of view.
Being empathetic means we take ourselves completely out of our own judgmental brains, listen to our children, and mirror back the feelings behind their words and actions.
We do not agree or disagree.
We do not worry about facts or logic.
We do not try to change the person’s feelings.
We do not try to make the person feel better.
We just encourage the person to talk. We quiet our own reactions. And we accept their feelings as real and important.
To be clear, empathy doesn’t mean we think our children’s feelings are warranted. They might be downright ridiculous! Exaggerated! Selfish! Infuriating!
• The child who bursts into tears when he accidentally drops his new shiny quarter down a storm drain.
• The kid who is thrown into a rage because his cousin got half a cookie more than he did.
• The child who complains bitterly that he can’t have another thirty minutes of TV after you both agreed that screen time was over.
We can think of thousands of examples, and you probably can, too.
So often there are easy fixes to the child’s problem. (“You dropped your quarter. Let’s get you a new one!”) We might know of a more reasonable way to view the situation. (“Your cousin has a different kind of cookie—and his are smaller!”) We might be righteously frustrated ourselves. (“Kid, your thirty extra minutes of screen time is up! Why are you fighting me on this?”)
But, when you are being empathetic, all those rational thoughts are beside the point. You just recognize that the person in front of you has real feelings and needs to get them out before moving on to the next step.
The importance of learning and mastering empathy cannot be overstated. And, for many, it’s hard. Humans are highly judgmental creatures, and many of us are just natural problem-solvers. When we listen to a person’s plight, our guts tell us to judge the situation and jump right in to solve it. And when we become parents, our guts work overtime. Said one parent to Briggs: “I can hardly hear my kids because it’s so noisy inside me. Every time they talk, I get hung up on my own inner reactions.”
And that’s in the best of times. In the worst of times, our kids aren’t just spitting mad at the world—they are spitting mad at us. They reject our efforts to connect with them. They are unappreciative of the patience and care we give them. They take an entire day’s worth of negative feelings and find ways to blame us for all of them.
Indeed, the true test of empathy is our ability to give it when we are the ones suffering the slings and arrows of our children’s anger. Lucky for us, it’s about a thousand times easier to do when broken into four distinct steps.
“The language of empathy does not come naturally to us. It’s not part of our ‘mother tongue.’ Most of us grew up having our feelings denied.”
—ADELE FABER & ELAINE MAZLISH
Empathy in Four Steps
Showing empathy, like so many other things in life, is a skill set. Put these four steps into action, and you’re guaranteed to enjoy an immediate payoff.
Step #1: Get on the Child’s Level
Empathy is easier when we are eye to eye with the person in pain. And it’s more effective, too. That’s why we suggest greeting negative emotions by lowering yourself to the child’s level. Getting eye to eye helps balance the energy, establish instant rapport, remove the power differential, and show that you are willing to meet the child where she is in the moment.
When our children are sick, we have no trouble holding out a trash can for them to vomit into, right? Likewise, when children express negative emotions (which can feel a lot like being vomited upon), those emotions need somewhere to go. We, the adults, are that somewhere. Picture yourself holding a large container in front of you to “catch” your children’s negative emotions. And then, when it’s all over, picture yourself throwing all those emotions in the garbage.
Do not—we repeat—do not keep them yourself. Being the container does not mean adopting your children’s suffering as your own. Although it is hard for some of us (especially those of us prone to a bit of codependency and helicoptering) to unlink our children’s emotions from our own, it’s important to try. In Between Parent & Teenager, Ginott wrote that empathy is “an ability to respond genuinely to our child’s moods and feelings without being infected by them.” Amen to that.
Empathy for Survival Brain
Empathy doesn’t work when children are out of the zone. That’s because, when the fight-or-flight reaction has been triggered, the frontal lobe (where listening and thinking happens) is mostly closed for business. Picture a shop with a sign in the window reading, “Be back in five minutes.” Yes, your child soon will calm down enough to talk and accept empathy, but at that moment the chemicals in his bloodstream are making it impossible for him to communicate rationally. Still, putting yourself on his level and becoming the container are both worth your while. (It’s basically what you are doing with “Stop, Drop, Zero Talk.”) And, remember, when kids are barely in the zone is when they are most likely to get thrown out of it.
