By: Kelly Arrington, Parent Support Specialist

We often hear in the world of conscious parenting to validate your child’s feelings. But what do you do when you validate your child’s feelings and they get more upset??

If you have worked with me for more than one session it is likely you have heard me recommend to label and validate your child’s emotions. Generally, this is super helpful because it helps diffuse the intensity of their feeling. “Name it to tame it.” When they are stomping or crying or screaming and you get down on their level and say “you are so frustrated right now” often you’ll see them deflate and go “yesssss!” and possibly melt more. There is so much power in being seen and understood and most of the time all our kids need is to know they are seen, heard, and understood. 

Most of us didn’t receive that growing up. Think back to times when you felt a strong emotion and were met with dismissal or some reaction that made you feel like you shouldn’t be feeling what you’re feeling. Imagine if someone had met you with understanding. Whew, it can have such a big impact. 

Ok, off my soapbox about validating. But seriously, it can be magic, and I’ll write a separate post about how to best validate feelings. Even tho it is great, there are times when it backfires. You tell them “I see you are so frustrated right now” and they yell in your face “NO I’M NOT YOU IDIOT!” or worse. All of a sudden their emotions are even bigger, and they are losing it. You may be thinking, “but Kelly told me to do this! She’s full of it, and now our life is an even bigger mess.”
I get that. It’s so frustrating when the tools don’t work. 

I was listening to a training recently and got some very helpful tools for those times that validating isn’t the answer. 

Let’s hold up for a second- how do you know when validating isn’t the answer?

• Sometimes this is based completely on the knowledge of how you child reacts. Tried validating a few times and it always backfires? Try this new approach instead. (I will say, if you child isn’t used to being validated, they may be confused and have big reactions the first few times so give it some consistency before throwing in the towel.)
• They are really worked up. Like BIG. Sometimes if they are completely hijacked by the feeling naming it will make it bigger. Trust yourself on this. 
• You don’t have any idea what they might be feeling. If you can’t relate to them and aren’t sure what they are feeling, it’s best not to guess and these other strategies might be a better route. (No shame here either. Many of us weren’t taught to label our own emotions and we’re still figuring out how we feel let alone have the ability to figure out how someone else is feeling). 

Ok, I digress. 

So new strategies! The premise behind this strategy is that we’re going for “3 yeses”. Instead of making the kid think about what they’re feeling we want to give them the change to simply nod their head. When a child is overwhelmed by emotions we don’t want them to have to use their thinking brain. Here are some examples of how this would sound:

Instead of “I see you’re angry” try…

• “It sounds like…” you had a really hard day
• “I get the feeling that…” you’ve been feeling lonely
• “I wonder if…” you didn’t want to stop playing that game
• “It sounds as tho…” you felt that was unfair

Is that starting to make sense? So the idea is that we’re no longer telling them how they feel (which can sometimes make them mad, especially when we get it wrong or it just overwhelms their brain) and we’re simplifying the answer they have to give while bringing in extra curiosity. That’s all there is to it!

Side note-

I want to give a quick reminder of the 3 Rs- regulate, relate, and reason. This is the order to follow when your child has big feelings, and you need to help them calm down. All the strategies listed above (label, validate, 3 yeses) all happen during the relate phase. This is step 2. We need to help regulate with our calm presence first. I’ll write a post on that too!

So that is my tip for the week! Give it a try with your kiddos and report back and let me know how it works for you all! I hope this is helpful.