Unison Parenting Blog: Two Parenting Pitfalls in Emotional Validation

Parents must strike the right balance between overemphasizing and underemphasizing a child's emotional needs. In my last blog, I showed how parents can veer toward Permissive Parenting when they only focus on love, kindness, and feelings without discipline. On the other extreme are parents who neglect or do not properly address a child's emotional needs.

Typically, we see this behavior with the other two negative parenting styles, Dominant Parenting and Neglectful Parenting. In a nutshell, the Dominant parent focuses on rules at the expense of a clear, loving attitude; they won't bother with emotions. The Neglectful parent doesn't interact with the child enough to recognize or address their emotional needs.

But even parents striving for the Loving and Firm (best) parenting style must watch for two pitfalls damaging to our child's emotional health.

Emotional neglect specialist Dr. Jonice Webb points out two such pitfalls. First, the parent doesn't meet the child's emotional needs threshold. A parent might validate a child's emotions, but not consistently or enough. They may discriminate, choosing which emotions seem valid to the parent.

Reflecting on my own parenting, I wonder if I was consistent in validating emotions. Did I dismiss some emotions because I felt the child was overreacting or not matching emotions to the situation? Parents need a heightened awareness of this pitfall and its potential damage to the child.

The other pitfall is actively invalidating the child's emotions. This approach stems from seeing emotions as a choice. The result is the parent may see the child as "too emotional" or "behaving badly" by experiencing certain emotions.

A child's fragile psyche can be negatively impacted by a parent's response to emotions. What can parents do to avoid these pitfalls?

The answer would be a much longer post, but here are two rules of thumb:

1. Treat the child's feelings as valuable.

2. Don't ignore the child's feelings. Commit to noticing feelings and helping the child manage them.

You can see that to parent in unison, all parenting partners must adhere to these guidelines.