What is emotional safety? It’s when our children feel free to be themselves. They can comfortably express their feelings and concerns, thoughts and interests, and they do this with awareness and respect for others.
Our children gain emotional safety through their experiences with others. When they feel loved, accepted, heard, and trust that their needs will be met, they develop a deep internal experience of safety.
How do we create this rich inner experience for our children?
After working with parents as a consultant and psychotherapist for almost four decades, I’m certain of one thing: Parent’s attitudes—how we think about our children—is even more important than what we say to them. In my book, Bring Out the Best in Your Child and Your Self, I identify two key attitudes. The first:
Children have an innate drive to express their best selves—to develop their highest potential.
Like all living things, children have a natural yearning to grow and mature, to develop their full potential. It’s a part of being human. We all have that inner force that compels us to evolve, to grow not only physically, but to develop all of our unique potential—mental, emotional, social and spiritual. Children and parents want to respect themselves, to be contributing members of the family and society. We all want to find and express our best selves—to become all that we can be.
The fact that we often fall short—that children and adults can easily slip into unproductive behavior—doesn’t mean we don’t have that innate drive! It isn’t easy to express our full potential; we need all the help we can get. And that leads us to the second attitude:
Children depend on us to help them.
They can’t do it alone. Children need us to recognize their yearning and to help them fulfill it. By definition, children are immature—works in progress—still learning how to handle their feelings, develop strength of will and self-control. To support their natural unfolding, they need an environment based on mutual respect.
How can we create this environment? Let me count the ways:
1. Water the flowers, not the weeds. Notice and acknowledge our children’s finest qualities and behaviors. Give attention to that which we want to grow.
2. Hold high, age-appropriate expectations. Strengthen our children’s self-esteem by asking them to live up to their own capabilities.
3. Follow through. Teach children that we mean what we say and help them to become more cooperative and responsible.
4. Show respect. Help children develop empathy by demonstrating respect for their feelings and thoughts, bodies and belongings.
5. Respect self, others and life. Model sensitivity and care for yourself, others, and our planet and teach children to internalize these values as a normal part of life.
6. Provide positive values. Expose children to those values you want them to adopt, emphasizing the best in human nature and minimizing the excesses in our culture.
7. Teach skills that support emotional safety. Help our children to learn to work through frustration and disappointment, to assert themselves respectfully, to problem solve, and to develop qualities such as courage and persistence.
The bottom line is known to us all: the best formula for creating emotional safety is for our children to see love in our eyes, experience it through our touch, and hear it in our voice.
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Ilene Val-Essen is the author of Bring Out the Best in Your Child and Your Self: Creating a Family Based on Mutual Respect. Please visit her at Quality Parenting.
12 comments:
I was very fortunate growing up to have a Dad who embodies many of the positive traits you describe. He is a great champion to this day, and those feelings of safety, respect and comfort are still present. Thank you Dr. Val-Essen for your insight.
Bringing out the best in our children and ourselves is an objective I imagine most parents, grandparents, and educators aspire to accomplish. Thank you for the practical suggestions on how best to do so. I am really enjoying your book, Ilene. This post is a terrific precis of the emotional intelligence concepts you address in it.
You know, that list applies to fostering emotional safety in any environment including schools. Couldn't any employer use a slightly modified one? I think so.
With all of the above points, I feel as though follow through and consistency are most important. As a child care provider, I have learned that in order for children to respect our views and values we have to practice them ourselves and remain consistent from beginning to end. Thank you so much for the insightful post.
Wow!
1. Send this post to five people who are caretakers of a child or of children.
2. Print and cut out the steps and post them permanently in your mind.
3. Follow the steps to create an emotionally safe environment.
4. Live in this emotionally safe environment to see love in a child's eyes, to experience it through a child's touch, and to hear it a child's voice.
5. Don't break the chain.
I have so enjoyed reading your book, and have found it to be so helpful! In fact, I attended a conference last week STRENGTHENING FAMILIES - Focused on the 5 Protective Factors to increase family stability, enhance child development, and reduce child abuse and neglect. I thought of your wonderful book at the time and the excellent tools it contains to assist parents, teachers, and all adults to create emotionally safe environments for all children, and To Bring Out the Best in Our Children and ourselves. What a great posting!- Thank you
This post coincides with a beautiful letter I received yesterday from a now adult that was an "extra child" at our house for many years. He told me that I was the constant, trusted adult in his life and that he knew that I was always here and was always available for him. The security and safety I provided to him. Wow! It is so important to be that adult to every child. To know that I made a difference in a child's life and possibly protected him from emotional danger. You never know what affect you are having on a child..make it a safe one.
Wow, thank you for such an insightful post. I was raised by the typical 60's parents and not sure how much our little inner-selves were really considered when we were young. It's so nice to see how much parenting has evolved. Good one, LPP!
I agree so much with this article and I realise myself that a lot of the hurt and damage I still deal with as a grown adult today stems from my childhood. fact I never really experienced emotional safety as a child as I grew up with an abusive father and spent most of my time defending my mother who never left the situation. I now work with children and so know how incredibly important it is to provide children with an emotionally safe environment and I hope I can help these children and thereby gain something back in some way that I never had. I agree totally with the poster who said you never know the effect you have on a child. For children from abusive/unhappy homes, their teachers, care workers etc may be the only positive influence they have in their lives, so very important.
This is a most sensible list of child-rearing suggestions, but is there ever a good time to pull a few weeds?
This should be part of a course for those who want kids.
I loved reading your book and am delighted to find it encapsulated in this wonderfully articulate and helpful blog that I'm sending on to my children who are now parents. This should not, of course, substitute for reading your book! but it provides a very wisely chosen list of suggestions ready at hand. Thanks so much.
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