When we tell kids, “You’re going to be fine,” or “You’re so young, you don’t need to worry about this,” our kids learn that they shouldn’t be feeling the way they do. Many parents tell me they want to “protect” their kids from tough feelings; this well-intentioned intervention often backfires, because most efforts at “protection” actually leave a child alone with the feelings they’re already having, which is scarier than the feelings themselves. Parents don’t so much need to protect kids from having tough feelings as much as we need to prepare our kids to have those feelings.
