• The Dismissing Parent
• The Disapproving Parent
• The Laissez-Faire Parent
• The Emotion-Coaching Parent

Although parents were the focus of Dr. Gottman's research, this information will be interesting to all who nurture and care for children.

Let's face it—emotions come in all shapes and sizes and we never outgrow them.
Children can be giggling joyfully one moment, and then seemingly out of the blue, they can throw a tantrum on the floor. Sometimes their emotions last a long time, other times they vanish almost instantly. Emotions are often difficult to predict, and they're not always easy to control.

No wonder we're not automatically comfortable with emotions.

Sometimes we might feel like avoiding our children’s emotions altogether. Yet discomfort with emotions, or a desire to avoid them, can lead to a parenting style that has negative effects on a child's development.

Research by Dr. John Gottman suggests that habitually brushing emotions aside can have long-term negative consequences for children (Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1997). Compared to children raised by parents who valued and guided emotions, children whose parents ignored or dismissed emotions had more behavioral problems, more difficulty with friendships, lower academic achievement, and more health problems overall.

We all have attitudes or beliefs about emotions, and these attitudes shape how we respond to our own emotions and the emotions of others. For example, if we don’t think emotions are important, we will probably try to ignore them and hope they go away quickly. If we are comfortable with emotions and believe that they are a natural part of our lives, we are more likely to be aware of how we are feeling and to value these feelings. Gottman calls these attitudes "meta-emotions”—our feelings about our emotions.

• If we attend to our own emotions, we are more likely to notice the emotions of others.
• If we fear or neglect our own emotions, we are more likely to fear or neglect the emotions of others.

Parenting styles are deeply influenced by one's meta-emotions—the attitudes parents have about their own emotions. Emotion-dismissing parents, for example, often view their own emotions as voluntary, as something they choose to feel. These parents then view their child's emotions in the same light. When a child experiences a negative emotion, the solution seems simple: the child should simply decide to have a more positive emotion. In addition, emotion-dismissing adults tend to think of negative emotions as toxic, as if these feelings should be avoided. If a child experiences a negative emotion, they will do anything to move the child out of the negative emotional state, including distraction, tickling, eating, and so on.

Such parents are not insensitive to their children’s emotions. They see them happening and want to be helpful and protective, but they are not sure what to do. Because they are uncomfortable with their own emotions, they remain uncomfortable with their child's feelings. For them, dismissing the emotion, minimizing it by saying “it’s not that bad” or distracting the child with something new, may seem like the best option.

If the emotion is sadness, anger, or fear, a parent may feel discomfort or anxiety when the child expresses such emotions. This may raise questions, such as:

• Why is she sad?
• Is something wrong with my child?
• Have I done something wrong?
• How long will it last?
• Won't it damage her if I allow her to feel sadness or anger or fear?
• How quickly can I change this feeling in her?

Such fears can lead to misguided efforts. For example, one way to deal with an uncomfortable negative emotion may be to stand back and ignore it and, in effect, teach your child to do likewise. Another is to rush in and try to fix it quickly. Still another involves “toughing it out.” Yet however many ways there may be to ignore, minimize, or distract the child from the emotion, these well-intended efforts all suffer from important flaws.

Emotion-dismissing parents tend to:

• View emotions as something to be avoided or dismissed. But as Gottman notes, in dismissing the child's emotional experiences, these efforts may also dismiss or diminish the child.
• Suggest to the child that experiencing sadness isn't important enough to cause a parent's concern—or that children aren't supposed to be sad.
• Suggest that the child's own emotions aren't to be trusted.
• Show examples of a dismissive pattern that children learn to imitate. Children often model adult behavior and attitudes. If the adult regards emotions as something to be moved out of the way, the child will likely follow suit.

Emotions—including negative emotions—are healthy and natural, not problems to be fixed or avoided. More importantly, they are opportunities to build trust and share experiences with children.

With the help of a technique called "emotion coaching," anyone can learn to shift to a healthier and happier parenting style. Emotion-coaching adults empathize with their child's emotions. But they go beyond empathy. They help the child label her feelings and solve problems; they guide the child and set limits on behavior. In short, these adults believe that emotions should be valued, shared, and worked through in positive ways. And that means they can teach their children these attitudes as well.

Accepting, valuing, and exploring emotions is not always easy. It is not automatic, like breathing or growing fingernails. We’re not necessarily born with the ability to do it. Instead, it might require effort and practice—but like any new skill, it can be learned. And it gets easier with practice.

It is well worth the effort.

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Keesha’s upset, and her mom doesn’t know why.

