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A child psychologist has warned parents never to try and tell their children how to feel, as it’s one of the biggest mistakes they can make, and explained what they should say instead
What we thought were words of encouragment to children may be having the opposite effect warns one child psychologist.
There is no guide on how to be a parent, so for many, every day is a learning day. Now one expert has urged parents to avoid telling children how they feel, or how they should feel – whether its sadness, anger or something else as it’s a “huge mistake”.
The major misconception mishap is explained by Child psychologist Professor Sam Wass, who claimed that the worst thing you can do is to try and tell your little one not to feel their emotions.
The professor, who is an expert in child stress and attention and has previously appeared on the Channel 4 show The Secret Life of 4 and 5 Year Olds and also told The Mirror some of the ‘worst’ phrases parents can say to their children and that should be avoided.
Speaking in partnership with Virgin Media O2’s Connected Playground, he said: “Inhibiting emotions doesn’t work, it doesn’t work for adults and it definitely doesn’t work on a child, you can’t just tell someone to cancel an emotion.
“So for example in September you always see all these parents marching their children to their first day of school, dragging them by the hand and their child is in floods of tears and the parent is walking along and saying in a really cheerful voice ‘it’s going to be fine, you’re going to have a lovely time, don’t be scared’.
“And that is exactly what not to do as it just doesn’t work.” The expert went on to say that instead of telling them what not to feel, you should try and explain to your child what their emotions are.
“What we think does work is just describing what a child might be feeling, we call this building metacognitive awareness and it’s the awareness of the inner child and what they are feeling,” Professor Wass explained. “It’s something we never teach children in schools but it’s something we have to learn.
“Children aren’t aware of what they’re feeling, they can’t describe it and that’s because they don’t know it themselves. It’s only by you describing to them what they are feeling that they gain that self-awareness of what it is.”
He added: “Something about being self-aware of what we’re feeling helps us to manage that emotion and helps it to reduce.
“What I would do as a parent is just to help my child gain self-awareness about what they are feeling, so putting it in non-judgemental terms, saying something like ‘it seems to me you are feeling this’ and putting a verbal label on it to help them understand better and learn what their own emotions are.”
This comes after the expert explained how to ‘defuse’ a toddler’s tantrum. He told how many people often try and use logic to deal with a tantrum, but this doesn’t work with children as their brains aren’t developed enough to handle reason.
Professor Wass explained: “Toddlers are at this stage when the emotional centres of their brains are massive and their reason centres are tiny, so a much more effective way to deal with a tantrum is to comment on what they’re saying and echo it back to them using their language.”
So how exactly would you go about doing this?
“If the child is talking in two-word phrases, saying things like ‘want juice’ or ‘want custard’, you can match their language and their intonation,” he clarifies.
“They’ll be very up and down in their voice, so you copy that. Match their state and what they’re saying, commentate on it, almost like a football commentator would, so if they’re saying ‘I want custard’, you would say, ‘Freddie wants custard’ to make sure they feel understood. This feeling of being understood will help them calm down and then you’ll be able to shift their attention onto something else.”
An earlier version of this story was published in March 2023.
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