Understanding and valuing children’s feelings and thoughts truly help them be themselves.
To accompany children in building self-awareness, the first step is to genuinely listen to them. Avoid judging, giving advice, or trying to guide them. Just let them express their experiences, help them identify, accept, and understand what’s happening inside themselves.
Adult brains have fully matured, enabling them to handle emotions on their own. Children’s brains are still developing. Assisting them in focusing on the frontal lobe responsible for empathy towards others and learning to downplay emotions, verbalizing emotions, and giving them meaning in the developing cortex is crucial. The limbic system in their brains deals with fear, laughter, or tears without the need for intervention from higher brain regions.
Therefore, for children to not be overwhelmed or crushed by emotions, to manage their energy, to learn to express their needs in socially acceptable ways, and to know that it’s safe to fully feel emotions, they need adult companionship.
Hence, when they lack the psychological capacity to effectively process their own experiences, they should never face emotional upheavals alone. That would push them into ancient psychological defense mechanisms like denial, nullification, splitting, projection onto others, or counteraction. These are effective ways to avoid feeling, but they disconnect us from reality.
Rather than leaving children to confront their inner monsters alone, we can accompany them. Parents hold the responsibility for ensuring their children’s emotional security.
If Martin hits you and tells you, “I don’t love you anymore,” and you feel hurt, if you start listening to your own pain instead of preparing to hear his, and if you respond with, “Me too, I don’t love you either,” or “Go to your room until you calm down,” Martin will deeply feel abandoned.
He needs you; he hits you to seek connection. He loudly declares his need for you with his love as the wager, yet you reject him?
Children are children; they don’t articulate things well. The role of parents is to help them use appropriate words, not to escalate emotional conflicts.
Adults can control their impulses. Prioritizing a child’s emotions over parental emotions is normal!
Of course, as children grow older, parents should step back. But premature withdrawal will hinder a child’s learning process, leaving them at the mercy of anxiety control mechanisms.
When a child experiences emotions, your question should be, “How can I help him become aware of what’s happening within him?”
For newborns, act promptly. Try to identify their needs and fulfill them. They know better than your doctor or clock if they’re hungry. When they express emotions, be there for them. If all their physiological needs seem met, it’s related to psychological needs. Stay and listen attentively. Let the child pour out their complaints, protests, and pain to you.
As children grow older, they become better at managing their emotions independently. Instead of rushing to comfort them, take a few minutes to observe how they try to cope with the situation themselves.
If they don’t express any requests to you, trust them.
Give them space to express themselves. We often want to “comfort” children, but I restrain myself. When my child cries, before comforting him, I try to listen first: “I know you’re uncomfortable!” If he’s really distressed, I may even encourage him to cry: “Cry, baby! Cry aloud, hug me and cry, you’re in pain!”
Never ask “why.” Asking, “Why are you crying?” can make a child feel blamed or diminished, implying they have no reason to cry. Furthermore, it requires thought, which the child isn’t ready for. Before discussing their emotions, they need to show them openly.
Moreover, knowing “why” they’re crying may lead us to try to solve their issues, offer solutions. But what they need is different – they can likely handle their problems alone; they just need their emotions to be heard.
Try using “What’s going on?” or “How are you feeling?” instead of “why.”
(Translated from a website article)