Your child is upset. Really upset. They want something that they can’t have and it’s not going away.
You’re frustrated. You really want this to end. You can see that if your child just stopped thinking about it, they would stop feeling upset.
Many peaceful parents will recommend using distraction, particularly with younger children. They use the disclaimer that it doesn’t do any harm and “it helps!”
When parenting respectfully, we aim to do things more consciously than just what ‘works’. We also understand that while something may help short term, our goals aren’t to make the behaviour stop. That’s not our aim. We understand that behaviour is a signal.
Distraction is just that – it distracts from the real work of processing emotions.
If our aim is to help our child work through the feelings under the upset, then distracting them isn’t going to be helpful.
Distraction robs the child of the ability to learn healthy coping mechanisms. When we take advantage of young children’s ability to adapt by redirecting them to something else, we are ignoring the feelings that they’re allowed to express. Their emotions are valid regardless of how uncomfortable they make us feel!
If we are aiming to help our children handle strong emotions then they actually have to:
- Be able to fully feel those emotions without belittling/shaming/distracting/blaming/punishment,
- Have their emotions validated,
- Have adequate open support to process said emotions to learn, and
- Practice coping mechanisms.
I mean the reason why so many of us struggle with the strong emotions of our children is in part because we were parented in a way that dismissed and silenced our feelings, right?
So how do we respectfully distract our kids? We don’t. We can’t. It’s not respectful to take away opportunities to express and process emotions.
What to do instead? Here’s some helpful reading:
What respectful parenting is and is not
What DO we do then? (instead of punitive parenting)
Misbehaviour is a signal, not an offence
Children don’t want to hear “it’s OK”
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Thank you for reading.
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I sometimes think of expressing emotions as blowing up of balloons. Our kids blow up the balloon and boy sometimes it seems huge it might burst…like a balloon growing when filled with air our joy and happiness make the beautiful moments of life even more beautiful. Anger and sadness make the upsetting things in life seem worse. It seems that many of the reactions to children’s emotions are like taking a needle and popping the balloon. What’s left? Some broken mess, dangerous too (hello choking hazard!). But when we allow them to process the emotions we discover that in the end our kids let the air back out. It was just their soul breathing. Good lung exercise, too. And with the balloon still intact but deflated to it’s real size, we can now examine it and learn from it. And then one day that same balloon maybe doesn’t need to be blown up, or at least not all the way.
Hi,
My wife and I are a parent to a 16 MO boy and have been following gentle/respectful parenting with him from the beginning. I completely agree with the idea that “distraction” is not the right way of dealing with an emotionally upset child. And I always attempt to vocally “Acknowledge” his emotions when my son is upset about something as I believe that helps a child understand and deal with emotions better.
However, lately I am facing a problem that I am not sure how to deal with:
Whenever he gets upset with something, he becomes physically aggressive: ex: he will either bang his head on the floor or the table, OR hit me if I’m carrying him when he is upset OR if he is carrying something, then he might fling it
What worries me is that he might end up hurting himself or someone else in that moment. We have always treated and spoken to him like an actual person from day1 and we feel he is usually very communicative and responsive. He speaks a few words, but is not fully talking yet. And when he is upset all communication breaks down on his side (which I am sure is natural for a baby that young). But my dilemma now is how do I keep him and myself safe while trying to “communicate” that it’s OK to feel such BIG feelings.
How would you deal with such a situation?
The only thing I can think of is repeating over and over again that it is OK to feel upset/angry/sad that “so-and-so happened” while he is crying out loudly and hope that eventually he will stop crying and be calm .I want to acknowledge his feelings and make him feel heard by validating his feelings., but I am just not sure when he would actually calm down.
Thank you.
Shamanth Huddar
While I agree with this in large part, I do think there is space for distraction. If you consider adults, we distract ourselves in order to postpone feeling emotions all the time, and that’s ok, necessary even, and worth teaching our little ones, so long as it doesn’t become the default. Also, my oldest routinely would have meltdowns that would last for hours and end in him passing out. The littlest things could set him off. I was always on edge. If I hadn’t used distraction as a method, he would have spent most of his waking hours crying, and that amount negative hormones constantly flooding his brain would have been terrible for him. While he was an extreme example, I think we need to acknowledge this reality and trust parents to know their children well enough to know when they can hold/work through their child’s sadness and when the child simply needs help getting out of that state.
As someone with anxiety I can see how distraction can be a useful tool. Also when pain is involved, it can be helpful. However, I think it’s an important distinction to know the reasoning and consent involved really. This is about parents who forcibly distract instead of helping children process emotions. Does that make sense?
Racheous thank you for sharing! What a lovely article and the photos are amazing too! I love how you put together these information on “How to Respectfully Distract Children”. Easy to read, very relatable and great tips! Can’t wait to read more!