Clinical Psychologist Warns Parents Who 'Compulsively Validate' The Emotions Of Their Kids
Instead, express curiosity.
Dima Berlin | Canva Parents today are so terrified of invalidating their kids that they often swing like a pendulum in the opposite direction, training their kids that their emotions should be the center of the universe. Then, they are upset and surprised when their kids become self-centered adolescents and adults.
One way that parents unintentionally teach their kids to be self-involved and anxious all in one swoop is the current practice of compulsively narrating their emotions for them.
In our society, an attuned parent is no longer only supposed to respond to a child’s stated emotion. They are supposed to inhabit the child’s brain and verbalize what the child cannot. Unfortunately and fortunately, we are not superhuman mind readers, so we often get this wrong.
A parent who tends to be anxious will overshoot the incidence of their child’s thoughts being fear-driver. A parent who is depressed will assume their child is thinking negatively about themselves.
Here is what it looks like when a parent compulsively validates a kid's emotions:
Child: I’m bored, this sucks.
Mom: Oh, honey. I’m sorry you’re angry and sad.
This may sound ridiculous, but I heard it in my own ears. The parent is not trying to make things worse; they are trying to validate and be empathic. Instead, they are extending or even transforming a child’s fleeting boredom into a different, more negative emotion and validating that unfelt emotion.
Sadly, the child will soon feel that new, more negative emotion because kids trust their parents to interpret their world for them.
Also, continually narrating your child’s internal experience can be perceived as intrusive and controlling. Especially if your child is sensitive or less verbally articulate than you, they may start to feel that you are inside their head, monitoring their thoughts. When you don’t interpret the thoughts correctly, they begin to doubt their original thoughts since if you’re the adult, you must be right.
This is one way that constant labeling and validating (your perception of) your child’s emotions can end up having the exact opposite effect of what you intend. A child can grow less confident in what they think and/or less willing to share their thoughts independently with you.
If you recognize yourself in this post, consider why you engage with your child this way.
Usually, it is parenting anxiety/perfectionism (you have heard of validating emotions as a positive parenting practice, and now you’re taking it to an extreme) or a history of feeling extremely misunderstood and dismissed in your childhood and trying to rectify this for your kids.
Your intentions are great, but you may be overshooting the mark and unintentionally making your kids feel that you know their minds better than they do or that you intrude on their own brains.
Note: Sometimes, people say kids will correct you if you misinterpret their emotions. This isn’t true. Yes, some kids will, but many kids will just take what you say as fact and update their own barely-as-yet-verbalized emotions in their minds to reflect the data you just provided them.
Strategies to help you stop compulsively validating your kids' emotions:
You’ll have to practice them because in the moment, it’s hard not to revert to old patterns when your child is upset.
1. Do not tell your child what they are feeling.
If you’re worried this will not promote an atmosphere of open discussion of feelings, remember that kids follow what they see you DO more than they listen to what you SAY. Express your feelings freely, and your kids will be confident in sharing theirs.
2. Listen to your child quietly when they share their emotions.
Saying, “Yeah, for sure,” or nodding are other ways to show you are present and listening. Mirroring every thought, “I hear that you’re sad,” can quickly become misinterpretation and overextension.
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3. Trust your child to soothe themselves and give them emotional space.
You can teach them strategies to self-soothe, but show by your calmness and confidence that you believe they can do it. Toddlers and preschoolers should be helped with this more than older kids, but even toddlers should get a chance to self-soothe before you jump in and rescue them.
For example, your toddler says, “I want a cookie now!” Instead of saying, “You’re feeling so frustrated!” you can say, “Yeah, but we have to wait for dinner,” and calmly redirect to something else.
You are modeling an adaptive strategy for discomfort and distraction while also modeling calm confidence that this is a surmountable problem that your toddler can power through.
4. Ask how your child felt rather than telling them how they must have felt.
Most kids honestly do not want to be asked frequently about their feelings, but if there is a useful place to understand emotions in a given situation, ask rather than tell.
For example, your 10-year-old gets a bad behavior grade in class and says the reason is: “My friends all hate me.” Instead of saying, “I’m so sorry! You must be feeling so sad,” how about calmly and kindly asking what happened and what the child plans to do about whatever social issue arose?
You can also ask how they felt about whatever happened to help them label it and understand why things may have happened how they did. (E.g., "I felt embarrassed when they made fun of me.” “Oh, I get it, so that was why you responded by leaving class, and your teacher emailed me.”)
If you try to take a step back and allow your child to have more internal private brain space, you may see them become calmer and more confident around you and in general.
Keep in mind that your child will eventually become an adult. Our job as parents is to take a long-range view of our children’s need to gain independence and individuate from us.
Certainly, it provides enough scaffolding to make children feel secure. But stopping yourself from responding immediately (which is often done because of your unaddressed anxiety, as discussed) can prevent you from overpowering your children’s nascent attempts to independently self-regulate and navigate their own emotions.
Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten, aka Dr. Psych Mom, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the founder of DrPsychMom. She works with adults and couples in her group practice Best Life Behavioral Health.