Why is it so important to validate our children's emotions?

What it involves and how to achieve it

Dr. Anna Sintes Estévez

Clinical Psychologist

Hospital Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona

Validating a person's emotions means accepting what they are feeling without judging them , showing empathy towards them and letting them know that what they are experiencing and expressing to us is important to us. Validating the emotions of the people around us also allows us to communicate better with them and will provide us, in the long run, with the opportunity to establish deeper bonds.

When we refer to the family environment , emotional validation is a key piece in the education of our sons and daughters, which will help them create a healthy identity , experience and accept their emotions, put themselves in the shoes of others and also practice this validation in their own environment.

What does it mean to validate emotions?

Practice active listening. This involves paying attention and focusing on the other person, looking at them and avoiding distractions with the phone, television or any other element.
Show genuine interest. Adopt an open and relaxed posture, nod, and use words that show you are listening attentively (“I see,” “I understand”).
Avoid interrupting the other person's story, and allow them to express everything they want to express.
Clearly show that we have understood what they have told us, paraphrasing what they have said.
If we are not sure what he has explained or what emotion he is expressing, we can check it by asking him directly ("How did you feel when ...?") or by expressing what we have understood with hypotheses ("It seems to me that you felt sad when ... Is that so?")
Recognizing and expressing the emotions the other person is expressing (“You seem to be feeling very angry”).
Normalize emotions based on the context or situation ("It's understandable that you felt so frustrated in this situation")
Normalize emotions based on the history of lived experiences ("It's understandable that with everything that's happened to you, you feel this way")
Naturalize responses when they are normative (not inappropriate ones). "It is natural that in this situation and with this anger you reacted in x way." As long as the reaction was not very inappropriate, such as aggression, for example.

Guidelines for practicing empathetic listening

To validate, moreover, it is not necessary to agree with the other person's reaction. As parents, we validate emotions, which does not mean validating behavior . Therefore, a useful exercise for adults is to think that all the suffering that our son or daughter is making us feel is precisely all the suffering that he or she is feeling, and that he or she is probably showing it to us and expressing it in an inappropriate or uncontrolled way. With this in mind, we can:

Offer help by letting them know that we notice and understand that they are feeling bad.
Focus on emotions and not on the “bad behavior.” For example: “I see that you are very angry; I notice that you have been hurt by something; I understand that you feel very bad at this moment.”
Never confront when there is a high level of emotional dysregulation. Trying to self-criticize or think about the consequences at that moment can reactivate the emotions. In this case, it is advisable to wait for the intensity of the emotion to decrease and then encourage reflection on the episode.

We must think that All the suffering that our son or daughter is making us feel is precisely all the suffering that he or she is feeling, and which he or she is surely demonstrating and expressing to us in an inappropriate way.

Invalidating attitudes that we must avoid in the family sphere

We must avoid attitudes and communications that invalidate emotions in the family context, that do not allow the expression of negative emotions and that give quick and easy solutions to problems that are complex. Some aspects that create an invalidating environment in the family context and that, therefore, should be tried to avoid, are:

Denying or responding inappropriately to private experiences or emotions that are considered inappropriate.
Responding to personal experiences with punishments, trivializing them or attributing them to socially unacceptable traits: being an exaggeration, not being realistic, lack of motivation, not having a positive attitude...
Offer positive reinforcement of emotional escalation by responding and attending only when the person is expressing very extreme emotions.
Emphasizing the need to control or hide emotions.
Not tolerating unpleasant emotional expression (anger, sadness...).
Giving messages of oversimplification in problem solving (giving simplistic solutions, conveying that the problem is unimportant or has a very easy solution). Sometimes it can be useful to ask directly if the other person just needs us to listen or if they would also like us to help them think of possible solutions.