At first, Keesha’s mom hopes that her daughter’s mood will pass quickly so she can finish putting a few more things away. But Keesha’s quivering lips, body language, and tone of voice tell a different story. She’s angry and about to cry, and her mom knows it.

“Don’t be a brat Keesha.” Keesha starts to cry.

“Stop it right now. I said stop it!” More crying.

“That’s it Keesha. If I hear any more crying, you’ll be in trouble!”

More crying, of course. Not only is Keesha angry about something, she’s now in trouble for feeling this way. She’s about to be punished for the way she feels—even though she didn't misbehave.

Keesha’s mom disapproves of her daughter’s negative emotions like anger, fear, or sadness. For disapproving parents, these emotions are unacceptable. Instead of trying to understand their children’s emotions, they discipline or punish them.

Plenty. These parents are trying to control their children’s emotions, telling them that they shouldn’t feel the way they do. What they are missing, in part, is the realization that emotions are a natural part of our daily experiences. Emotions help us react to situations, they help shape our choices, and they enrich our relationships with others. And they are universal—every person in every culture throughout the world experiences a range of emotions daily. Children have powerful emotional lives from a very early age. In short, emotions are not simply a mode of thinking that can be switched on or off at will.

Parents and caregivers, like all of us, have different attitudes about their emotions—especially their negative emotions like anger, fear, sadness, disgust, or contempt. Some adults value their feelings and appreciate what all of their emotions add to their lives, while others view emotions as unnecessary, uncontrollable, manipulative, or simply undesirable. Some adults may believe that expressing emotions is a sign of weakness. These attitudes about emotions in general will influence how they treat their child's emotions. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Disapproving Parenting Style. Disapproving parents tend to disregard or suppress their own emotions, and because of this they treat their children's feelings negatively.

Disapproving Parents basically view emotions as a matter of choice. In this view, if children feel a certain way, it's because they want to feel that way. And if emotions are seen as negative, the obvious solution is to make children stop wanting to feel that way.

This view of emotions is wrong. Emotions are not simply a matter of either pure impulse or decision. Our brains are “wired” to experience emotions. Some of our emotional thinking even goes on unconsciously, influencing how we feel about people or leading us to make certain choices. Emotions can’t be just turned off. In fact, trying to turn them off, or trying to make children turn them off, can have harmful consequences. One big consequence is that children will learn not to come to you when they are feeling negative emotions. Instead, children will have these feelings alone, and feel wrong or unacceptable for feeling the way they do.

The Disapproving Parenting Style doesn't just dismiss emotions, or leave them alone without guidance. It actively attempts to suppress them. Those who practice this style are openly critical of their children's feelings. When asked to describe children's emotional experiences, they seem to lack some basic connection or empathy. It's not that they're bad parents, and it's not that they lack love and support and concern for their children. Rather, these adults subscribe to a basic set of beliefs that are the wrong way to look at emotions.

Disapproving parents tend to believe that:

• negative emotions need to be controlled
• negative emotions reveal bad character
• children use negative emotions to manipulate their parents
• emotions make people weak, and a loving parent must therefore help children be tough to help them survive
• negative emotions represent a waste of time and are unproductive
• negative emotions should be carefully controlled rather than freely displayed
• children's feelings are fundamentally a form of behavior, and therefore should require obedience and be subject to parental authority.

In effect, disapproving parents decide to give out comfort, criticism, or punishment depending on whether they approve or disapprove of the emotion their children express. In Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child (Gottman & DeClaire, 1997), one father said, "He's being sad just because he wants to be a little brat, so I ignore him or tell him to shape up." Another father, who described himself as a "cold-hearted realist" stated that he objected to his child's sadness as "useless time" involving "doing nothing constructive whatsoever."

Disapproving parents fail to understand how their own emotions work and tend to transfer that failure to their children. And research shows that children raised by disapproving parents are more likely to:

• have a hard time trusting their own judgment
• grow up feeling something is wrong with them inside
• grow up feeling more alone
• suffer from a lack of self-esteem
• have trouble regulating their own emotions and solving their own problems
• have more difficulty than other children
concentrating, learning, and getting along with their peers.

A parenting style that produces these kinds of negative results is obviously overlooking something important. What’s missing is empathy—feeling the emotions of children, and sharing them together. Children’s emotions shouldn’t be ignored or criticized—they should be valued, encouraged, and guided. When parents and caregivers take the time to show empathy, their children thrive.

“Emotion Coaching,” a parenting style identified by Dr. John Gottman, offers a different approach—one that encourages healthy emotional development, closer relationships with children, and more positive outcomes for the child.

