Stop naming your child’s feelings, and instead, try naming your own

Q:

I’ve listened to and read many parenting ideas. One concept I’ve come across a number of times, including in your books and webinars, is the idea of validating and empathizing a child’s feelings by naming them. For example, saying, “You really wanted to go to the park. It’s so disappointing that it’s raining.” Or, “You’re so angry that you can’t have such and such!”

Unfortunately, when I try to do this, my kids hate it! They tell me to stop talking like that, it’s so annoying, and other similar sentiments. I try to match my tone/expression to theirs so I don’t sound patronizing. What am I doing wrong? Or does this just not work for all kids?

A:

This is a common dilemma. None of us wants to be patronized, and this is especially true when we are struggling emotionally. Imagine trying to tell your spouse what a difficult time you’ve been having with the baby that day and the reply you get back feels contrived. Now it feels like your concern is not only not being properly addressed but it’s actually being trivialized. Consider this offending dialogue for example:

You: “...and she just cried and cried and nothing I did calmed her down but we had to leave for carpool — it was late already — and I finally got everyone in the car, which was really hard with her screaming in my ear the whole time, and I’m buckling her in when she vomits all over her seat...”

Your Spouse: “Wow. You must have been so frustrated!!”

Now, it’s obvious your husband hears you and is trying to empathize. But it’s also obvious that he’s standing outside your experience, as if he is a spectator far away, telling you what he assumes you felt, and in so doing, is accidentally separating himself from you.

Authentic Reactions

Imagine if he had said something like, “Wow! I’m glad that happened to you and not me, because I would have run away!”  Now I know this doesn’t sound like the most sophisticated emotional coaching ever, and you have to know this man’s particular character and sense of humor to understand him correctly. However, what this response has going for it is its authenticity. You know he gets it! You feel that he not only understands what you went through, but he is in awe of your survival skills to boot.

Most importantly, you know he ran your story through his nervous system, and he actually felt your pain almost as if he was in your shoes, and that’s  how he came up with his rather unelegant emotional summary of your situation. He was expressing his real feelings — not just telling you what you must be feeling. “I would never have been able to handle that” is far more powerful than, “You must have been so frustrated!” The former phrase puts the listener right in the situation with you while the latter keeps him at arm’s length.

Sharing the Experience

Emotional coaching, naming feelings, mirroring, and all such acknowledgment techniques don’t work. We human beings need authentic emotional resonance.

The challenge for parents is that we often don’t feel the child’s pain (part not said out loud: “Yes I know you’re disappointed that it’s not beach weather today but there’s nothing I can do about that — I don’t control the weather.”) We try our best (part said out loud: “I know! It’s so disappointing! You were all ready to go swimming and now you have to wait for another day!”) but our well-intentioned acknowledgment often falls flat or provokes ire.

It might work better — although there are certainly no guarantees — if we were to imagine being our child’s age (say six or eight or nine) and dive fullheartedly into the disappointment with him, complaining with him “Noooooooooo! We were all ready — everything is packed up, and now we can’t go! Not Fair!!!!”

Again, this sharing of one’s own feelings reduces the distance put in place with the “You-must-feel-such-and-such” structure. “Oh, no! Our day is ruined!” is more intimate than, “I know you’re very disappointed.”

Of course, this shared frustration can be followed a few minutes later with some proper adult hashkafah “Well, clearly Hashem has other plans for us today. Let’s figure out if there’s somewhere indoors that we can go, and we’ll have to do the beach trip another day...”

In summary, stop naming your child’s feelings, and instead, try naming your own — either by joining the child in his distress or by giving your own personal reaction to it. Let us know if that goes any better!

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 808)