It can be so incredibly heartbreaking to watch as our children experience genuine sadness. It seems to be hard-wired into us as parents to run to our child and try to comfort him when he feels sad or upset. What is hard-wired is then nurtured into full-bloom as we parent our infants an toddlers and learn how to respond to their cries and whimpers. As they get older, we may still find ourselves forever trying to “cheer them up” when they are sad–but, sadness is one of the many necessary and healthy human emotions, and our children actually grow and develop as they not only experience sadness, but learn how to cope and overcome bouts of sadness and sad feelings.
Instead of trying to “cure” our children of their sad feelings, our job as parents should instead be helping them learn how to identify, fully experience, and learn from their own sadness. There are many times when feeling sad is the absolutely most appropriate emotion and we can actually feel heartened that our children are developing a complexity and depth to be able to experience feeling sad. Grief, loss, disappointment, discomfort, isolation, rejection–all of these situations and more warrant an individual feeling sad. We can then guide our children in learning HOW to process these emotions and find healthy ways to express and work through the sadness.
One of the chief things a parent can do is to take the child seriously and show empathy for sadness: “I know you are feeling sad because you weren’t invited to the party,” is a far more constructive and helpful parent response than: “It’s no big deal, you shouldn’t let it make you feel sad!” For parents, since we are flawed, evolving humans ourselves, it can be very hard for us to see our children so sad and vulnerable and our discomfort can cause us to diminish or minimize our children’s sadness. By making them think there is “no room” for genuine sadness, or that it is unacceptable or a sign of weakness, our children won’t learn how to experience the healthy emotions and develop the strength of character to move through it.
See Also: Why Dealing with Our Kids’ Feelings Can Be Difficult and Can Your Children Express How They Feel?