Stop Talking to Your Child About Their Feelings All the Time

As children, we were raised by a generation of parents who generally did not talk about our feelings. So, in today’s environment of healthy parenting, we, as parents, are encouraged to connect with our children more. One way we do this is by talking to them about their feelings.

However, constantly talking to your kids about their feelings and asking them to name them all the time can feel quite clinical, rather than a normal parent-child conversation. All this talking can also take up a lot of time in the day, and your children might feel as if they are constantly being monitored.

In this article, we talk about why we need to cut back a little, how much is too much, and what we can do instead to foster healthy communication while raising children who will be emotionally mature adults unafraid to be in touch with their emotions.

When our children are in the midst of experiencing their emotions, our first instinct is to want them to understand themselves and name their feelings. We want them to feel seen and safe to communicate.

However, when we talk about it too much or when they are right in the middle of experiencing them, their developing brains are not given enough time to process their feelings on their own or to let them feel as deeply, and it gets in the way of letting them learn to navigate their emotions independently.

And sometimes, when we prod too much by asking, there is this undercurrent of us almost wanting to remove those negative emotions, especially when they are strong. We must remember that it is okay for them to be distressed.

In the Child Psych Podcast, child psychologists, play therapists, moms, and hosts Tania Schamuhn and Tammy Johnson discuss how, if, as children, we felt invisible with our emotions, we may feel a sort of discomfort as parents about letting our kids be upset and not doing anything about it, so we tend to overcompensate.

But children’s brains are not wired like ours as adults. As adults, we tend to talk through our feelings as we navigate them, and sometimes we need to talk with others to process them.

Children, on the other hand, do not yet have enough language to name and describe their feelings in words. At this part of their lives, the right hemispheres of their brains are more active, meaning they feel things more deeply but lack the language to express them. Most of the time, they cannot even name their feelings yet.

According to Child Therapy Center LA, asking them to name their feelings as “happy,” “sad,” or “mad” can oversimplify their big feelings and leave out nuances such as frustration or embarrassment.

We sometimes forget that their language and emotions are not yet fully connected, and that being unable to name their complicated feelings can add to their already bad mood.

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With children, emotions can show up physically.

Kids at this age are more body-based first, and when they are deep in their emotions, sometimes what helps more is getting them to move rather than talk. If your kids are active, get them to go out for a walk with you, run, or play a game.

If they prefer indoors, get them to do something repetitive or predictable that yields fast results, like baking or cooking, or doing a puzzle or knitting. Play-based physical activities, especially when done with a parent, are emotion-regulating and help them a lot more than talking it out.

Teaching them to regulate their emotions independently and giving them space to think through their feelings is a good foundation for emotional maturity they can carry into adulthood.

Every kid has a different temperament and has different coping mechanisms when it comes to dealing with their feelings. Acknowledging that they’re upset and letting them know that you’ll be there for them is a good place to start.

Kids should be able to navigate through their feelings on their own. They need to feel their emotions with all their intensity, to drown in them so that they learn how to swim through them and eventually recover.

There is a difference between wanting to comfort them and take their negative emotions away and sitting with them as they go through it.

Sometimes, it is enough to acknowledge that their emotions are running high, respond with gentleness and grace, and let them know that you are a safe space to go to if they do want to talk about what bothers them.

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