11:24:20 
2025-01-19 
38
((I say, “I know something must have really upset you at school today. I’m here to help you, but you can’t hit your brother on the head… You look really mad… Can you tell me what’s going on?” She yells, “Stop talking, I don’t want to talk!”) —Chris, about her 8-year-old
When our daughter yells at us, “Stop talking,” it’s often because:
* She’s embarrassed to tell you what happened. Children often feel embarrassed to tell their parents about being bullied, for example, because it makes them feel similarly shameful. Or:
* She’s worried about how you’ll respond. Will you side with the teacher? Tell her off for mishandling the situation? Call the other girl’s mom and embarrass her? Act like she’s an idiot who can’t solve her problems on her own? Or:
* Her emotions are so raw inside that she doesn’t want to feel them, so she She tries to suppress it and push it away. If she tells you, she’ll feel terrible all over again.
Unfortunately, the feelings she can’t express will continue to bother her, and she’ll take them out in bad behavior—hitting her brother, for example. So how do we support our child to express the feelings that are causing her to misbehave? (After setting a clear boundary, of course, that her brother is not being hit.)
* Don’t force her to talk. Intruding won’t help her feel safe. Whether she needs to talk or not, she needs to feel safe enough to express her feelings. Stay present, surround her with love, and set appropriate boundaries while she’s expressing her anger, and those feelings will come out sooner or later.
* Make her laugh. If your child lets you have a pillow fight with her that ends with you both laughing a lot, it can release the same stress hormones that a long crying spell does. Once she feels better, she’ll be more likely to share what’s upsetting her. But she may not even need to talk about it. What she really needs is to let those feelings out.
* Use "quality time." Children often use this time to express their frustration, but they don't usually need to talk about what's upsetting them - just venting through laughter, crying, or playing.
* Gain her trust. When she tells you things, are you regulating your emotions so that you don't go off the rails?
* Find your empathy. If we can get past our anger because she just hit her brother, and feel genuine empathy for her suffering, she'll feel that empathy in our tone of voice. She may still try to resist feeling her emotions, but once she feels safe, the emotions will come out.
Why all the trouble? Because you're helping your child develop emotional intelligence, supporting her in solving her problems, and creating a strong bond with her. And it's definitely nice when she stops hitting her brother on the head.
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