When your kid feels sad — holding space for their emotional process

So this morning, my younger son was really feeling sad and disappointed because his dad was going fishing with my older son’s class. And he was making a lot of statements like, I really want to go with Daddy and Cruz. My class never gets to go fishing. Mommy, will you pick me up early from school today? And I really had to stay centered.

On something I learned from Donna Scott in our most recent recording, the one called Talking Back, which you’ll find on my website. And she talked about how so often we want to suppress or stop the emotional cycle of our kids because either we don’t have the capacity for their emotions, or we think they’re being selfish, or we want them to handle something with more maturity, or we think they’re being like super ungrateful. And we just go into this state of like cajoling them out of it, right?

Every instinct inside of my body wanted to say, Daddy takes you fishing all the time. Cruz’s class is going fishing because they’re in third grade and they’re learning about professions. You’ll get to do that in two years. Jase, stop making a big deal. It’s only gonna be an hour and a half of fishing. You’re gonna be having so much fun with your friends. Maybe daddy could take you fishing after school, right? I just wanted to like rush him out of his process, rush him out of his sadness.

The first thing to remember is what Donna taught me, which is rushing our kids through their natural emotional process, allowing them to ride the wave of that sadness or that anger in a place of safety, is actually what teaches our kids true emotional health. It’s what allows them to actually process the emotion and release it. Instead of it staying stuck inside of them, or instead of them suppressing it — when we rush to stop it, that is what causes them to become emotionally stunted and immature. They feel so brushed off and disregarded and unimportant. Dismissed.

So acknowledging their feelings is an actual parental superpower. It’s safe to be sad with me. It’s safe to feel disappointed. And so instead of rushing him or doing any of those things, I was just like, Yeah, I totally understand why you feel bummed about that. I just kind of tried to acknowledge him softly. We kept moving about our morning. I didn’t tell him he could skip his class. I didn’t try to fix it for him. I allowed him to feel his disappointment.

The other reason this is important is because as we constantly suppress our kids’ negative emotions — their sadness, their anger — we are also suppressing the joy and the fun that they experience. People who begin to emotionally suppress don’t just suppress the negative, they become more emotionally shut down overall. And that is not what I want for them. I don’t want them to become numb and disconnected and disengaged.

The third part is when we are constantly correcting our kids for feeling a certain way, we are literally teaching them to look outside of themselves to determine how to feel instead of saying, Yeah, you can trust yourself to feel that way. That does feel crummy. And also we can move through it and still move forward with our day.

So many of the women that I work with feel completely codependent on the surroundings outside of them to determine how they feel. Who is upset with me? How are things with my partner? Who likes me? Who doesn’t? We’re working to overcome this outward-looking anxiety and codependence in our 30s, in our 40s, in our 50s.

And so many of the men that I work with deal with so much suppressed sadness, frustration, and rage because most of us were taught to look outside of ourselves to decide how to feel. I feel a certain way, but my parent tells me, it’s fine, it’s no big deal, get over it, stop being rude. Our parents show us from the beginning that they don’t have the emotional capacity to handle what we’re feeling. So we begin to shut down and we look outside of ourselves and we’re like, yeah, it is fine, it’s no big deal, I shouldn’t feel this way, I’m stupid for feeling this way, my feelings don’t matter.

There’s this complex combination of beginning to shut down, not trusting ourselves, looking outside of ourselves to decide how to feel, and developing anxiety and insecurity in trusting ourselves. So the next time your kid is having a moment — I personally find it much harder to deal with these moments when they’re angry, but I know many of you feel just as triggered when they’re sad.

And I get it because you think it’s a reflection of them not having gratitude, or you think it’s a reflection on maybe you. Maybe it triggers something inside of you where you’re like, how can they even feel sad? They have everything in the world. I don’t want them to feel this way. Or maybe you were never allowed to feel sad, so you want to rush them through their sadness.

And what I can promise you is as you begin to hold space for them and demonstrate your parental superpower of allowing them to have their feelings, holding space for them as they go through their process, acknowledging what they’re feeling, but still holding your boundary and gently moving them forward throughout the day — it will also heal something inside of you that did not know how to process emotions. It’s not perfect and it’s not easy. But it is one of the most powerful transformations that you can experience for yourself and for your home.

I should note that he actually went to school still feeling a little bit sad and experiencing the fact that it is sometimes okay to feel sad in a safe environment. He was safe with me at home. He was safe with his dad in the car on the way to school, who knows how to hold space for him and just allow him to have his feelings. And it’s safe for him to be a little bit sad at school with his caring and loving teacher and naturally move through that process. As he goes about his day, he will release his sadness and his attention will be drawn to other things.

I hope this was helpful to you guys. It was helpful to me this morning as I was remembering it and moving through the motions with him and alongside him and feeling so thankful for the guidance that Donna has given us. And I’m so glad that you’re here on this journey with me.