When Expressing Feelings, How Much Do Children Tend to Take After Their Parents?

All families have both overt and covert rules about expressing feelings. In most cases the covert rules have a more powerful influence on children than overt rules.

Covert rules are communicated to children through the behavior of their parents. This is done largely by the way in which adults share their own feelings. If parents are transparent about their feelings, sharing their joy, sorrow, anger, worry, tenderness and warmth, their children are very likely to do the same. If, on the other hand, parents rarely express their feelings openly, their children are likely to be equally private and undemonstrative.

These rules can be complicated when both parents do not act the same way. If, for example, your mother was openly expressive of her feelings and your father was not, then the rule you may have learned in your family is that women share their feelings but men do not. Often this may get internally translated into a rule: Women should share their feelings and men shouldn't. If one parent is overly expressive emotionally and if the other parent labels that response as hysterical, overly sensitive, irrational, unreasonable or too emotional, then a child in that family may learn this rule: Don't be like your emotional parent.

Overt rules are very much like covert rules but with one exception: they are explicitly stated. Overt rules about feelings may be expressed this way: Don't get upset. Don't be so sensitive. Don't let things get to you. Don't' get mad. Don't cry. Don't get excited. Calm down. Be reasonable. Control yourself. Often these rules are backed with various sanctions, which might range from a raised eyebrows to a sharp comment or some form of punishment.

Most adults bring these overt rules with them into their new families when they become parents. We tend to raise our children much the way we were raised, even when we vow to ourselves that we will not treat our children the way our parents treated us. Much to our surprise, we often hear ourselves repeating the very same words in the very same tone that we resented hearing as a child.

Decide together what you want to teach your children about the expression of feelings and then begin by putting these attitudes into practice in your own life. Reassure your children whenever they show their feelings that you accept them. You can discourage them from using their feelings to manipulate you by telling them you won't be manipulated and by refusing to give in to their implicit demands.

You will be most successful when your behavior consistently matches your teaching. Perfection is not required, of course, nor is it attainable. Like all efforts at being more fully human, when something is truly worth doing, it's also worth doing poorly.