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A young child, Toby, sometimes gets teased on the playground. When he comes home he tells his mom, Paula, all about it. Naturally his mom expresses concern for Toby and his hurt feelings. As she explains: "He gets upset by it, so I try to let him know that I love him no matter what, and that I think the world of him."

Paula loves her son unconditionally, and she often lets him know it. She also encourages him to express his feelings and let them run their course, believing that it’s healthier than keeping them bottled up. And that's roughly what the French phrase "laissez faire" means: to let something be, to leave it alone. But sometimes Paula feels like she should be doing more for her son when he experiences strong emotions. Like many parents, Paula isn't sure how to help her child learn from his emotional experiences.

This style of parenting has many things going for it. Those who have a "laissez-faire" attitude about emotion accept emotions as natural and normal. Rather than ignoring their child's feelings, or dismissing them, these parents view emotions as a normal part of life. They see emotion as a process that needs to run its natural course without much outside interference. Emotion, in this view, is like a river. If you let it flow, it will go where it needs to go. But if you dam it, the pent-up force of the river may turn destructive.

Despite the name, "laissez-faire" adults are not “hands-off” when it comes to raising their children. They value being involved in their children's lives. They accept, love, and respect their children, and they encourage and honor their children’s emotional expressions. They know children flourish in an atmosphere of unconditional love. But they also fear that setting limits on a child's behavior might send the wrong message. They fear their child may sense that the parents' love depends on compliance or good behavior rather than the child's inner value.

One mother, Sally, grew up under a father who had forbidden her to express her frustration and anger as a child. She wants to spare her own daughter the pressure-cooker atmosphere she grew up in, and so she practices a laissez-faire parenting style: “I want my kids to know they can scream and yell all they want. I want them to know it's all right to say 'I've been put upon and I don't like it'” (Gottman, Katz & Hooven, 1997).

As admirable as this accepting attitude toward emotion may first seem, it falls short of nurturing healthy emotional development. Imagine what would happen, for example, if you decided to be a laissez-faire gardener one summer. Rather than interfere with the natural process of growth, you decide to step out of its way. Other than providing rich soil and frequent watering, you simply let nature take its course.

Soon there is a problem: your garden will be full of weeds as well as flowers.

Sometimes letting things run their course does not always produce the best results. Laissez-faire parenting runs into something like the same problem. In parenting, as in gardening, it is not enough to let things go. You have to help them grow.

Despite her best efforts to accept her daughter's emotions, Sally encountered the same problem. When her daughter does something wrong, she would like to be able to say, "That wasn't a very good idea; maybe we should try something different." Yet Sally feels powerless to help her daughter understand her emotions as well as experience them. As a result, Sally eventually finds herself "screaming and yelling" at her daughter. Sally sometimes feels "at the end of her rope" and will resort to anything that might work, including physical punishment.
Obviously, something is wrong with this picture.

What's missing from Sally's parenting style? It's not acceptance, since she's very accepting of her daughter's emotions and her tendency to express them. It's not good intentions, since Sally is perfectly willing to accept the effects of an emotionally expressive child, at least until her patience runs out. Something else, some crucial additional element, seems to be missing.

Research suggests it's not enough to accept and value your child's emotions. In addition to being allowed to freely experience their emotions, children need to be encouraged to understand them as well. And this is precisely where the laissez-faire parenting style falls short. Many families are very accepting of a child's emotion, but they lack the skills to help the child understand or learn from them (Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1997).

Children imitate the adults who care for them. That means that parents who experience and learn from their own emotions can serve as models for their children.

Children who have had emotional guidance gradually begin to integrate their parents' responses into their own behavior. The other side of the coin holds true as well. Without the guidance that comes from understanding their emotions, children don't learn how to regulate them. As a result, such children:

• often lack the ability to calm down when they're angry, sad, or upset
• find it more difficult to concentrate or learn new skills, and therefore don't do as well in school
• find it more difficult to pick up on social cues, and therefore may find it harder to make and keep friends

Laissez-faire parenting is a real advance over being dismissive or disapproving of emotions. It teaches the child the importance of accepting and experiencing his or her own emotions. But simply experiencing emotions is not enough. Emotions must be understood as well, since that allows children to learn to regulate rather than simply experience emotions. How, then, can parents foster such understanding? They can begin by learning and practicing the five key steps of emotion coaching.

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Emotion Coaching, the parenting style that best nurtures a child’s emotional development, begins with one word…empathy.

It means valuing and sharing the feelings your child experiences, from the sadness over a friend moving away to the anger at an older brother who snatched away a favorite toy. It means viewing emotions, even negative ones, as a natural part of life.

