The Conscious Parent

experiences in their own way, with us bearing witness. The first step to
raising an empathic adult therefore lies in allowing our children to
experience all their experiences, with full ownership and without our
editing or control. In other words, empathy involves validating our
children’s sense of being, which entails communicating to them that they
have every right to their feelings. We don’t have to agree or disagree, but
simply to allow their feelings to exist. We aren’t invested in denying,
shaping, or changing our children’s feelings. Rather, we not only let them
know they are being heard, but we also pay attention to what they are
saying beneath their words.
Empathy requires a willingness to suspend our own feelings so we can
align with those of our children. This can be hard to do when our
children are experiencing a particularly difficult emotional moment,
especially one of the shadow emotions such as jealousy, rage, guilt, or
resentment. Indeed, if anything is truly hard to stomach as a parent, it’s
our children’s negative emotions toward ourselves and others.
After I picked my daughter up from school one day, she asked to go to
the park. I said no. Then she asked if we could go to the library. Again I
said no. Finally, she asked if she could go on a play date, to which I
again replied in the negative. Each time, I explained my reasoning: I had
to prepare dinner, dad was coming home, we had a lot to do. She began
to pout, then sulk, and then threw a hissy fit. “You are a mean mommy.
You never let me do anything. I hate my day. It’s a horrible day.”
Instead of being able to sit with her disappointment, allowing her to
feel her feelings without the insertion of mine, my ego became activated.
After reprimanding her for her “selfishness” and calling her behavior