KEY POINTS
- Loving a child is important but not quite enough. Kids also need to feel seen and deeply understood.
- Since your child’s emotions are the deepest, most personal expression of who they are, they must be validated.
- Don’t miss small opportunities to give your children emotional acknowledgment.
Source: Beaunitta Van Wyk / Adobe Stock
How do you show your children you love them?
Do you give them hugs?
Do you make sure they’re fed?
Do you have them attend the best schools?
Do you simply tell them you love them?
Most of us as parents agree that what matters most in life is knowing that our children are happy. And we know the way we treat our children matters.
Parenting is, arguably, the most important and complex job in the world. And, yet, there’s no manual, no education required, no prerequisites needed before signing up. Even with preparation and knowledge, it’s hard to enter parenthood fully capable of meeting all our children’s needs.
Most notably, it’s especially difficult to fully meet all our children’s emotional needs.
The Emotional Needs of Children
It’s true that giving your children love, food, and a good education meets many of your children’s needs. But noticing and responding to your child’s feelings is the deepest, most personal way to say, “I love you.”
How you treat your child’s emotions determines how your child will treat themself as an adult. If you brush aside their feelings, you are brushing aside your child’s true nature—their accomplishments, likes and dislikes, passions, and preferences. Feelings are the pipeline to self-awareness and connectedness. Without paying attention to your child’s emotional needs, they are at risk of experiencing low self-esteem and low confidence in adulthood.
You may love your child beyond words, and yet your child could feel perpetually ignored or perhaps even unloved by you if you don’t attend enough to their emotions. Even if their needs are met in other realms, their emotional needs are the most crucial.
This is because emotions are a part of our biology. They are the deepest part of who we are—they’re what make you, you. When you notice your child’s emotional experiences and acknowledge them, you are signaling to your child that you see and love them for who they are at their core. And this makes your child feel unconditionally loved, seen, and known.
Why It Can Be Difficult to Tend to Your Child’s Emotional Needs
One of the main reasons parents find it so difficult to be in touch with their child’s emotions is that they are not in touch with their own emotions. And why is this so? Because scores of people have grown up with childhood emotional neglect.
Childhood emotional neglect happens when your parents underrespond to your feelings as they raise you. The best time to learn emotions skills is when you are a child. But, if your parents don’t have emotion skills themselves to pass along to you, you are subjected to childhood emotional neglect. And on it goes from one generation to the next.
If you were raised in an emotionally neglectful home, please don’t blame yourself. Blame won’t stop the childhood emotional neglect from seeping into the family you created. Instead, know you have the power to end the pattern of childhood emotional neglect with your children.
Below are tips to assist you as you grow in your awareness of the importance of emotions in yourself and your children.
6 Ways to Meet Your Child’s Emotional Needs
- Pay attention to who your child is. Take note of your child’s feelings. What makes them happy? What makes them angry? Sad? Excited? This will inform you about what they like or dislike and what their strengths and weaknesses are. From here, it’s your job to reflect what you notice to your child. Do this in a validating and nonjudgmental way, which will allow them to feel truly seen and understood by the most important person in their life: you.
- Foster an emotional connection. Once you start noticing your child’s feelings, attempt to feel it with them. For example, if your child is angry at their teacher for choosing another student’s project to showcase over their own, get in their emotional experience with them. “Wow, I’d be angry about that, too!” you might say. “Now let’s talk about your teacher’s possible reasons for doing that.” By putting your child’s feelings into words, you are modeling for them how to articulate their emotions and express them effectively.
- Respond competently and kindly to your child’s emotional needs. When you notice your child is having a feeling, don’t judge the feeling as good or bad. Don’t try to push it away. Assist your child in finding the source—what might be causing them to feel this way? Help your child identify and name the feeling and what to do with it. Ask frequently, “Do you need solutions right now or just someone to listen?” Most times, emotions just need to be heard and understood for them to pass.
- Give your child the gift of self-compassion and forgiveness. Your child, like all children, will make a mistake. It’s your job to help them identify what role they played in the mistake, what part of this mistake is someone else’s responsibility, and what part is simply circumstance. When you can guide your child to understand what went wrong, what could go better next time, and that they can come to you for support, you teach them to not shame or blame themselves.
- Show your child that you not only love them but also like them. How can you show your child you enjoy their presence and who they are as a person? This might entail warm embraces, laughter, quality time together, or engaging in activities they love. Most children know they are loved by their parents because, well, you are their parents. But it’s vital that your child truly feels your love and senses that you enjoy their company.
- Don’t miss small opportunities to give emotional acknowledgment. A general rule to have as a parent is to check in on yourself regularly throughout the day. How do you feel? Is there something you want or need? Do this not only with yourself but also with your child. How might they be feeling? Is there something they want or need? There are so many opportunities to give emotional attention to your child.
Moving Forward With Confidence
A helpful tip: Behavior is oftentimes easier to spot than an emotion. If you notice a certain behavior in your child, know that there’s a very important feeling underneath worth exploring.
Whether your child is smiling, crying, frowning, wincing, isolating, acting out, drifting, or showing some other sign that they are experiencing a feeling, you will find it much more effective to address their behavior by naming and talking about the feelings that are driving it.
When you take note of your child’s true nature and reflect it back to them in a loving and supportive way, you are giving them vital information for a lifetime, and you’re also giving them the opportunity to own and/or change their own innate tendencies. This makes them more resilient and gives them more control over their future.
More loved, more seen, more resilient. These are gifts that only the luckiest kids receive. But the truth is, every parent can give them to their children, if only they know what to do. And now you do.
© Jonice Webb, Ph.D.