Acknowledging feelings strengthens your bond

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hysical abuse and emotional neglect are often lumped together as causes of childhood trauma. While it’s easy to understand why physical abuse would cause developmental problems it’s harder to understand the effects of emotional neglect. And yet the very reason why physical abuse is so destructive is because it’s a form of emotional neglect.

Physical injury in and of itself does not necessarily cause trauma especially when it’s not life-threatening. For example falling off a bicycle while learning to ride is rarely traumatic despite the scratches and bruises that may result. Similarly falling down a flight of stairs — providing no serious injury occurs — may cause temporary pain and suffering without causing lasting trauma.

Being pushed down the stairs by an angry parent on the other hand is very likely to result in lasting emotional injury. The inherent lack of care sensitivity and protection is what causes the trauma — not the physical aches and pains.

Failing to Connect

Human beings in general and children in particular are emotionally sensitive. Spouses can hurt each other by being “cold.” Parents hurt children by conveying disapproval and rejection. However — and here’s where emotional neglect comes in — they can also hurt children by simply failing to connect to them emotionally.

When parents are unattuned to their children’s emotional experience children are left in a state of confusion and overwhelm. When they suffer emotional pain they lack the words to identify their own feelings. This can sometimes result in “acting out” — a child becomes wild and/or defiant when feeling insulted hurt or upset. Without knowing what he feels the youngster releases inner turmoil in outer frenzy. Addictions serve a similar purpose in older children and adults distracting them from emotional pain that hasn’t been named and processed.

When parents don’t actively identify a child’s feelings the child doesn’t learn how to identify express and manage those feelings. This is emotional neglect.

Rules and Routines

Perfectly nice parents can accidentally be emotionally neglectful. In their quest to get kids out of bed and ready for school to do their homework have their bath get into bed and go to sleep parents can easily become task oriented.

“Time to get up. Brush your teeth. Get dressed. Stop fighting and eat your breakfast….”

No harm is meant by the endless instructions and many parents are genuinely confused by their children’s lack of cooperation. “I have to say everything ten times before they move. It’s exhausting!”

Although there may be many different factors at play here one common cause is the lack of emotional connection. Children don’t connect to instructions — they connect to parents. When a parent connects emotionally to a child that child reciprocates increasing his tendency to cooperate with parental requests.

Constant Attunement

Emotions occur all day every day so there’s plenty of time for parents to identify them for their children. Let’s consider this dialogue for example:

Child to parent: “Why do I have to go to bed now? It’s not fair! Everyone else is up!”

Parent: “They’re older than you are. It’s your bedtime. Please get into bed now.”

Instead of just delivering the cold facts the parent can add a few sentences that acknowledge the child’s emotional experience. “I know it’s hard to go to bed when everyone else is still awake. It’s one of the hard parts of being the youngest. Unfortunately honey it’s bedtime. Please get into bed now.”

While this doesn’t make the child’s problem go away it does allow for emotional connection. The parent has acknowledged named and accepted the child’s emotional experience. Doing this over and over again throughout the day is called attunement and is the opposite of emotional neglect. Emotional neglect ignores the child’s feelings acting as if they either don’t exist or are irrelevant. Emotional attunement on the other hand acknowledges that feelings exist and makes them an important part of the conversation.

“I see you’re enjoying your book. In a few minutes sweetie you’ll have to put it away and get ready for your bath.” “I know you’re upset at your brother. Please tell him with your words not your hands.”

It’s hard for parents to slow down to acknowledge feelings when there’s just so much to get done. Most will find however that the benefits of doing so more than justify the effort involved.