Step #3: Label the Emotion
There are many feeling words beyond the usual suspects: happy, sad, and mad. We suggest you expand your feelings vocabulary for three reasons: First, because accurate feeling words help the child self-regulate. (“Name it to tame it,” as Daniel Siegel says. “Research shows that merely assigning a name or label to what we feel literally calms down the activity of the emotional circuitry in the right hemisphere.”) Second, because when we accurately name other people’s feelings, we have an easier time empathizing with that person. She’s not just moody; she’s lonely. She’s not just irritated; she’s embarrassed. She’s not just hyper; she’s anxious. This is how kids, too, learn to be empathetic; by naming the feelings in themselves, they are better able to recognize those feelings in others.
Remember, the more specific you are in labeling the child’s feelings, the more likely you are to connect with the emotion. After all, you know exactly what it’s like to feel lonely, embarrassed, anxious, and worried. And it’s not fun.
Feeling Words to Use with Kids
Here are some excellent feeling words to use with kids. If it helps, you might even consider writing some of these down on a piece of paper and sticking them in your wallet. That way, when emotions run high, you’ll have a cheat sheet.
•Afraid
•Angry
•Annoyed
•Anxious
•Confused
•Disappointed
•Discouraged
•Distracted
•Embarrassed
•Excited
•Frustrated
•Furious
•Happy
•Humiliated
•Hurt
•Irritated
•Jealous
•Lonely
•Nervous
•Offended
•Overwhelmed
•Pleased
•Scared
•Surprised
•Tired
•Unimportant
•Unsure
•Worried
“Upset” Is a Feeling Masker
“Upset” is a word to avoid, as it’s too general and tends to sugarcoat feelings. It may even make children angrier. “I see how upset you are . . .” is a sentence that doesn’t exactly scream empathy. Rather it distances us from the real, specific feeling beneath the “upset.” You don’t really know how I feel, the child may think, which is why you called me upset. The more specific our feelings vocabulary, the more likely children are to someday learn to maturely express those feelings.
It’s important to remember that empathizing with your child’s excitement and joy is as important as empathizing with her sadness. Just as loud and extended outbursts of anger can be irritating for parents, so too can loud, extended outbursts of joy. Sometimes, it seems like parents are constantly trying to rein in children’s emotions. Don’t be too happy! Don’t be too sad! Then we wonder why adults rarely laugh or cry as much as children; we’ve been taught that only muted emotions are acceptable. Just remember that feelings deserve expression and acknowledgment—both positive and negative.
Step #4: Give Feeling Acknowledgers
Although it comes last, this step is actually the most important step in empathy, and, when done correctly, it is one of the most important tools a parent (or person!) can possess. Feeling acknowledgers, an adaptation of “feeling encouragers” coined in Redirecting Children’s Behavior, are statements and sounds that mirror back what a person is feeling. They are at the heart of “active listening” because they help identify, affirm, and invite the expression of your child’s feelings. Unlike feeling blockers, which contain no “feeling” words at all, feeling acknowledgers depend heavily on feeling words. But feeling acknowledgers are only effective if we are able to say them in the spirit of genuine empathy. If that’s not possible, we are likely out of the zone and need to give ourselves a few moments to get back in.
Replace “Soothing” Words with Feeling Words
Sometimes, we think we are being compassionate by offering words and using tones of voice that are soothing in nature. (“It’s okay,” “Don’t worry,” “You’ll feel better soon,” or “Shhhh, you’re fine now.”) Despite how “nice” they sound, however, these are all feeling blockers. Remember, the point is not to try to “soothe” the feelings away. It is to help the child identify the feeling so he can fully express it and move past it on his own.
Here are some of our favorite feeling acknowledgers. Fill in the blanks with the feeling words listed here.
•“It sounds/looks/seems like you feel ( ) about not making the team.”
•“What I hear you saying is that you feel ( ) because I won’t let you watch more TV.”
•“I imagine you are ( ) about your first day of school.”
•“I bet you were ( ) when you didn’t make the team!”
•“I wonder if you are ( ) about the way your friend talked to you.”
•“Are you ( ) at me?”
•“How do you feel?”
