Why children need to be allowed to feel and express ALL of their emotions

People love to see happy children.

When our toddler runs around, waves at people, smiles at them, or walks up to them to hand them her possessions or a leaf, they delight in her.

They comment on how adorable she is; they’re all smiles too.

But when she feels and expresses a “negative” emotion, such as sadness, anger, or fear, the response is often less warm. The smiles fade pretty quickly.

People often respond in one or more of the following ways to children’s negative emotions:

They deny their feelings. (‘This didn’t hurt’ or ‘No reason to be upset.’) 

They scold them. (‘Stop being so unreasonable.’)

They scare them. (‘If you don’t stop, I’ll give you a reason to be upset.’ Or ‘If you don’t pull yourself together, you can go to bed without food.’)

They lecture them. (‘Maybe next time, you should think about the consequences of your actions.’)

Or they just ignore them.

All of these responses to a child’s emotional outburst have one common underlying theme:

They communicate to the child that their emotions aren’t welcome, that this side of them isn’t loved.

If they receive this message often enough, they learn the following lesson:

To be loved, I must stop showing my negative emotions.

But learning not to show their negative emotions is not the same as healthy emotion regulation.

It is actually deeply harmful.

Because such emotions don’t just magically go away.

All emotions, the ones we enjoy feeling and the ones we find uncomfortable, have evolved and exist because they serve an important role:

They signal to ourselves (and to others) whether our needs are met, whether things are good as they are or need to be changed, or whether we are in danger.

Those emotions we find uncomfortable are our body’s way to tell us to attend to the cause of those emotions and, if possible, correct it.

Just like pain is our body’s way to tell us that we need to pay attention to and care for an injured body part, negative emotions call our attention to some part of the environment - physical and social.

And just like children need our help when they are hurt or sick, they also need our help to regulate their emotions.

So when we communicate to them that their emotions aren’t welcome, it is the same as if we told them that their pain from an injury or sickness isn’t welcome.

We leave them alone in their distress.

They are stuck with their emotions, with a loud and clear signal that something is wrong, but no tools to cope. And no way to develop the tools they need to cope with these emotions in a healthy way.

That in itself is reason enough not to discourage children from showing their emotions.

But it isn’t the only reason.

Because children are entirely dependent on us, they crave our love. Feeling our unconditional love is their insurance that we keep them safe.

When we signal to them that their emotions aren’t welcome, we signal that our love for them is conditional: Conditional on not showing certain parts of themselves, conditional on not showing negative emotions,

So to be loved, they need to hide this part deep inside. Which is the beginning of a journey of disconnecting from part of one’s true self.

And ultimately this makes children terrified of those very emotions – they have no tools to cope with them, and they make them feel unloved and alone.

Children (and adults) can deal with this fear of negative emotions in, broadly, two ways:

They can lash out in anger or they can suppress it.

Either way, they become disconnected from feeling the actual emotion as nature intended it and struggle making sense of it.

And they carry this pattern into adulthood; remaining stuck in an immature way of dealing with emotions.

And struggle truly connecting with other people.

They also struggle to open their hearts because the fear of being rejected and feeling those emotions is just too big.

If we look around the western world today, this describes many adults. In fact, I believe this describes most of us (myself included) at least in part. We just think our emotional immaturity is normal because it is the norm.

But it is not.

It only appears this way because most of us were not allowed to feel and express negative emotions when we were children.

I believe this is also the main reason why so many adults struggle with the emotional outbursts of children. It makes them uncomfortable to see negative emotions in their child - as it would to see such emotions in themselves. And they haven’t learned how to regulate those emotions themselves.

Unfortunately, not being able to fully feel and express those emotions, over time, leads to poor health outcomes.

Research shows that people who struggle feeling and expressing their emotions are more likely to suffer from chronic pain (such as back pain, migraines, arthritis), to develop autoimmune diseases and gut problems, to suffer from anxiety and depression, and to use alcohol or other drugs to cope with their distress.

So when we aren’t able to fully feel and express our emotions, they go awry and cause damage in many different ways.

We tend to think of emotions as (just) living in our minds. But they are part of our biology. They affect the whole body. When we are able and open to fully feeling them, to let the sensations they create pass through our body, and just sit with and listen to them without ruminating about them, it becomes easy to see this.

In our culture, we tend to be in our heads most of the time. We ruminate. We worry. When we feel an uncomfortable emotion and engage with it, we tend to think about it. We construct a narrative around it. But we don’t pay attention to the sensations in our body; we don’t allow the emotions to simply pass through.

Because while emotions have evolved to alert us about something being either good or bad for us, there isn’t always something we can do to address the problem. Sometimes, when we feel upset – because we didn’t get the job we wanted, because a relationship ended or because we missed the bus – there is nothing we can do to change reality.  

But fully feeling the emotions this brings up in our bodies, without trying to distract ourselves, suppress them or judging ourselves for feeling this way, helps those emotions pass through our bodies without causing damage.   

This is again similar to pain. Sometimes pain signals to us that we need to react immediately to change the situation (such as stopping touching the hot surface, change our position, or putting down something heavy). And sometimes, pain tells us that we need to give it time for an injury to heal. That we need to use a broken arm less until it heals.

Emotions tend to pass once we’ve listened to their message.

When we don’t want to hear what they have to tell us, they tend to stick around longer.

As Dr. Aziz described in his book “Not nice”, the ability to be present with emotions and feel them is what enables us to feel connected. Connected to ourselves, to other people and the world at large. It gives us true confidence. It gives us an inner confidence that no matter what life throws at us, we can handle it. Because we can handle the emotions that come along with it.

This is why I think it is so important that we communicate to our children that their emotions, ALL OF THEIR EMOTIONS, are welcome; that we love them, no matter what emotions they may feel.

That it is safe for them to express all their emotions around us. 

How can we do this?

When our child gets upset, we can just be there for them. We can hold the space. We can provide a shoulder to cry on, hold them in our arms, and be there with them.

We can say something like “I see you are hurt” or “You look upset”.

Accepting and allowing a child to feel however they may feel doesn’t mean we need to solve the problem for them. If they are upset that another kid took their toy, we don’t need to get the toy back. If they are angry that we won’t buy them ice cream, we don’t need to change our mind.

But we can acknowledge their feelings and be compassionate.

Reality is as it is and it is okay to be upset with that!

We can allow them to ride the wave of negative emotions.

And if we struggle with those emotions, we can ride that wave of negative emotions ourselves.

We can simply notice that we are feeling uncomfortable; that we have an urge to shut them down or run away – and breathe deeply instead. It may be helpful to use a mantra for ourselves such as “I am safe” or “It makes sense that I feel agitated” (if we never learned how to cope with our own negative emotions, our discomfort is perfectly reasonable).

We can try to allow those negative feelings to pass through our own body, to be present with them – without being in our minds ruminating.

And we can try being compassionate with ourselves – in the same way we would want to be compassionate with our children. Trying to allow those uncomfortable feelings at first is hard. Our nervous system tries to avoid them and cope in the same way we always have.

So it’s important to not get down on ourselves for falling back into old patterns. That is very likely to happen and it is okay. As a first step, it is great if we can simply notice how we feel and react and to be compassionate with ourselves.

If we practice this often enough, eventually we will be able to respond differently in the moment.

And able to increasingly show our child unconditional love and compassion. 

***

By modeling unconditional love and compassion, we also teach them how to love themselves and others unconditionally and to be kind to themselves and others.

Not only does this help our child to develop into an emotionally mature adult who can regulate their emotions in a heathy way (and help others do so too), we also set ourselves up for a long-term, loving relationship with our children.