![]() This response is like a kick in the stomach for a little person who’s just learning what this world is all about. Read about the 10 steps to embracing empathy a way of lifeĪsk any parenting coach (anyone but me), and they’ll tell you that an empathetic response would be something like, “you don’t feel mommy loves you right now? I get it. The problem is that the way empathy is depicted and used is not real empathy. When our loved ones empathize with us, we get the chance to learn who we truly are, what matters to us, what moves us. When our loved ones emphasize with us, we feel seen and heard we feel validated, respected for our needs and feelings, and accepted for who we are in that given moment. Studies from the entire psychological range show the effects empathy has on the human soul, on relationships, and of course – on raising children. When we react to anything our children say, we want to make sure that we respond to what they’re sayings from their perspective, not from ours. Easing your pain is a blesses action, and there’s a time and place to soothe your heart, but not as a response to your child’s statement. ![]() When you tell your child that “you’re wrong, mommy loves you to the moon and back”, you’re saying this to soothe your aching heart, to make yourself feel better at the presence of your child’s feelings. You’re here because you want to raise children who trust themselves and who trust their hearts children who know when their needs are met and when they aren’t, and who actively strive for the meeting of their needs. Telling someone they have their feelings wrong tells them that there will forever be someone who knows better than them, even when it comes to their feelings. We can’t, ever, attend to the experience of another. Telling someone their feelings are wrong is classical gaslighting. If you’ll think about it, your initial reaction is probably somewhere in the lines of “oh, that’s not true!” and then you go off explaining whatever happened and why your child might be thinking that they’re feeling this way. Want to know what to say when your child says “you don’t love me”? Read on… Where does Your Child End? Where do You Begin? And then the mommy guilt, and the shame, would do the rest of the work. “If he can’t be sure of my love, then I probably did something wrong”. For many of us, hearing a child say we don’t love him means that we’ve failed as mothers. Not only that, we want to make sure that our children know that that statement is not true, but even more so, we want to avoid the feelings this sentence brings within us. “You don’t love me, Mom,” is one of the harshest sentences for us, mothers, to hear.
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