Let Your Kids See Your Negative Emotions.
It is well documented that excessive fighting in front of children is not a good idea – not only does it make them emotionally anxious, but it can also affect how they process emotions and build relationships in the future .
But that doesn’t mean you should suppress all your negative emotions in front of them, according to a new study from the University of Washington published in the journal Emotion .
Sarah Waters, assistant professor at Washington State University in Vancouver, studied how 109 mothers and fathers interact with their children after a stressful event. Some were told to suppress their emotions, and some were told to act naturally.
After a stressful assignment (which in this case was a public speaking followed by negative audience feedback … phew), parents were asked to put together a Lego project with their child, while the researchers examined the quality of their interaction.
Both parent and child were also connected to different sensors to measure heart rate, stress levels, and more. The study authors combined this data with coding performed by helpers to get their results.
“Efforts to suppress stress made parents less positive partners on the Lego assignment,” Waters said. “They offered fewer recommendations, but not only the parents responded. These children were less responsive and positive towards their parents. It is as if the parents were transmitting these emotions. “
Waters and her team also found that children appeared to be more sensitive to the repressed emotions of their mothers than their fathers. The reason for this was not clear in the study, but she says it is possible that fathers are more likely to suppress their feelings and therefore have less of an impact on children.
So what should you do instead of suppressing these hard feelings? Waters advises discussing this with your children in a healthy way.
“Children are good at picking up subtle signals of emotion,” she said. “If they feel that something bad has happened and the parents are behaving normally and not paying attention to it, it confuses them. Two conflicting messages are being sent. “
Rather than suppressing emotions in front of your children, Waters suggests the best course of action is to allow children to see healthy conflict from start to resolution.
“Let them see the whole trajectory,” she said. “It helps children learn to manage their emotions and solve problems. They see that problems can be solved. The best thing is to let the children know that you are angry and tell them what you are going to do about it so that the situation improves. ”
In other words, if you feel angry, sad, or frustrated, talk to your kids about it before you start building Lego.
“Public speaking is very difficult for me, and some of the feedback from people I spoke to hurt my feelings,” you might say. “I think I need to practice a little more conversation so that next time I can learn better and be more confident.”