The Jewish Mom.  Typified.  Personified.  She’s warm, caring and protective.  Unconditionally loving and accepting.  She is always there to save her child through thick and thin, through his good choices and his mistakes.  And never misses an opportunity to protect her child from even the slightest discomfort.

How fortunate we are, to be part of a heritage of what our sages deemed us as Rachmanim, Bayshanim and Gomlei Chasadim (merciful, modest and giving.)  Look at our behavior on Purim, when our inhibitions are let down a tad.  We encourage and support each other, and we finance the poor without a second glance.  What beautiful traits.

But is acting on one’s mercy always the correct behavior?  Would we consider giving money to a compulsive gambler because we feel bad that he has no funds left constructive mercy?  Is feeling bad for our children always in their best interest?

Let’s think about it.  A child needs to undergo a surgery to protect him from a life-threatening situation.  How would we perceive his parents, if they were to cancel the surgery because they “couldn’t tolerate to see him in pain?”  Would we deem them merciful?  Clearly, sometimes we put aside our emotions to do what is best.  

As parents, we very often have the opportunity to witness our children experiencing some degree of discomfort.  And yes, these are opportunities.  Opportunities to help them grow.

“Joey got to use the Wii longer than I did, protests Zack.

“My teacher blamed it on me and I didn’t even do it!”  “He made me stay in for 5 minutes of recess and the kid who did it wasn’t even punished!”

One of my favorites working in a school setting was when the boys complained to the principal, “Abe never gets in trouble ‘cuz his father is the richest in the school!”

Most of these complaints are pretty valid.  Yet as parents, how do we respond to them?

Typically, when our children complain, we either dismiss it or pacify it.

 “So, what’s the big deal if he got a few more minutes on the Wii?  Last week you got more time than he!”  Dismissed.

“Oh, you are right.  I will call your teacher and tell him that you shouldn’t have lost your recess.”  Pacified.

“OK, you can have five more minutes on the Wii because he had it longer.”  Pacified.

“If your teacher punished you, you probably did something wrong!”  Dismissed.

So which is the right way?  Neither.  Now, before we get carried away, let’s just note that research indicates that children are resilient to a degree of parenting mishaps.  Children are able to identify occasional yelling, dismissing, pacifying as resulting from various stressors, and to get past them with little or no emotional harm done.  What I am discussing is the potential developmental disadvantages of a specific practical parenting attitude.  

Dismissing a child’s negative emotion teaches the child that experiencing that negative emotion is “bad.”  Since that emotion is not something that is in his control to prevent, he will effectively develop a sense of shame for having that feeling.  In other words, he will feel that he is “bad.”  So if we say (or give the impression of) “Don’t be jealous, you are not allowed to be jealous!” the child walks away feeling jealous (telling him not to be jealous hardly inhibits the jealousy,) and in addition he feels ashamed for experiencing an emotion that he is not allowed to feel.  By trying to dismiss one negative feeling we effectively create two. Children who experience constant dismissing of their emotions often develop a deep-rooted negative sense of self, might harbor anger, resentment and feel alienated and self-conscious by the adults who dismissed their feelings.

But what can be wrong with pacifying emotions?  After all, if it isn’t fair shouldn’t we always balance the score?  If David got a lollipop for behaving in the supermarket shouldn’t Sammy get one too?

Pacifying prevents a child from learning to tolerate disappointment.  Perhaps more accurately, pacifying trains a child to be intolerant to disappointment.  When something goes wrong, it must be changed.  If I don’t get my way, I will carry-on, insist or forcefully get what I want.  Parents who constantly pacify their children actually raise children who have a hard time facing the reality of disappointment.  And life is full of ‘em.  

Take, for instance, a child who comes in crying that he fell and scraped his elbow or banged his foot.  A typical response might be, “Sam, do you need a Band-Aid to make it feel better?”  Pacified.  Another response, “Oh, it doesn’t look too bad, I think you’ll be ok.”  Dismissed.  Sometimes, parents will try to dismiss with humor, “Oh!  Maybe we should call Hatzalah!”

