There are two phrases that slip out so simply when your baby experiences an emotional occasion. Perhaps they tripped and fell or had a battle with a good friend. Their face crumples, and earlier than they’ve even had an opportunity to talk, you say: “You’re okay.”
It sounds comforting. Reassuring, even. However it’s not. As a aware parenting coach and advocate for kids’s emotional well being, I’ve studied over 200 youngsters — and I’ve seen this well-intentioned and overused phrase trigger long-term injury in ways in which most mother and father by no means understand.
In reality, as a result of it appears so innocent at first, it is essentially the most harmful phrase in parenting. This is why, and what to say as a substitute:
1. It teaches youngsters to doubt their very own feelings.
When a toddler is visibly upset and hears “you’re okay,” it sends a complicated message: What I’m feeling should not be actual. Over time, this disconnects them from their interior emotional world and teaches them to mistrust their very own instincts.
2. It invalidates their expertise once they want you most.
You might say it with love, however a toddler hears: “Your emotions don’t matter.” Dismissal — nevertheless refined — teaches them that consolation and connection are solely out there once they’re calm and handy. That is the place emotional suppression begins.
3. It short-circuits emotional processing.
Feelings are supposed to transfer by means of the physique. After we interrupt that pure course of with untimely reassurance, we rob youngsters of the flexibility to establish, title and regulate their feelings. As an alternative of constructing resilience, we’re constructing avoidance.
4. It teaches that love is conditional.
With out realizing it, phrases like “you’re okay,” “cease crying,” or “don’t be scared” situation youngsters to imagine they have to suppress their feelings to stay accepted. And when love feels conditional, emotional security — the very basis of psychological well being — begins to unravel.
5. It could possibly rewire a toddler’s stress response.
The nervous system develops by means of repeated experiences. When a toddler is upset and met with dismissal as a substitute of assist, their physique learns that it’s not protected to specific emotion. Over time, this will reshape their nervous system to anticipate disconnection, making it more durable to belief, regulate and really feel protected being absolutely themselves.
What to say as a substitute of ‘you are okay’
Kids don’t want a repair — they should really feel. And extra importantly, they should know it is protected to really feel, particularly with you.
Listed below are highly effective alternate options that validate their interior world and construct emotional power:
- “I imagine you.”
- “Your emotions make sense.”
- “I’m proper right here with you.”
- “You don’t need to be okay proper now.”
- “I noticed what occurred. How are you feeling?”
These phrases do greater than soothe. They strengthen. They educate your baby: My feelings matter. I can belief myself. I’m not alone.
These responses take observe. You’ll nonetheless say “you’re okay” typically. And that’s okay, too. The aim is to observe aware parenting: noticing our patterns and selecting, second by second, to reply in ways in which construct emotional security quite than undermine it.
These moments could seem small, however they really assist to construct a toddler’s emotional basis. And in a world the place nervousness, despair and disconnection are on the rise, that is how we defend our kids’s psychological well being — one second of emotional security at a time.
Reem Raouda is a number one voice in aware parenting and the creator of FOUNDATIONS — the transformative therapeutic journal for fogeys prepared to interrupt cycles, do the interior work, and change into the emotionally protected mother or father their baby wants. She is widely known for her groundbreaking work in youngsters’s emotional security and strengthening the parent-child bond. FFollow her on Instagram.
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