Preventing Trauma in Children- Empathy During Limit Setting
As a parent, you want to protect your children from harm and from any long-term psychological damage from painful things that happen.
Many parents become overprotective of their children in an effort to protect them. However, this can lead to anxiety, dependence, and lack of confidence in children. What can get overlooked is the powerful role of emotional connection. How much do your children seek you out for comfort when they feel any emotion they are having difficulty coping with? The more reliably they seek you out for comfort when they are distressed, the more likely that they will be able to more quickly recover when something painful happens.
Whether or not your child will seek comfort from you when they are distressed is strongly influenced by how you handle their distress when you are setting a boundary with them. However, a lot of parents view limit setting as needing to dominate the child to assert their authority. “He needs to know who’s boss” is sometimes the belief. This results in the parent and child working against each other, and the opportunity to comfort the child and contain the child’s emotions is missed. Other parents go to the opposite extreme, failing to set and maintain boundaries. If you do not set and maintain strong, predictable boundaries with them, your children will not trust your ability to keep them safe.
How then can you give empathy and comfort your children while setting and maintaining boundaries? First, calmly and firmly state the boundary. When they balk at it, restate the boundary and direct their attention to what they can have or do and anything that might be relevant such as being able to do that activity another day or after they complete a task, or being able to play with a similar toy somewhere else.
Once they understand the finality of your words and are upset about it, offer comfort if they will accept it. Some parents will then restate the boundary. Resist the urge to do this. Just comfort your child at this point. Younger children may lean into you for a hug while crying. Older children will usually verbalize anger with a disappointed tone in their voice and they may not want to be touched right them. If your child does not want to accept physical comfort, maintain an open body posture and give your full attention to your child without being in a hurry or demanding anything, to show you care about how they feel. Label their feelings and show empathy. “I know you feel disappointed” helps them understand their emotions and feel your love for them. Let them know you would probably feel the same way if you were in their shoes.
This is not coddling. It is empathy, compassion, and containment. Children whose parents acknowledge and accept their emotions are much more likely to seek out their parents when something distressing happens, which helps them emotionally metabolize upsetting experiences, thereby helping to mitigate negative, long-term psychological effects of upsetting events.
