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Janet Lansbury discusses when to say “yes” to something as a parent versus when to set a boundary in an intriguing article. She says to say “yes” to your child’s feelings and to your child’s self-directed play. These are two things that I emphasize in the play therapy I do with young clients. Janet states that children need freedom to express their deepest, darkest, oddest, or inappropriate-seeming feelings because emotions are connected to “self” and who we are. By accepting a child’s emotions, we are accepting who they are. Janet states, “Encouraging the expression of feelings and acknowledging them is the key to our child’s emotional health and also to self-worth”. This means not stopping the emotions with distractions, punishments, or other invalidating responses. The other thing to say “yes” to is self-directed play as children learn a great deal through their play. Boundaries should be set for safety, when the child is testing, and during transitions. Janet also addresses the “annoyance factor” which can be summed up by a quote from the article “when we placate children by allowing them to do what we don’t really want them to do, we end up being the ones who want to explode, and that can be dangerous.” In other words, if we will be irritated by a behavior, it might be better to set a limit rather than endure the behavior and become resentful of the child.
“…not stopping the emotions with distractions, punishments, or other invalidating responses” makes me take pause. Could there be some validating responses that supports a child’s feelings and then goes a step further. A step is needed, in my opinion, that could help him acknowledge his feelings, feel them, but then slowly begin, as he grows older, to discern what is appropriate for the time and place in which he is? I can’t help but think that encouraging a child, older than three, to sink into emotions and experience them is only the first step toward a healthy personality in a global sense. I think there is another important level of emotional health, when other people and social situations require some self-constraits and discernment as to what is appropriate. If this is true, what can be done to encourage this kind of development from infancy on. I think REI and Montessori are on to something.
Yes Marianne, I agree with you that it is not simply about validating a child’s emotions but also helping them learn to regulate their feelings. II notice you say “encouraging a child to sink into emotions”, but I prefer to think of it as validating what the child’s experience is versus encouraging an emotion. Validation does not mean allowing a child to do hurtful things to themselves or others when they are experiencing a negative emotion, but it does mean respecting that little children do feel big emotions. I think children learn emotional regulation in several ways including through self-directed play as well as modeling from caregivers. This is partly where limit setting also comes in. I like to teach limit setting that includes
acknowledging the feeling as the first step and then moving onto the limit itself.