How to Talk so Little Kids Will Listen: A Survival Guide to Life with Children Ages 2-7 (The How To Talk Series)

by Joanna Faber

And kids can’t behave right when they don’t feel right. If we don’t take care of their feelings first, we have little chance of engaging their cooperation.

Just accept the feeling. Often a simple acknowledgment of the feeling is enough to defuse a potential meltdown.

But a child’s emotions are just as real and important to him as our grown-up emotions are to us. The best way to help a child “get over it” is to help him go through it.

Without having their own feelings acknowledged first, children will be deaf to our finest explanations and most passionate entreaties.

Children need us to validate their feelings so they can become grown-ups who know who they are and what they feel. We are also laying the groundwork for a person who can respect and not dismiss the needs and feelings of other people.

The gift we can give them is to not get in the way of their process by jumping in with our reactions: advice, questions, corrections. The important thing is to give them our full attention and trust them to work it out.

The best way to inspire a child to do better in the future is to give him an opportunity to do better in the present. A punishment makes him feel bad about himself. Making amends helps him feel good about himself, and helps him to see himself as a person who can do good.

A more useful way to praise is to resist the impulse to evaluate and instead to simply describe what you see (or hear or notice with any of your five senses).