Children need emotional attention, validation, and responsiveness to thrive.

Parenting is largely about teaching children how to understand and manage their emotions.

Emotionally attuned responses help children feel understood while learning accountability.

Parents can learn emotion skills even if they did not receive them growing up.

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Even though every child is different, all children are also the same in one very important way. In order to thrive, children require emotional attention, validation, and responsiveness from their parents.

Knowing that you need to provide this to your child gives you a tremendous leg up on parenting. But knowing how to provide it is another thing altogether.

Think of parenting as a process of teaching your children how to manage their emotions. The better you handle your children’s emotions, the better they will be at managing their own emotions, as well as the emotions of others, throughout their lives.

The 3 Essential Emotion Skills for Parenting:

The parent feels an emotional connection to the child

The parent pays attention to the child and sees the child as a unique and separate person, rather than, say, an extension of the parent, a possession, or a burden.

Using that emotional connection and paying attention, the parent responds competently to the child’s emotional needs.

Although these skills sound simple, in combination, they are a powerful tool for helping children learn about and manage their own nature, for creating a secure emotional bond that carries the child into adulthood, so that they may face the world with the emotional health to achieve a happy adulthood.

In short, when parents are mindful of their children’s unique emotional nature, they raise emotionally strong adults. Some parents are able to do this intuitively, but others can learn the skills. Either way, the child will learn them.

Zach is a precocious and hyperactive third-grader, the........

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