Parents regularly have to talk to their child about hard subjects. Whether it’s talking to your child about death, divorce, moving, or trauma, your child may be overwhelmed by the difficult subject. None of that is surprising, and hopefully these sorts of hard topics don’t come up often. But one of the hardest subjects young kids are constantly facing—and which we parents often overlook!—is their own feelings.
I know, feelings don’t sound like a “subject.” But feelings are always at the root of any event: if a beloved pet dies, it’s the sadness that really affects the child, not the intellectual idea of death itself.
Research has consistently shown that when parents talk about feelings with their children, the benefits are enormous and wide-ranging. But talking with kids about their feelings can easily become overwhelming for the child, especially if you’re talking about Big Feelings which, by definition, tend to be overwhelming.
This puts parents in a bind. How are you supposed to talk about intense feelings or hard subjects when they will certainly make your child fall apart?
The indirect approach
In the post, “Voicing Your Child’s Emotions: the Direct Approach,” we looked at how you speak to the feelings your child is having: by getting her feelings out in the open where you both can see them, she won’t need to act them out—often in ways that make your life a lot harder.
That’s all good, except when voicing those feelings will overwhelm your child.
This is something that I, as a child therapist, see all the time. Parents bring in a child who is full or rage or sadness or fear, and those Big Feelings are too big to be talked about. If I were to mention them, the child would just shut down.
Incidentally, this is true not just for children but for adults as well. When we fear our feelings will get too big or too out of control, we push them away, and keep them away, and no one better try to make us look at them, much less start to feel them again!
That’s where approaching feelings indirectly becomes necessary.
How to approach indirectly: an overview
The overall idea is to talk about the feelings, but let those feelings belong to someone other than your child. This “someone” can be you or a toy or even a drawing—basically anything but your child.
For example, let’s say your child is afraid to go to his new preschool. When he then plays with his stuffies, depicting how his penguin refuses to go to penguin school, this may feel completely transparent to you. Still, resist the urge to point this out to him!
Your son is able to express the penguin’s fear because the feelings are someone else’s and not his. It’s important for him to have this emotional distance in order to feel safe. It allows him to sample the feelings without getting a walloping, personal dose.
So, use this opportunity: you can name and talk about the feelings the penguin is having using the techniques discussed in various posts such as “Naming Emotions: a Key Part of Successful Parenting” and “Voicing Your Child’s Emotions: the Direct Approach.” The only difference here is that the emotions are a penguin’s.
Approaching feelings indirectly means you still talk directly about the feelings; it’s just that the owner of the feelings is someone other than your child.
Using play
The above example with the penguin is not typical—the connection between the imaginary play and a child’s real-life experiences/feelings can seem a bit murky, as if you’re trying to interpret an enigmatic dream.
Just keep in mind that a child’s emotions always weave through her play. If you reflect on the issues she is currently struggling with, you will likely see those same issues and emotions appearing in her play in an altered, perhaps metaphorical way.
Let’s look at an example.
Four-year-old Isaac has just moved to a new city and will be going to a new preschool. He and his dad, William, sit on the floor in their living room among a pile of six-inch toy animals. Isaac selects a full-sized tiger, then hands his dad a baby tiger.
“I’m going hunting,” Isaac’s big tiger says to the baby tiger, as if issuing a punishment. “You go play over there,” Isaac adds.
William’s not sure what to do, and he doesn’t want to impose his story over whatever story Isaac is inventing. He whispers as if conspiring with Isaac, “What does the baby do?”
“Wahhh,” Isaac says, “the baby doesn’t want to.”
“Wahh,” the dad says, “I don’t want to go over there and play.” Then whispers again, “How come?”
Isaac whispers back. “He wants to be with his dad.”
This is what William had suspected. There seems to be a clear parallel between the hunting tiger who leaves his child and Isaac’s attending a new preschool.
“I don’t want to play over there,” William says in a whining voice. “I want to be with my dad. It makes me sad to say goodbye. And then I’ll be by myself.”
“No,” Isaac corrects, “You’ll stay with the monkeys.”
