In this healthy state there’s a willingness to experience any emotion that arises — fear sadness joy anger — and by doing so to allow feelings to move freely. The result is an energized and joyful life experience.

Parents can facilitate emotional well-being. Children are born with all sorts of conditions that negatively affect emotional well-being such as tendencies toward depression anxiety and all other mental health conditions. Even so parental interventions can help. A depressed teen being raised in an emotionally intelligent environment may still be depressed but she’ll inevitably be better off than one being raised in an emotionally oppressive environment.

Accept and Validate

By welcoming and accepting all emotions parents can foster an emotionally receptive environment. Parents can accept a child’s anger for example while teaching him how to establish interpersonal boundaries with respect and sensitivity. (“Be mad but don’t call names.”)

It’s essential that the parent refrain from telling a child not to feel what he clearly feels. Sentences like “There’s nothing to be upset about” “There’s nothing to be afraid of” and “There’s no reason to be so hurt” should be avoided. Instead accept and even validate. “What he said is hurtful and I imagine it makes you feel upset and sad.”

Validating the child’s feelings does not mean that the child will get madder sadder or more frightened. On the contrary: providing the emotional safety of “permission to feel what you feel” allows negative emotions to quickly release and resolve.

Denying permission to feel on the other hand pushes anger sadness and fear deeper inside. Suppressed feelings are like ticking time bombs easily triggered and always exploding. Moreover buried negativity causes a host of physical behavioral and emotional difficulties that persist indefinitely.

Zero Tolerance

Another aspect to emotional safety is establishing a zero-tolerance policy for name-calling teasing and bullying especially among family members. It’s not enough to ask children to stop their harmful behaviors. Parents convey the importance of their values through taking serious and consistent action to prevent emotional mistreatment.

Emotional safety can be inculcated in the three ways that all values are established in the home: through modeling through encouraging (including praising and rewarding) and through disciplining (applying negative consequences). As an example let’s look at the following scenario.

Six-year-old Yossi is a lovable child with a few behavioral quirks. His older siblings never miss an opportunity to tell him how weird he is. Yossi’s parents concerned for his emotional well-being constantly reprimand the siblings when they overhear such comments. Their “intervention” however accomplishes nothing other than reinforcing the insensitive behavior.

They change tactics now looking for the opportunity to reinforce positive comments the siblings make to Yossi. “That was a very thoughtful remark!” they say if someone gives Yossi positive feedback of any kind.

Unfortunately positive remarks are few and far between so this tactic yields painfully small and slow results. So they lay down the law: “From now on anyone who makes fun of Yossi or anyone else in this family or who otherwise hurts him or anyone else will have to write an essay on the damage caused by hurtful words.”

There are many details in how this disciplinary move is carried out: Yossi’s parents read books and take courses to ensure they have the skills necessary to implement negative consequences effectively. They are committed to the outcome — they adjust the consequences as necessary and pursue their agenda diligently. The children see how important this value is to their parents and after a while all of them “get it.”

Due to the parents’ consistent and determined efforts their home becomes an emotionally safe environment. All family members can be who they are and feel what they feel without fear. This is home for all of them.