Embrace the Waterworks
Confession: I am a crier. I cry when I’m happy, I cry when I’m sad, I cry (frustratingly) when I’m angry, when I’m moved by immense talent or beauty...spend enough time with me and you will see tears at some point. Now, you may not be as emotional as I, but something I hear often from parents is:
“How do I express and normalize feelings in front of my child without scaring them?”
I’ve noticed a wide range of ways that parents show or don’t show emotion to their children, from keeping it all behind closed doors to sharing each and every feeling that comes up.
We certainly don’t want to live on either extreme all the time. Showing no emotion in front of our children ever will create a dynamic where they may not feel free to express their own feelings, or even understand what healthy emotional expression looks like. Sharing everything is overload, and could run the risk of making the child feel like they have to take care of or soothe you. But remember, we can’t do this perfectly all the time. You might pass over a valuable opportunity for sharing emotion with your child or you might overshare now and then...that’s okay.
There are a few things to consider when sharing emotions with your children.
Explain/name what’s going on in a straightforward way using simple feeling words. I’m talking ten words or less if possible - any more will be too confusing and you’ll get in the weeds with details. This is important because a child seeing a parent exhibiting an extreme emotion without context or explanation leaves the child to make up their own story about what’s going on. As you can imagine, this story is usually wrong, and the child may default to “This must be my fault.”
For example, let’s say you are feeling anxious and overwhelmed and start to have a panic attack while sitting on the couch with your child. You might say something like, “I feel really worried right now, and the worry is so big that I can feel it in my body.”
Reassure your child that it is not their fault and they are not responsible for fixing it. This is a vital piece that should not be skipped, because young children are developmentally very self-centered and think in black and white terms. Understanding the nuance of a complex emotional response is not within their cognitive ability yet. Thus, we again have to head off the story they might otherwise tell themselves about the situation.
If we continue with the same scenario, this might look like, “Even though I feel worried right now, it will go away and I will feel a different feeling, and there’s nothing you need to do to fix or help.”
Let them see you using healthy coping skills. In doing so, you are modeling healthy emotional expression and coping so that they know what to do when they inevitably feel the same feeling. You can even include your child if it feels appropriate.
For example, “I know it helps me calm down if I take deep breaths. Would you like to take ten deep breaths with me?”
If you hit all of these points, you will have taught your child several things. You will have expanded their feelings vocabulary and normalized healthy expression. You will have demonstrated that we are all responsible for our own emotions. And finally, you will have modeled healthy coping skills. Amazing! Give yourself a parenting gold star.
When I think about what I wish for children to take away from their parents about emotional expression, I always go back to the words of one of my personal heroes and the patron saint of empathy, Fred Rogers. He said, “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”
Folks, when feelings are mentionable, they are manageable, so go ahead and start the conversation.
