When to listen, when to name, and when to validate your child’s feelings

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ost parents now know that providing emotional support is an essential parenting task. It strengthens the parent-child bond as the child learns that the parent is on her side: caring, seeing, understanding, and helping. It also models the skills of nurturing and supporting others. And it helps the child to process and relieve distressing and painful events so that she remains as mentally healthy as possible; growing up with a mountain of unprocessed hurt piled up inside creates a heavy emotional burden that can take many adult years to unravel. But how, exactly, do parents provide emotional support?

Components of Emotional Support

Support starts with uninterrupted listening. It’s important to let someone “tell their story.” You can ask questions when the speaker is finished relaying what she thinks is important.

Sometimes, listening is the only form of support needed. The story was told, the feelings were released, new ideas popped into consciousness, and “processing” was completed. The parent will know that listening was sufficient if the child pops up after telling her story with some sort of new resolve or a happy demeanor and with a quick “Thanks!” (hopefully), dashes off.

Often, the second component of emotional support will be needed as well. This is the naming of feelings. The trick with this step is to ask yourself, “What does the speaker seem to be feeling?” and then offer a few guesses in that regard, as in, “Wow, sounds like you felt left out and hurt.” Naming feelings helps shrink them and release them. “Left out,” for example, is more specific than the open pit of pain that it was before it was named — and now that the child knows what she’s feeling, the emotion has served its purpose and can begin to drift off and diffuse, leaving the child intact.

Whenever a child expresses an emotion verbally or nonverbally, naming the feeling — even briefly — is a bonding and healing intervention. In many cases, that’s all that’s needed in combination with listening.

However, there is a third option for emotionally supporting a child through her challenges and this step is called validation. Validation — the exact opposite of discounting — conveys the message: “Your feeling makes sense.” Note that validation strengthens an emotional response. “You have every right to be upset...” is a form of validation that strengthens the child’s angry response to bad treatment. “Of course you were afraid, it was pitch-black in there!” strengthens the child’s confidence in her vigilant response to danger.

Parents can use validation when they want the child to maintain a specific emotional response over the long run: “Yes, you’re tired. You worked so hard on that project! And look how it paid off!” However, when parents don’t want the child to strengthen an emotional response, validation should actually be omitted from the menu of emotionally supportive interventions.

Be Careful What You Validate

Consider this response, for instance: “You’re terrified of the spider! You know what honey? I’m ALSO terrified. It’s an ugly, creepy creature!” The parent is validating the child’s fear unnecessarily, helping her to maintain a lifelong phobia just like Mom has. Why?

Or consider this comment to a 12-year-old crying bitterly because her sister made fun of her: “You’re really upset and that makes sense because it really hurts when your sister makes fun of you.” In this scenario Mom has the option to just listen and name the feeling, providing emotional support in this way. Instead, she has also validated the child’s pain, pointing out that it makes sense to be crushed in grief when a sister mocks you. This validation accidentally teaches the child that being mocked by a sister should cause heartbreaking pain. That particular message isn’t going to help the youngster deal with her immature sister or other less-than-perfect people in her life.

Why validate needless suffering? Why not build resilience instead? “I hear how upset you are. Her words really hurt you.” (Mom acknowledges, accepts, and names feelings). “When people say hurtful things to you, ask yourself if their words are true. If you need to improve something, you can do that, and if you don’t need to, then you don’t need to worry about what they’ve said; sometimes people say inappropriate things when they’re upset.” Then Mom can leave the conversation. It’s not necessary to stick around for a long time to offer excessive comfort (attention) to pain that you’re not trying to cultivate.

Validation is best reserved for those times when a child is having a feeling she thinks she shouldn’t be having (e.g., the child feels bad for being angry at her brother who has just torn her schoolbag). It helps kids and others accept their own feelings (“Of course you’re upset, that bag meant a lot to you and anyone would be upset if someone just wrecked something they cherished.”)

However, it can be left out when the child is happily immersing herself in pain over small frustrations, minor disappointments, and daily emotional injuries. In those cases, it’s best to stick to listening and emotional coaching, followed by education and problem-solving.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 973)