Helping Your Child Deal With Their Feelings: An Expert’s Guide

As parents, one of the most unbearable things is to see our child struggle with their feelings – to feel sad, worried, or find friendships hard. It’s natural to want to make them feel better and fix whatever is bothering them. But if we do that too much, we can inadvertently send the message that those feelings are not okay, that they’re intolerable, or that there’s something wrong with having them.

This impulse to fix is particularly pressing now. In my practice as a child psychotherapist, I’ve seen a growing tendency for young people, especially teens, to self-diagnose. They come in and tell me they have depression or anxiety, or that they have OCD. My job is not to tell them they’re wrong, but to understand the meaning behind their words – what does the term ‘anxiety’ mean to them, and what helps? Of course, sometimes they do meet the clinical threshold for diagnosis. But it raises an important question: are we living in an era of pathologising feelings?

What we need to do as parents is to normalise the discomfort of emotions. If we can do that, our children are more likely to grow into teens who can frame uncomfortable feelings as just that: uncomfortable, but understandable. That it makes sense to be anxious when you’re starting a new school or having difficulty with friends. That sadness can come for no ostensible rhyme or reason. That anger in and of itself is not inherently bad – it is what you do with it that matters. Feelings are like weather; they don’t stick around permanently.

Normalising Difficult Feelings For Your Child

The first step to normalising uncomfortable emotions is to try not to immediately fix them. Validate first: ‘I can see you’re feeling X. I get it, it sucks to have to go to bed/not be invited to your friend’s party.’ Then, only later, move into problem-solving mode. Second, model all sorts of emotions and their OK-ness. The other day, I was showing my children photos of a loved one who died before they were born, and I began to tear up. Instead of saying ‘Mummy’s fine,’ I said, ‘I’m feeling really sad because I loved this person very much and I miss them, and I’m feeling happy that you’re hearing all about them from me.’ I was showing that it’s completely OK to feel sad, to feel more than one thing at a time, and that sadness doesn’t last forever.

Thirdly, try to normalise emotions in everyday life for your child. This can be as simple as labelling your own (‘Ugh, I’m so annoyed – I wanted to go for a walk and it’s pouring with rain’), being curious about the emotions of characters in books or films, or simply wondering aloud about your child’s feelings. And finally, build resilience through supported struggle. Resilience – such a buzzword, but an important one – grows when children face experiences that are hard but manageable with support. Life won’t always go smoothly, and the more children experience setbacks with help rather than rescue, the more they learn they can cope. Highlight these moments: ‘You were really upset about going to that after-school club, but you calmed down and did it – that’s impressive.’ We can also model resilience ourselves, showing how we manage mistakes and bounce back, even messily.

In the end, our job isn’t to take our child’s difficult emotions away, but rather to sit beside them while they feel them. When we show that emotions are safe, understandable, and temporary, we give our children the confidence to feel – and to know that feelings, however hard, are part of being human.

Emily Samuel is a child and adolescent psychotherapist based in Bath; emilysamuelpsychotherapy.com