Accepting Big Feelings

What's it good for?

On the recommendation of a parent friend, I started reading How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk today. Specifically, I read the first chapter, which is about validating children’s emotions, rather than doing a whole bunch of other things. When a kid expresses a big feeling, the book advises their parents to acknowledge and label the feeling. A lot of “You’re really sad your friend is moving away” or “you’re very mad at your teacher!”, which I notice is not a conversational move I make very often with adults.

It’s not too surprising that validating a child’s feelings is better than quashing them, especially in a world where The Steven Universe Theory of Probems is embedded in the culture. But I was surprised that simple emotional labeling was recommended over:

• Giving advice/proposing solutions

• Asking probing questions

• Confirming understanding about facts

With adults, working out the factual details might be a good way to communicate - in a non-touchy-feely way - that you’re paying attention. Likewise with asking (some) questions: it’s a way to show you’re listening and invested without coming across as condescending. (I doubt most adults would react that well to “Wow! You’re mad!”) And while unsolicited advice is generally a faux pas among adults,¹ teaching is a huge part of parent-child relationships, so it was a helpful check to my fantasies of being a wise mentor to be reminded that no, kids mostly don’t love being lectured either.

I had a good time thinking about the lessons from the chapter while eating brunch with my niece and nephew today, though fortunately for everyone they weren’t evincing too many big feelings, and I’ll probably keep the ideas in my back pocket as I hang with kids on the eve of having my own.

But this isn’t (yet) a parenting blog,² so there are two further questions I want to discuss. One, why does this technique work well with children in particular, and two, might it apply elsewhere?

Why Label Kids’ Emotions?

What sort of position is a kid in, relative to their parent?

• They have little power to shape their destiny, and are keenly aware of that fact

• They don’t have fully formed communication (or even thinking) skills, so they’re frequently misunderstood

• They don’t have much practice regulating their emotions, nor (outside of abusive situations) are the penalties for poor emotional regulation very steep

So basically, a kid is a person who is likely to have lots of big feelings it’s hard for them to control or communicate, and if their caregiver misunderstands or disrespects those feelings, they won’t have much influence in what happens.

When you actually write it out, that situation seems extremely ripe for out of control emotions, and thus the injunction to tackle feelings first is wise. Probing questions, gentle reminders of boundaries, parental guidance: all these things may have their place, but until huge feelings get their due, they won’t do too much good.

Someday, as a parent, I expect to go back, read this, and shake my head at how little I knew now. But as a not-yet-parent, yes, I’m convinced.

Where Else Might This Apply?

There’s a basic sense in which “acknowledging your interlocutor’s feelings” is a great tool to have in your toolbox, including when your interlocutor is yourself. This is one of those wise, true things that everybody knows, but that can be hard to actually apply in the moment, and possible to take too far. If you respond to everything everyone says by acknowledging their feelings, then you by definition never inject anything new into the conversation. Sometimes the object level is simply the place to be, and few people like a self-described empath who lives in the realm of feelings full-time.

So, okay, fine, the answer to “when should I use this technique” is “sometimes, but not to excess”. Not very useful. To be narrower, I think good times to practice emotional labelling are when at least some of the features of parent-child relationships are present. For example:

• When there’s a strongly unequal power dynamic: it’s probably good for bosses to take a beat to (respectfully) label the feelings of their employees, so the employees feel emotionally safe and understood.

• When someone’s in a compromised state or doesn’t have all their faculties: when comforting a drunk person, or an overtired person, or a very sick person, their emotions may be harder to bear and harder to communicate, so it’s probably extra good to check in on a purely emotional level.

• When dealing with inner turmoil: if you’re trying to figure out why you feel a certain way, it’s probably worth trying to label that feeling, lest you skip to solutions without really understanding where your emotions are coming from

Thinking about these situations helps me empathize with children: it doesn’t seem like their emotional needs are totally distinct from those of adults, but rather like there’s a cluster of circumstances they’re under that all point toward feelings-related jeopardy, and adults are under some of these circumstances sometimes, too.

I also had a quick conversations with my wife that was unusually helpful this evening, starting from a place of “what am I feeling, actually?” rather than getting too deep in the weeds of specific circumstances. Good stuff.

1. Particularly on the planet Gethen.

2. Don’t worry, friends and family, it will never be the sort of parenting blog that parades the writer’s children around as unwitting or unwilling stars.