"Validating" or "understanding" a child's feelings...

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I'm posting this here, rather than in the Parents' Forum, to get a wider range of opinions. Nearly every parenting article I read says that a parent should "validate" or "understand" their child's feelings. For instance, "I understand that you're frustrated that you can't get the M&M's you want", or "it's OK that you're angry about not going to the park today", or "I understand that you're in pain after your surgery", or whatever.

Well, so ****ing [sexing] what! What difference does it make if the parent "validates" or "understands" the child's feelings? The child is still not getting the M&M's. The child still doesn't get to go to the park. The child still feel pain, with the parents doing nothing to stop it. Whether the child's feelings are "valid" or "invalid", they're still stuck with them! And the parent still gets to enjoy the fact that it's their child and not them that's unhappy. I honestly think the whole "validation" thing is stupid! If you're not going to make the child's bad feelings go away, like by giving them the desired item or an antidepressant, or turn them over to a more generous adoptive family, just don't bother! In other words, **** [defecate] or get off the pot!

Come to think of it, that's what my therapist did to me. But because she was an overprivileged ***** [female dog], her "validation" or "understanding" meant nothing! She had unrestricted access to alcohol, tobacco, and prescription pills, which I knew. Any time she felt even slightly unhappy, she could numb it out, while I was out of luck, because I was a filthy subhuman kid. So her "validations" were nothing more than straight-out meaningless mockery! It was like a US Democrat "understanding" how disempowering it feels to have your small business looted by Antifa.

Last edited by Aspie1 on 17 Sep 2022, 9:14 am, edited 1 time in total.

I've experienced people who validate and those who are harsh and just say 'tough luck!!'

I think the validators are way better

You have a somewhat valid point. But the problem with "validation" is that whoever "validates" your feelings will be hopped up on benzodiazepines, SSRI's, or alcohol just an hour later---or simply be enjoying whatever they desire---while you'll still be stuck feelings your misery full-strength.

I always thought of "validation" and "tough luck!" as basically the same thing, both as a kid and today.

Yeah in that situation, when your therapist was an adult and she was patronising you, a child. That was an inadequate way that she handled the situation.

I validate people. And I’m a teetotaler.

Where do you get the idea that therapists are invariably high on drugs?

I "validate" people too, but only because that's an NT social rule; it's how the world works. If the social rules were up to me, I'd say "do this and that" and hand them a 200-mL bottle of whiskey.

Therapists not all "invariably high on drugs". But they have close friends in the psych industry. So them saying to a psychiatrist they know "psst, I had a tough day, and I want some Xanax" isn't a stretch. All while denying the same benefit to their patient.

Have you ever considered doing EMDR?

Isn't that where the therapist just waves their fingers in front of your eyes, and expects you to magically feel better?

I like to validate people because it's part of being a Sweet Pea.

I guess the idea began as a reaction to older ways of parenting. It used to be common that a parent would invalidate a child's feelings, i.e. not just denying them what they want but also telling them they didn't, or shouldn't, have those feelings. I suppose the fear was that the child might internalise the invalidation and begin to deny their own feelings, so that they didn't know what they wanted or felt any more, which (it was thought) could lead to mental health problems. So maybe they started actively validating the child's feelings (i.e. reassuring them that there was nothing wrong with their feelings as such) just to be on the safe side.

My parents sometimes used to judge me harshly for wanting this or that, and I think I might have grown to like myself a bit better if they hadn't done that. I don't know whether it would have helped me or not if they'd used positive validation. But it doesn't seem to me that it would have done any harm, unless it was so overdone that it began to look as if it was being made up.

It does look incongruous to hold that it's OK to want something but not OK to go and get it, but I think that's sometimes the way it is. If we know what the desire is and that gratifying it directly may be harmful, we might be able to find something less harmful that we could try for instead. We might start by desiring something very specific that we can't have, and then figure out what the general desire might be, and find something to do that fits the bill. For example, driving a car very fast on a crowded public road would be dangerous, but the general desire underlying that might be boredom and a wish for some excitement, and there may be safer ways of gratifying that.

