Dismissing Parent | Disapproving Parent | Laissez-Faire | Emotion-Coaching 

"You shouldn't feel that way"

Keesha’s upset, and her mom doesn’t know why.

At first, Keesha’s mom hopes that her daughter’s mood will pass quickly so she can finish putting a few more things away. But Keesha’s quivering lips, body language, and tone of voice tell a different story. She’s angry and about to cry, and her mom knows it.

“Don’t be a brat Keesha.” Keesha starts to cry.

“Stop it right now. I said stop it!” More crying.

“That’s it Keesha. If I hear any more crying, you’ll be in trouble!”

More crying, of course. Not only is Keesha angry about something, she’s now in trouble for feeling this way. She’s about to be punished for the way she feels—even though she didn't misbehave.

Keesha’s mom disapproves of her daughter’s negative emotions like anger, fear, or sadness. For disapproving parents, these emotions are unacceptable. Instead of trying to understand their children’s emotions, they discipline or punish them.

What's wrong with this picture?

Plenty. These parents are trying to control their children’s emotions, telling them that they shouldn’t feel the way they do. What they are missing, in part, is the realization that emotions are a natural part of our daily experiences. Emotions help us react to situations, they help shape our choices, and they enrich our relationships with others. And they are universal—every person in every culture throughout the world experiences a range of emotions daily. Children have powerful emotional lives from a very early age. In short, emotions are not simply a mode of thinking that can be switched on or off at will.

Parents and caregivers, like all of us, have different attitudes about their emotions—especially their negative emotions like anger, fear, sadness, disgust, or contempt. Some adults value their feelings and appreciate what all of their emotions add to their lives, while others view emotions as unnecessary, uncontrollable, manipulative, or simply undesirable. Some adults may believe that expressing emotions is a sign of weakness. These attitudes about emotions in general will influence how they treat their child's emotions. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Disapproving Parenting Style. Disapproving parents tend to disregard or suppress their own emotions, and because of this they treat their children's feelings negatively.

Oversights of the disapproving parenting style.

Disapproving Parents basically view emotions as a matter of choice. In this view, if children feel a certain way, it's because they want to feel that way. And if emotions are seen as negative, the obvious solution is to make children stop wanting to feel that way.

This view of emotions is wrong. Emotions are not simply a matter of either pure impulse or decision. Our brains are “wired” to experience emotions. Some of our emotional thinking even goes on unconsciously, influencing how we feel about people or leading us to make certain choices. Emotions can’t be just turned off. In fact, trying to turn them off, or trying to make children turn them off, can have harmful consequences. One big consequence is that children will learn not to come to you when they are feeling negative emotions. Instead, children will have these feelings alone, and feel wrong or unacceptable for feeling the way they do.

What are the negative effects?

The Disapproving Parenting Style doesn't just dismiss emotions, or leave them alone without guidance. It actively attempts to suppress them. Those who practice this style are openly critical of their children's feelings. When asked to describe children's emotional experiences, they seem to lack some basic connection or empathy. It's not that they're bad parents, and it's not that they lack love and support and concern for their children. Rather, these adults subscribe to a basic set of beliefs that are the wrong way to look at emotions.

Wrong ideas about emotions.

Disapproving parents tend to believe that:

• negative emotions need to be controlled
• negative emotions reveal bad character
• children use negative emotions to manipulate their parents
• emotions make people weak, and a loving parent must therefore help children be tough to help them survive
• negative emotions represent a waste of time and are unproductive
• negative emotions should be carefully controlled rather than freely displayed
• children's feelings are fundamentally a form of behavior, and therefore should require obedience and be subject to parental authority.

In effect, disapproving parents decide to give out comfort, criticism, or punishment depending on whether they approve or disapprove of the emotion their children express. In Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child (Gottman & DeClaire, 1997), one father said, "He's being sad just because he wants to be a little brat, so I ignore him or tell him to shape up." Another father, who described himself as a "cold-hearted realist" stated that he objected to his child's sadness as "useless time" involving "doing nothing constructive whatsoever."

The costs of disapproving parenting.

Disapproving parents fail to understand how their own emotions work and tend to transfer that failure to their children. And research shows that children raised by disapproving parents are more likely to:

• have a hard time trusting their own judgment
• grow up feeling something is wrong with them inside
• grow up feeling more alone
• suffer from a lack of self-esteem
• have trouble regulating their own emotions and solving their own problems
• have more difficulty than other children concentrating, learning, and getting along with their peers.

A parenting style that produces these kinds of negative results is obviously overlooking something important. What’s missing is empathy—feeling the emotions of children, and sharing them together. Children’s emotions shouldn’t be ignored or criticized—they should be valued, encouraged, and guided. When parents and caregivers take the time to show empathy, their children thrive.

“Emotion Coaching,” a parenting style identified by Dr. John Gottman, offers a different approach—one that encourages healthy emotional development, closer relationships with children, and more positive outcomes for the child.

Dismissing Parent | Disapproving Parent | Laissez-Faire | Emotion-Coaching
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