•“How ( ) that you can’t go to the mall with your friends.”
• “I notice/sense you are ( ) today because of the doctor’s appointment.
•“I see/hear how ( ) you are with your brother.”
•“( ), huh?” (e.g., “Frustrating, huh?”)
•“( ) isn’t it?” (e.g., “Infuriating, isn’t it?)
In the beginning, it’s important to use sentences that contain the word “feel”—just to remind yourself to use actual feeling words. Once the feeling has been confirmed, though, you may want to move on to words, sounds, or body language that acknowledge feelings without stating them explicitly. You might say:
•“Oh, wow!” or “Really!” or “Ugh!”
•“You make sense!”
•“Knowing you, that makes so much sense!”
•“I wish ________.” (Give your child in fantasy that which she cannot have in reality. For example, “I wish a tiny leprechaun would fly through the door and put that cookie back in your hand!”)
Hugs are powerful feeling acknowledgers, as are empathetic facial expressions, head nods, and soothing sounds shared in a genuinely loving tone—“mmm,” “hmm,” “ah,” and “oh.”
In fact, one of the best feeling acknowledgers—loving silence—is one that requires no talking at all and is particularly helpful when no words seem to fit the situation just right. Put everything else aside, move close to your child, and quietly align yourself with her energy.
Keep in mind that not every feeling acknowledger is appropriate for every child; a great feeling acknowledger for one child may sound cheesy, contrived, or scripted to another. The trick is to be genuinely understanding and use actual feeling words.
A common mistake parents make is reflecting back the child’s underlying desire rather than the underlying feeling. (“I see you aren’t ready to turn off the TV” or “What I hear you saying is that you want another cookie.”)
Or parents reflect back someone else’s feeling. (“Sounds like your friend is mad at you.”)
When used correctly (and, yes, it may take some practice, so be patient with yourself), feeling acknowledgers are one of the few tools that actually help keep children in the zone—but only if we offer them at the right time (i.e., when they are not already out of zone) and only if they are accompanied by honest reflection. When kids feel that our empathy is false, they can quickly become annoyed or resentful—just like us.
When giving feeling acknowledgers to a child, try to avoid words that presume how the child feels—such as understand, know, or must. For example, “I know you are scared . . .” or “I understand you are feeling angry . . .” or “You must be bored . . .” We can strive to understand, and we can show understanding, but we can’t know for sure whether we genuinely understand how another person feels. When we say, “You must feel . . .” we insist we are right. Must makes it so.
One last, important thing: Avoid following your feeling acknowledger with but—as in: “I hear how disappointed you are, but we need to leave the party now.” But undermines the acknowledger and shuts the conversation down.
Whenever you feel a “but” coming on, replace it with “and.”
“I hear how disappointed you are, and it’s time to leave the party.”
How Much Empathy Is Enough? Three Is the Magic Number
Empathy’s job is to give our child the chance to feel heard and emotionally connected to us. So how do we know when we’ve done our job well—or have failed miserably? As Kathryn Kvols teaches in her Redirecting Children’s Behavior classes, the child will give us cues that tell us how emotionally connected or disconnected he is in that moment. Positive cues mean we’re succeeding. Negative cues mean we’re not. A “yes” from your child is great confirmation, as are nods, smiles, and other nonverbal signs. Once you hit three, you can be sure you’re right on track. The more the better, though.
Here are other cues to watch for:
Fact: Children Are Especially Hard on Those Who Make Them Feel Safe
Have you ever stopped to wonder, Why does my child seem to take everything out on me? There’s a good answer: Because you make her feel safe.
Remember when we talked about your child’s Emotional Bank Account? Well, you aren’t the only one making deposits and withdrawals from that account. Over the course of any given day, your child’s “balance” may also be affected by her peers and teachers and siblings. Sometimes the account gets overdrawn without your knowing it; the child’s negative feelings well up, and she dumps those feelings on you—someone she knows will still love her afterward.
In this way, it’s a vote of confidence to be on the receiving end of your child’s anger. It means she sees you as her safe haven. In fact, Briggs suggested that parents literally treat children’s anger as a gift. “The child who openly expresses hostility to you actually hands you a double bouquet,” she wrote. “You have reared him with enough strength to stand up for himself; he’s no wilted violet. And you have made him feel safe to express himself directly.”