“What are the monkeys like?” William whispers, and Isaac just shrugs. “Does he want to be with the monkeys?” William asks, and Isaac shakes his head no.
“I don’t want to be with monkeys. I don’t even know them. I don’t know what it’ll be like,” William adds.
I think you get the idea.
The father never tells Isaac that the play is actually about his son’s separation anxiety and fear of the new school. What specifically Isaac fears about the new school isn’t yet clear, but perhaps William can draw out more specifics through the play: does the baby tiger fear he won’t fit in, make friends, or be liked by the teachers? Is he afraid that without his parents nearby, no one will take care of him? Does he fear he will simply fall apart without a parent present?
(For more examples of using play in this way, check out “Using Play Therapeutically, part 2,” as well as the upcoming post, “How to Make Sense of Your Child’s Behavior: Some Examples.”)
Using stories, whether your own or someone else’s
Kids love to hear stories, and we can use them to broach big feelings. For example, let’s continue on with William and Isaac.
Whenever William tries to approach the subject of preschool directly, Isaac gets super clingy and won’t let William go. So, William tries a different, non-direct approach.
That night as he sits beside Isaac in bed, he tells him a story.
“I remember my first day of preschool. I was scared. Scared I wouldn’t know how to play with the other kids. Scared that I didn’t know the teachers. Scared I’d miss my Momma too much. So that first day, me and two other kids got up on our teacher’s lap in this big, blue comfy chair and we read books for a long, long time. I was still a little sad, but not as much. That chair was cozy, and I liked sitting there with the teacher and the other two kids.
“Every time after that, we still started the day reading in the big blue chair, but only for a little while because there were lots of other things we wanted to do. So many things with kids I liked that I didn’t miss my Momma. And I knew that if I ever needed, I could read with my teacher in that big blue chair.”
Keep in mind that when you tell your child a story about yourself, it will feel closer to home than playing with tigers, and it’s a judgement call on your part as to whether your child can handle it.
If you don’t have a personal story that reflects your kid’s experience, you can make up a story about a pretend child. You can even tell him a story about one of his stuffies, which is one step more removed—and thus indirect—than making up a story about a person.
Here’s an example of how it might look with a variation in which the parent elicits her daughter’s ideas.
“Brownie the horse was starting school one day,” the parent begins. “He was so sad. He didn’t want to go because he’d miss all the other horses. School had different animals and he didn’t know if he’d like them…”
The mom pauses to look at her daughter. “What do you think Brownie does?” she asks.
Her daughter tells her that Brownie teaches the other animals how to speak in horse.
“Okay. And does that work?” the mom asks, and her daughter nods.
The mom continues, “So now they can all speak horse, and they can play together. But Brownie still misses the other horses. What do you think Brownie can do about that?”
And so it goes, the mom using the story of Brownie to draw out her daughter’s feelings and her solutions. This technique tends to work best with kids who are a bit older, say, above five or six.
Using books
Books are a reliable tool in the parenting tool kit that allows kids to indirectly approach feelings they are struggling with. In the above example, the mom could ask a kids librarian for book recommendations. The books don’t have to specifically address starting a new school, but can hit on related themes: a child’s move to a new town, a child needing to say goodbye to friends, or simply a child’s anxiety about being separated from parents (which so many kids books address).
Drawing
Drawing a picture is an excellent way to elicit a story and the emotions that always accompany stories. For a lot more on this, check out the two posts, “Drawing Out the Story,” and the corresponding short-short story, “The Jail and the Storm,” which includes a detailed description and dialog of how a father helps his son “draw out” his complicated emotions.
Related Posts
Using Play Therapeutically, part 1
Therapists help children work through feelings and issues using play therapy, and you can use these tools, too, Here are some guidelines.
A Common Pitfall: Speaking to the Intellect, Not the Emotions
A simple, but profoundly effective change parents can make in talking with their child. Here’s how to do it.
Kids and Play: What’s Really Going On
The real meaning behind a child’s play: to express and vent feelings. Figuring out their play helps parents better understand their child.
The Jail and the Storm
In this story, a father “draws out” some important feelings in his son and himself.
