Validating Your Child’s Emotions

Emotional validation is recognizing someone else’s feelings or needs without judgment. You don’t have to agree with someone’s perspective to validate their emotions. You just have to show the person that you understand how they could feel the way they do.

Why it’s important to validate your child’s emotions

When you validate your child’s emotions, you can:

• Help your child feel seen, understood, and valued.
• Help your child learn to identify their emotions and work through them.
• Show your child that you’re someone they can trust with their feelings.
• Teach your child to be more accepting of negative feelings. This can help them stay calm and handle those feelings when they happen.

Validating your child’s emotions can also help your child learn self-compassion. When people have self-compassion, they are more likely to be able to deal with adversity and setbacks in a healthy way.

It’s important to show your child that you understand how they’re feeling and that you’re willing to listen.

It’s important to show your child that you understand how they’re feeling and that you’re willing to listen. Here are some things you can do to validate your child’s emotions.

• Really listen. Show your child that you’re interested in what they’re feeling and why.
• Focus only on your child, without distraction.
• Show that you’re listening by using your body language and voice. You can sit at eye level with your child, lean in toward them, and nod your head as they talk.
• Tell your child that you understand what they’re feeling and why.
• Remember that your child’s problems are as real to them as yours are to you.

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• Be genuine. Kids can often tell when adults mean what they say, versus when they’re just saying the “right words.”
• Let your child feel the emotion fully. Telling someone to “stop worrying” or to “relax” when they’re upset usually doesn’t work very well. Plus, telling your child not to feel a certain way is like saying, “What you’re feeling is wrong or not acceptable.”
• Try not to “fix” the problem to make the emotion go away. Help your child learn to identify and work through feelings and problems on their own.
• Remember that every feeling is acceptable, but every behavior is not. Validating your child’s feelings doesn’t mean you have to give in every time your child wants something. It also doesn’t mean allowing your child to behave in inappropriate ways.

Excerpted from “Validating Your Child’s Emotions” from the Kaiser Permanente health encyclopedia. Read the full post online.