“Like a trained surgeon who is careful where he cuts, parents, too, need to become skilled in the use of words.”
—HAIM GINOTT
Feeling Blockers versus Feeling Acknowledgers in Action
Many problems and conflicts are cut short and avoided altogether when parents greet their children’s emotions with feeling acknowledgers rather than feeling blockers. And it really helps to see them in action. We’ve listed ten scenarios along with some possible parental responses, both blocking and acknowledging the child’s feelings, here:
My Kid Feels Heard—Now What?
Many times feeling acknowledgers are enough to dissipate emotional situations on their own. The child naturally goes on to solve her own problem or make peace with reality—just as you would do after venting your frustration to a trusted friend. But sometimes a little extra guidance is needed. The child wants to know what to do about her problem. In this case, the best follow-up to empathy is to ask empowering questions.
Empowering questions are questions meant to hand some power over to the child in what might otherwise be a situation ripe for conflict or parental rescuing. Empowering questions often begin with What, When, Where, and How.
Empowering questions include:
•“What have you tried so far?”
•“What else might you try?”
•“How can you take care of yourself in this situation?”
•“What do you plan to do?”
•“What do you want?”
•“What do you need?”
•“How can I assist you?”
•“How can we make this a win-win?”
•“What would you like to create for yourself?”
•“What ideas do you have?”
•“When would you be willing to do that?”
•“How will you remember?”
That last question—“How will you remember?”—is a good one to keep up your sleeve because it relieves you from having to remind or nag the child later.
Again, empowering questions are only effective after your child feels heard. They are not part of empathy; they are your segue out of it.
MISTAKES WERE MADE: TROUBLESHOOTING EMPATHY
There are certain roadblocks you may encounter on your path toward empathy. Being aware of them, and knowing how to get around them, is sure to ease your journey.
Mistake #1: We Go Too Fast or Too Slow
Like downward dog in yoga, empathy takes practice. You can’t expect to be a pro right away, and one of the most common problems parents face early on is flubbing the timing. Either they miss the cues that the child has been heard and go on for a bit too long, or, more commonly, they become impatient with the process and stop the feeling acknowledgers too soon. Be sure to wait for those cues that your child feels heard. Otherwise, he may feel rushed or believe you have an agenda.
If you do move too fast and find your child becoming defensive, put yourself on “pause” and go back to the feeling acknowledgers—or simply let the conversation go for now. It can always be continued at a later time if necessary. When you have received the cues that your child feels heard, trust yourself and move on.
Mistake #2: We Sound Disingenuous
What’s important in using feeling acknowledgers is your ability to be genuine with your child in moments of high emotion. Yes, some acknowledgers may sound awkward or scripted at first, but the more you do it, the more natural they sound. That said, our purpose in giving you a list of feeling acknowledgers is not to saddle you with some jargon-heavy “parentspeak.” It’s to open your eyes to all the different ways you can empathize with your child’s feelings without turning to feeling blockers. The goal is not to trick our kids into believing someone cares about their feelings. The goal is to care and to honestly show it.
Mistake #3: We Give In to “Rescue Requests”
Sometimes, when a child is starting to feel connected and heard, he will pose a rather tricky question. The question is a rescue request, and it’s tricky because it seems like a no-win. If you indulge, you keep the child from solving his own problem. If you refuse, you may invite a power struggle. Here are some rescue requests kids make:
• “What do you think I should do?”
• “What should I say?”
• “Can you do it for me?”
• “Will you remind me?”
• “Why can’t you help me?”
The key to dealing with rescue requests is to understand that they are signs your child needs more empathy. By seeking rescue, your child is telling you he is not yet feeling out of the woods emotionally. So engage with your child with more feeling acknowledgers. You might say:
• “It’s frustrating not knowing what to say.”
• “It sounds like you are feeling afraid to talk to the teacher about this.”
• “I imagine you are worried about your friend.”
• “You seem confused or unsure about what to do next.”
True Story!