Empathy is at the heart of parenting and caregiving. It creates a foundation for strong, healthy, trusting relationships with your children. They learn to trust their own emotions, and how to deal with them in positive ways. They tend to do better in school, have better friendships, and recover more quickly from strong emotional events. Children who experience empathy from their parents and caregivers thrive.

For some, this style comes naturally. For others, it means a few changes—starting with a person’s attitude about emotions and how to deal with them.

Everyone who cares for children can be an Emotion Coach. Emotion Coaching grows out of empathy, out of a desire to share, nurture, and guide the feelings of children as they experience life’s ups and downs. Emotion coaching involves teaching children what emotions are and how emotions work, often in the midst of an emotionally charged event. Emotion Coaching values all feelings—but not all behaviors, because children need to learn how to handle their emotions as well.

What is emotion coaching?   Meet Michael. He is 3 years old and he is angry…very angry. Red-faced from crying, Michael is enraged because his older sister just dunked his favorite stuffed bear in the toilet. As Michael stomps into the room crying, his father is faced with the difficult task of dealing with his son’s raw emotional state. Some of his options include: Pretending it isn’t happening and hoping it goes away on its own. Encouraging his son to get over it—it’s just not that big a deal…the bear will dry out. Empathizing with his son’s feelings—sharing them and talking about them. Teaching his son that this anger is inappropriate—he shouldn’t be angry at his sister Michael’s father, an Emotion Coach, chooses option 3—he moves in close to his son and chooses to share the angry moment with him. It’s when feelings run high that Emotion Coaching takes place, because the best time to teach about emotions and how to handle them is when they occur. It might look something like this: Michael: “I hate Carrie! She killed my bear!” (more crying) Dad: “Come here, Michael.” Michael: “Daddy, she ruined my bear!” Dad: “I can see you’re upset. You seem angry at your sister.” Michael: “Yeah. It’s not fair.” Dad: “You wish Carrie hadn’t dunked your bear in the toilet, and she shouldn’t have. You’re really angry about it, and I would be too.” Michael: “Yeah” (his anger starts cooling down a bit). Dad: “I remember when my sister did something bad to me. I was so mad, I wanted to get back at her for what she did. Do you wish you could get back at Carrie for what she did?” Michael: “Yeah. I want to put her doll in the toilet.” Dad: “Let’s think about what you can do. I don’t think putting her doll in the toilet is the best way to go. We need a better solution. Can you think of something else to do?” At first, taking this approach or saying these words might feel unnatural—or just too hard. But like other skills we develop, we get better at Emotion Coaching with practice. Also, every emotional event is different, and Emotion Coaching needs to be flexible. None of us can do this all the time. But the more we can take the time to work through a child’s emotions, the better.

Emotion Coaching can be learned by anyone. It takes a commitment to nurture your child’s emotions—and lots of practice. It is especially effective during the emotional event itself, when emotions might be running high. As you get more familiar with your child’s emotions, you also might be able to deal with them before they develop into bigger problems.

Here are the steps that Emotion Coaches follow. Further explanation of each step is found under the research spotlights entitled “The Five Steps of Emotion Coaching.”

• Being aware of the child's emotions
• Recognizing emotional times as “magic moments” and as opportunities for intimacy and teaching
• Listening empathetically and validating the child's feelings
• Helping the child verbally label emotions
• Setting limits while helping the child problem-solve

In his research, John Gottman (Gottman & DeClaire, 1997) found that parents and caregivers who follow these steps see many positive results. Their children:

• get along better with friends and others
• do better in school
• handle negative moods better
• have fewer behavioral problems
• have fewer infectious illnesses
• weather marital conflict better

Alongside these benefits, children who are emotion-coached are more likely to trust their own emotions—and to trust you with them. Emotion Coaching, built upon empathy, builds trust and leads to closer relationships among adults and children.

Caring for a child is the most important—and most demanding—job you will ever have. Becoming an Emotion Coach is an investment in your child’s future, with potential long-term benefits for both of you.

Here are some reminders that will support the 5 steps of Emotion Coaching:

• Be patient
• Be honest with your child
• Avoid excessive criticism, humiliating comments, or mocking your child
• Avoid calling your child names that “label” them negatively (lazy, selfish, thoughtless, spacey, etc.)
• Point out your child’s small successes to boost his or her confidence
• Be aware of your child’s needs, both physical and emotional
• Identify what she enjoys—and what she doesn’t enjoy
• Avoid agreeing with the “enemy” when a child feels mistreated
• Empower your child by giving choices and respecting his wishes

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