What Our Kids Really Need From Us When They’re Upset

Your daughter exits through the gym doors and you can tell something is wrong before she even approaches the car. Her face is cast down and her shoulders rounded, AirPods jammed into her ears. She slumps in the front seat, backpack hugged to her chest, phone inches from her face as she scrolls through her Snaps. Communication with her has felt all but impossible lately; she is either stonily silent or snappy and irritable. There is no middle ground.

“Did something happen at practice?” you ask, toeing onto the thin, delicate ice of her fragile emotions.

She blinks, once, twice, trying to keep the tears from forming in her eyes. You ease the car away from the curb. She’s more likely to talk when the car is moving.

“Hailey and I got into a huge fight because she’s not on the sprint medley team at the meet Saturday,” she says, eyes never leaving the phone. “I finally get to be in a relay but now I’m not allowed to be happy about it because she didn’t get picked.” She stabs at another Snap. “She’s legit NEVER happy when something good happens to me.”

You hate to see her upset especially since she’s been wanting to be on a relay team since freshman year. You know what a big deal this is for her. But Hailey is her best friend and it’s not worth ruining a friendship over. Your brain jumps into fixing mode.

“Well maybe you can call her after dinner and try to work it out. She’s probably just having a hard time because she wants to be on the team too.” You hazard a sideways glance. “You’re such good friends, honey—don’t let this come between you.” You place a hand on her leg.

She burrows farther into the corner of the car, pulls the strings of her hoodie tighter to her face. As soon as the car coasts into the driveway, she’s out the door and climbing the stairs to her room.
Conversation over.
***
Maybe this sounds familiar and you’re wondering where things got derailed. What could you have done differently? Would it even matter?

While there’s no exact science to teenage communication, there’s one thing we hear from the students we work with over and over: “Sometimes, we just want you to listen.”

Notice they don’t say, “We want you to judge how we feel” or “We want you to fix our problem.” What they want is for us to listen.

This, of course, is easier said than done when it’s your child and they’re upset or in pain. Our biological hardwiring demands that we make that hurt stop somehow: console it, fix it, smooth it over. But as it turns out, this approach often hurts our kids more than it helps them.

So what do our kids need from us in these high-emotion situations?

One word: validation.

Debra Kessler, Psy.D, defines validation as, “the act of letting someone else know his or her experience is real.” This doesn’t mean we agree with everything our child is feeling or thinking. It simply means we convey understanding of the emotions and the reasons behind why they feel that way.

Imagine the above scenario using these tips instead:

• Remain grounded. Your child’s emotions may be swirling all around them, but that does not mean you need to get sucked into the funnel cloud too. Getting as upset as they are will only amplify their feelings and prevent you from successfully guiding them out of the storm.
• Practice active listening. Listen as if you’ll be asked to recap what they said at the end. No judgment, no interrupting, no telling them about a time it happened to you. Just listening with an intent to comprehend.
• Restate their experience. Try this: “It’s so frustrating that your friend can’t be happy for you.” You can also use phrases like, “What I hear you saying is…” or “It sounds like…” and summarize what they’ve said
• Let them know you’re available. “I know this is hard. I’m here if you want to talk about it more.” Trust us, if they want or need advice, they’ll let you know.

Try to avoid:

• Fixing
• Judging
• Interrupting
• Getting overly emotional
• Talking about your own experience
• Making it about how upset you are for them

Believe it or not, our kids crave this validation from us. They want to know that someone sees and hears them, that these crazy emotions swirling inside them are both real and valid. As parents, our responsibility is not to fix our children’s problems or lessen their discomfort, much as we wish we could. What they really need from us is to hold space for their pain and teach them how to sit with it until it passes.

The message we need to communicate to our kids is not, “This problem is small and I can make it go away if you’ll let me fix it for you.” What they need to hear is, “What you feel is real and I’ll sit alongside you as you learn how to fix it for yourself.”

SK Wellness (SWELL) is a nonprofit organization that works within the South Kingstown
community to promote optimal mental health through education and advocacy. For more
information about their programs and services, please visit their website www.swellri.org.