After attending all of the Parenting from the Heart classes, a mom told her seven-year-old son that she had a surprise to give him on the last day of school. They were in Costco at the time, and, rather than delighting the child, the news threw him into a rage. He insisted he did not like surprises and demanded to know what it was. Instead of feeling hurt and defensive, as this mom had done in the past, she stayed calm. “It looks like I hurt your feelings by planning this surprise,” she said, which sent him into an emotional tailspin. “I hate you, Mom,” he yelled. “You’re the worst Mommy in the world. I don’t love you.”
“I can see how angry and hurt you are. You are angry at me,” she said. He said nothing. After a bit, they moved on, but the boy remained silent. Later, at the snack stands, the boy said, “I know I can’t have any samples.”
The mother got down on her knees and asked him eye to eye, “Do you think that I am going to take revenge on you for how you’re acting by not letting you have any samples?”
“Yes,” he said.
She replied, “I love you so much, and I don’t want to hurt you. I want you to be happy.”
The boy broke down in tears.
“Mommy, I take it all back. I love you. I didn’t mean it. I thought I didn’t love you, but I do!” Soon, the two of them were both in tears.
The mom was relieved to have her “sweet little boy” back. She told us: “On the way home, [my son] opened up and told me how the little boy next door had bullied him. He decided that when we got home he would tell the little boy how he felt. He did talk to the boy about his feelings and how he felt bullied by him. Then, last night he told me that when I shout at him he feels scared, and he will be able to answer better if I just use a regular voice. I’m so impressed . . .”
The Least Empowering Question Is “Why?”
If it’s true that “what” and “how” questions are the most empowering, the least empowering would have to be “Why?” Let’s say your child forgot to bring his homework to school for the second time in a week. He comes home and tells you about it. Your first inclination may be to ask him, “Why?” As in: Why do you keep forgetting your homework? Seems a fair question, right? Actually, no. Here are five reasons, courtesy of Jane Bluestein’s The Parents Little Book of Lists, to banish the “why,” followed by what to do instead:
“Why” makes children answer defensively. Kids drop into their survival brain—fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or faint—and may not be able to respond thoughtfully because they don’t have “access” to their frontal lobes. Also, you assume your child knows why he did what he did. Children—and adults—often have no clue. Many times your child may have difficulty explaining why, which can lead to frustration and resentment.
“Why” focuses on excuses rather than commitment. It can teach victim-consciousness and rob your kid of the opportunity to take responsibility. (If he can come up with a good excuse that pleases you, he can get himself off the hook.)
“Why” suggests that your boundaries and limits are flexible. If your child is creative or pathetic enough to please you with his answer, he may view you as permissive.
“Why” puts you in the position of a judge and jury. You have to examine the validity of your child’s excuses, then decide whether or not he is accountable.
Your child’s answer to “why” may tempt you to use guilt, shame, name-calling, or punishment. Asking “why” is often a precursor to making children feel bad about what they did or didn’t do in hopes that they will choose differently next time. For example: “You should have thought of that before,” “You should have known better,” “How could you have been so thoughtless?” or “How many times do I have to repeat myself?”
Instead, use the situation as an opportunity for your child to learn on his own and for himself to make more responsible choices, with your support. As always, offer feeling acknowledgers, then ask an empowering question: “How frustrating that you forgot your homework again! It sounds like you were worried. What will you do so you remember it tomorrow?”
ParentShift Assignment: Choose Your Five
Choose five feeling acknowledgers, both verbal and nonverbal, that will be authentic coming from you, and write them down. The very next time your child voices an emotion—whether it be positive or negative—slow things down and try out a few feeling acknowledgers. Be sure to wait for at least three connected cues before moving on.
Use this toolkit when your child is expressing strong emotions. For example, your child is begging, whining, complaining, insistent, demanding, yelling, saying unkind things, being uncooperative, laughing hard, or jumping up and down with excitement.
•GET ON THE CHILD’S LEVEL.
•BECOME THE CONTAINER.
•LABEL THE EMOTION.
•Use FEELING ACKNOWLEDGERS.
•Look for at least THREE CONNECTED CUES.
•After the child feels heard, ask EMPOWERING QUESTIONS.
•Avoid giving in to RESCUE REQUESTS.
•Watch for signs that the child may be “CHANGING FORM OR CHANGING TARGET.”
•Avoid FEELING BLOCKERS.