In this Mini-Lesson you are going to learn how to help your children to feel heard and understood so two things can happen:

1. They can let negative feelings go instead of suppressing them
2. They can feel good about talking with you concerning any problems they have

The way you meet your children’s need to feel heard and understood is by acknowledging negative feelings.

The result? No bricks in her backpack. No pent up emotional pain to numb. A stronger relationship with you.

Let’s talk about what it means to acknowledging negative feelings. Simply put, it means when your child comes to you in distress, with a problem or hurt feelings, you listen and try to understand what she is feeling and why. Then you give her a short summary of what you perceive she must be feeling and why she is feeling that way.

1. Listen to how she is feeling and why she is feeling that way
2. Give her a summary

This will enable your child to calm down and let go of her negative feelings. If your child is faced with a problem, acknowledging her feelings will put her in a state of mind to come up with ideas to solve that problem.

When you acknowledge negative feelings on a regular basis with all your children, they will feel more like approaching you when they have problems, even during their teenage years.

Acknowledging negative feelings is the first step when problem-solving with a child. Problem-solving is a topic for another Mini-Lesson. Just keep in mind that the first step in problem-solving is to acknowledge negative feelings.

Acknowledging negative feelings provides emotional healing.

When a child comes to you in distress, she doesn’t want you to agree or disagree; she doesn’t need your opinion or advice. She doesn’t want you to “fix it”. What she wants and needs is for you to listen and show that you understand.

Let’s contrast acknowledging negative feelings with denying negative feelings .

In a prior post you learned about 11 year old Johnny coming home from school and announcing, “My teacher’s mean. She made fun of me in front of the whole class and everybody laughed. I hate her,” at which point he was told, “Well, if you would have done what the teacher told you to do, that wouldn’t have happened.”

That is a good example of a child’s feelings being denied and not meeting his need to be heard and understood.

When you acknowledge negative feelings you:

1. let the child say whatever she wants
2. give her the freedom to express all kinds of nasty, critical things, whether they are true or not.
3. allow her to vent.

And while this is happening, you listen. Then you reflect back to her, the emotion she must be feeling and the reason. “She scribbled on your drawing? After all that work you put into it? I can see why you are so mad.”

In the next Mini-Lesson you will learn the step-by-step process to acknowledging negative feelings.