Your Kid’s Happiness Isn’t Your Job

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It can feel really hard when your kid is unhappy or uncomfortable. It’s easy to blame yourself and feel like you should have done something differently. But your kid’s happiness isn’t your job. 

In this episode, I’ll explain what I mean by that and how you can help your child process their emotions without trying to solve all their problems for them. 

Motherhood is confusing. There are so many different stages and phases. Babies are so vulnerable. They rely on you for everything. But as kids get older, we have to figure out how to back away, give them more responsibility & freedom, let them grow, change & make mistakes so that they build the skills and resiliency that they need in order to launch into adulthood.

One of the biggest skills you can teach your kid is emotional literacy - understanding what they’re feeling, how to express it and what to do with their emotions. 

Your Kid’s Happiness Isn’t Your Job

We all want our kids to be happy. But what I want even more is for your child to be able to move through any emotion. I want them to be able to be flexible and to have resilience in the face of hardship. To develop those skills and traits, they need to experience discomfort.

Often, when your kid is upset or uncomfortable, you go into problem solving mode. You try to figure out how to help them feel better and how to prevent that kind of discomfort in the future. It’s normal not to want your kid to be unhappy, but there are a couple things that happen when you work so hard to prevent it. 

First, it might keep you from showing up the way you want to and being the emotional coach for your kid. When you think it’s your responsibility to make your kid happy, you might end up thinking negatively about yourself. You might think you’re not a good mom, that you should have planned/done/said something differently. You might see your child’s struggles as being your fault. Or think that you have to work harder and be better. 

This is a really hard place for you to be. And I want you to know that you don’t have to take on that guilt. 

Second, you end up paving such an easy path for your child that they don’t have the opportunity to work through problems on their own, which is how they develop resilience and emotional literacy. 

It simply isn’t possible to prevent all problems and discomfort. Even the most “perfect” parent (not a real thing anyway) cannot prevent unhappy situations from happening. None of us feels happy all the time. 

Your kid is going to have hard things happen. It’s a part of life. We don’t want them outsourcing their happiness to you or anyone else. Instead, we want them to believe that they have the power to make themself happy even when shitty stuff happens.

Your job isn’t to eliminate discomfort for your kid. It is to teach them how to handle it and move through their emotions in a healthy way. Guide them when they are unhappy. Allow them to see that they can handle their feelings, that they know how to feel unhappy and how to shift to a different emotion. 

How To Support Your Kid’s Emotions

Before you can coach your kid, you have to shift your own thoughts. If you are thinking, “It’s my fault. I have to fix this,” or other bad thoughts about yourself, you’re going to get dysregulated. You won’t be able to stay calm. 

If you are judging or blaming yourself for their feelings or you are anxious about their negative emotion, you will likely try to shut down their emotion or rush them through it. You want them to feel better quickly so that you can feel better. 

But trying to soothe your kid so that you feel better is backwards. Start by soothing yourself so that you can show up for your child as that calm, neutral, compassionate witness. 

A more helpful thought than, “It’s my job to make my kids happy,” is “It’s my job to make sure my kids can handle all their feelings.” 

When your kid is upset, sad or disappointed, give time and space for them to feel those uncomfortable feelings. Be in the Big Feeling Cycle with them. Be neutral, show compassion and trust that they will shift out of the negative emotion. 

Shifting between different pieces of the nervous system takes a little longer for kids because they don’t have the same perspective and experiences that adults have. As an adult, you’ve been through hard things. You know that you can overcome them, and you have a different perspective. 

It may take a little time and support, but kids’ nervous systems are designed to do this. Let go of the responsibility for your child’s happiness, be a calming presence for them and trust that they will be okay.

You’ll Learn:

• How much responsibility you have for your kid’s happiness
• Why making your kid’s happiness your job might actually be creating other problems
• How to support your child through negative emotion in a way that empowers them to soothe and regulate themself