We want to help our children develop in a way that fosters stable, healthy emotions.  We want them to develop tolerance.  Tolerance to distress.  Tolerance to disappointment.  Tolerance to pain and to discomfort.  We want them to learn how to not get their way, yet not fly off the handle.  WE know that life is not fair.  The rich kid at school IS treated preferentially, and always will be.  The teacher DOES make mistakes and blame the wrong child.  Adults occasionally do make poor judgments, and the morning school bus does come too early here and there.  And parents do NOT count minutes of Wii time.  But as parents we are discovering that by merely trying to convince our children that life is not fair is not effectively getting the message across.  How can we respond in a way that works? 

Here are some appropriate responses to children’s distresses that will help them develop in an emotionally healthy way.

 “Oy, that scrape looks like it really hurts!” 

“It sounds like Rebbe may have blamed the wrong kid.  It’s pretty upsetting when that happens.”

“Did Zalmen get more shabbos cereal?  Oh, That’s disappointing!”  

“Yeah, It’s pretty frustrating that the rich kid gets preferential treatment, isn’t it?”

The trick is to just validate.  Nothing else.  No reason to add, “But that’s life” (dismissed).  No purpose in, “since he got a lollipop, you can have cookies instead” (pacified). 

But, you ask, what about solving the problem?  How does agreeing and validating solve the problem?  Let’s explain.

To begin, we all learn from our life experiences.  They wire our brain.  We learn to react calmly from observing people react calmly.  We learn to become anxious around certain people and in specific circumstances.  We learn to feel angered when we witness an injustice, by observing others become angry in similar circumstances.  Certain times of the year just breed jubilation.  Others bring us anxiety or sadness.  We don’t do anything to make it happen; they stem from our previous experiences.  They are no different than some people who make us feel uncomfortable, scared or calm, even if we’ve never seen them before.  There is something about them that reminds us of a feeling from the past.  Our experiences actually develop our neurological makeup, the way our brain appears.  Our brains are molded through our experiences.  People who lived for months or years under severe stress will have a different neurological makeup on a PET scan than those who were in a less intense environment.

And our responses to those experiences or people reflect that.   

Now, let’s understand.  There are two parts to a complaint.  There is the content of the complaint, and the emotion within the complaint.  When a child complains that his brother got a lollipop, the content is the lollipop, and the emotion is jealousy.  Had his brother not gotten the lollipop, would he have asked for one?  If not, the content is hardly relevant.  It’s not about the lollipop.  It’s about the emotion.  He’s jealous, and rightfully so; he wants to have what his brother has.  So if we give him the pop, his brain develops a response to dealing with “jealousy.”  In order to get rid of that yucky feeling, it needs to be pacified.

As parents, our goal is to train our child’s brain to develop the ability to feel and yet tolerate jealousy.  We want to help him simply allow the feeling to exist and to be ok with it.  To feel valid about his feeling needy when someone has an item he wants.  To forgive himself for feeling the emotion, without feeling ashamed for having experienced it.  We want him to experience anger and embrace the feeling without trying to “push it away.”  If we can help our child do that, he won’t need to fly off the handle.  He’ll be able to tolerate the experience and move on.  To become frustrated and be able to stay calm through the experience.  To feel hurt and insulted, and not need to take revenge.   That’s a healthy child.

When a child’s negative emotions are constantly dismissed, he interprets those emotions as “bad.”  When he experiences jealousy, he now has an agenda to rid himself of it.  He can’t.  He wants the lollipop.  He now feels ashamed.  The shame grows, and the self-worth withers.  On the other hand, if the emotions are pacified, he interprets the emotions as “intolerable.”  When he experiences them, they “must” be done away with.  If nobody pacifies him, we might see explosive behavior.  And yes, even when he is grown.

Validation allows the negative emotion to exist without doing anything to change it.  It simply agrees that his current jealousy or anger is legitimate, or at least that we can understand that he is feeling that way.  The neurological interpretation is merely, “I guess I am jealous because he has the lollipop.”  There is no judgment, no guilt, no pacification.  It is simply an observation.  And that is how a child learns to tolerate an emotion.  When the sub-emotion is emotionless.  There is no guilt or shame for feeling upset or jealous; it just coexists with the child.  Use validation with anger, guilt, frustration, despair and the whole gamut of emotions, and your children will turn out emotionally resilient.