The Daily Dad

You Won’t Be Able To Do This

Feb 20, 2024

03:42

Snipd AI

The podcast discusses the importance of allowing kids to experience and handle negative emotions like sadness and frustration, rather than trying to shield them from these feelings. It emphasizes the need to teach children healthy coping mechanisms and emotional awareness.

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Quick takeaways

Attempting to shield children from negative emotions does not lead to lifelong happiness, focus on equipping kids with tools to navigate feelings.

Parents should focus on raising resilient children who can effectively manage negative emotions and obstacles in life.

Deep dives

The Importance of Allowing Kids to Experience Uncomfortable Feelings

As parents, it is natural to want to protect our children from negative emotions. However, Dr. Becky, in her book 'Good Inside', highlights that attempting to shield children from uncomfortable feelings is not the key to lifelong happiness. In fact, no adult has ever expressed gratitude for their parents magically eradicating these emotions from their lives. Rather than trying to suppress or ignore negative feelings, we should focus on equipping our children with the tools to navigate them. By acknowledging the inevitability of frustration, disappointment, and envy, we can empower our kids to understand, process, and find healthy outlets for their emotions.

Teaching Kids to Handle Negative Emotions

3min

Nobody likes it when their kids are sad. It breaks our hearts when they feel lonely, ashamed, or frustrated. We’d like to just make this all go away, to protect them from all this, so they can feel happy all the time.

But that’s not possible (nor is it, as we’ve talked about, actually a recipe for happiness).

In Good Inside, the great Dr. Becky writes, “I don’t know one adult who has ever said, ‘Wow, my parents really got all those uncomfortable feelings out of me! The disappointment and frustration and envy…they convinced them all out of me! They successfully distracted me so much that now, as an adult, I never feel these things! I am happy all the time!’”

You can’t—just as your parents couldn’t—tell them to stuff their feelings down. You can’t gaslight them into thinking the negative feelings aren’t there. You can’t make life so wonderful and fun that they’re never sad or angry or jealous or frustrated.

We can’t do it. We shouldn’t try to do it.

Instead, we have to try to raise and cultivate kids who know how to deal with those feelings. We can teach them how to deal with frustration. We can inform them that, sadly, frustration is an inevitable part of life—that things don’t always work out, that stuff breaks, that obstacles arise. We can empower them to understand their feelings, to be aware of them, to process them, to find healthy outlets for them.

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