My Child Thinks Their Feelings Are Hurt, Now What?

We have all hurt feelings from time to time. Usually they are the result of some unrealized expectation, humiliation or lost opportunity. For kids, hurt feelings can be the result of disappointment, failure, changing rules or any of a dozen other surprises.

Children, for the most part, are willing to express their hurt feelings. Most adults aren't - though we would be better off if we did, because hurt feelings will affect relationships whether they are openly expressed or not. Hurt feelings don't go away just because they aren't shared. In fact, sharing hurt feelings is often the best way to recover our joy and enthusiasm. We simply need to learn how and when to share them.

When children share their sadness, hurt, loneliness, fear or anger, there are several things you should not do. Avoid the temptation to judge, criticize, give advice or teach them the temptation to logically analyze their feelings. Feelings should be expressed not analyzed. Situational analysis has its place but not when children are sharing hurt feelings.

Whenever children share their deep feelings, they need to be heard and understood. That does not mean you must agree with or support their claims. By offering a non judgmental listening ear to your children, you encourage them toward emotional honesty and maturity. First, they will learn that expressed feelings are changed feelings. Feelings lose their hold over us once they are expressed. Second, they will learn that their sense of brokenness Is most quickly repaired by sharing openly with another human being. Third, they will learn they are not despised, criticized or devalued for having normal feelings.

As their parent, your challenge is to avoid the extremes of over reaction and under reaction when responding to your child. You may, for example, be tempted to treat your child with too much sympathy when their feelings are hurt. You may want to give them not only comfort but a place of honor or a special privilege to compensate for their hurt. But this response, if repeated, will ultimately train your children to go through life using hurt feelings to gain attention and special privileges. They will learn to exaggerate their pain to increase the pay off - their reward for their pain.

On the other hand, in an attempt to avoid an overly sympathetic response, you may be tempted to ignore your children's hurt feelings entirely or, even worse, to mock or tease them for crying. But by repeatedly ignoring or mocking your children's feelings, you will train them to ignore their hurt feelings as well. Eventually they will learn to ignore all of their feelings. The end result is children who are so out of touch with their own emotional center that they have to depend on others for most of their direction, approval and motivation. Adults whose feelings were ridiculed or ignored as children have very serious adjustment problems. The golden mean in this situation is to steer a course in which you acknowledge your children's hurt feelings and, at the same time, teach them that there are no special privileges to be gained form hurt feelings or from dramatically expressing hurt feelings.