I think a good parent would notice strong but harmful desires in their kids, and rather than telling them they shouldn't want what they clearly do want, or ignoring their wishes as if they just didn't matter, help them to salvage something from the situation, and be on their side instead of just saying no.

By itself, "validating" negative feelings is well and good. But if the source of negative feelings isn't removed, what good does "validation" do? Case in point. It was less than a year after my family moved cross-country, and I was seeing a therapist. I told her how my parents always yelled at me about being "immature". She said: "That's OK. You just moved across the country. That will make many kids regress to an extent, and you're no different. What you're feeling and the way you're acting because of those feelings is normal."

"Umm... OK..."

She almost took my head off with her validation. But it did nothing for me. My parents still yelled at me for being "immature" and emotionally abused me for it. What she should have done after "validating" me is call my parents and tell them: "Mr. and Mrs. Asperger. Your son told me that you yell at him and accuse him of being immature. You dragged him thousands of miles across the country, away from the friends he knew and bonded with, away from the city he liked living in, all for a mythical promise of a better life. Unlike you, he can't numb his pain with whiskey, he can't get antidepressants, and he hasn't made friends yet. You're all he's got right now. And you demand him to be a miniature adult? That's parentification. What the hell is wrong with you?! You better pray to god that I don't call CPS on your asses!" Of course, I already knew she was their flying monkey, and so she wasn't going to do that in a million years. Not even talk to them, let alone call CPS.

Why would she call CPS over that? CPS takes kids if their LIVES are in danger, not because their parents insulted them.

You seem to have a lot of resentment toward your own parents and your old therapist that you project onto parents and therapists *generally*. It isn't warranted.

Often people (including kids) feel bad about situations that can't be fixed. The grasshopper you wanted jumped away. You lost a race. Cookies are not a healthy dinner. Grandma is dead. Bad, unfixable stuff is an unfortunate part of life.

1. Children still want to feel cared for, even when a situation can't be fixed. This "validation" language is intended to tell the child, "I still love you, even though I can't change this."

2. Children are still learning to deal with and regulate their emotions. Part of a parent's job is to teach them this. Most people do NOT use alcohol or other drugs to deal with the sorts of negative emotions that arise from not getting M&Ms or going to the park! That would be ridiculous.

Most people learn to handle these sorts of little disappointments quite easily, somewhere between 5 and 10 years old.

If you think that parents should just turn their kids over to a "more generous" adoptive family that will provide unlimited candy whenever the kid wants it, I think you truly do not understand how adoption works. People don't like adopting kids. They want to adopt babies. The kid would be put in foster care, where they would be much, much worse off. Forget candy--kids get beaten and raped in foster care!

If by some miracle the kid does get adopted, the new family isn't going to provide unlimited candy streams, either, because no responsible parent does that. It's not about being "generous;" it's about candy being bad for your health.

What about expecting a child to be a miniature adult, with 95% of adult responsibilities, including caring for the entire family's mental health, and 0% of adult rights? That's basically what parentification is. And the threat about calling CPS was hyperbole; it was an example of my therapist advocating for me. It'd be nice if she did, though.

There's a BIG difference between bad stuff that's external-inflicted and bad stuff that's parent-inflicted. Losing a race or a grasshopper hopping away are external. Refusals to take a kid to the park or buy them a $1.79 bag of candy are on the parent. With the former, "validation" makes some sense, since the bad situation was out of the parent's control. With the latter, it does not. I mean, it's the parent themselves that brought on the feelings; they could have made time for the park or pried their wallet open for just $1.79, but chose not to. In which case, "validation" is not only pointless, but basically mockery.

Well, in the latter case, I suppose the "validation" should come from a third party whose loyalty is to the child and not the parents. Like a friend, a same-age sibling, or a CPS worker. (I had none of these, but they're good examples.) As opposed to the parents themselves, a parent's friend, a grandparent, or the family therapist, who are all the parents' flying monkeys.

She couldn't have forced your parents to change if they'd chosen not to listen, but it seems a shame that she didn't even try. So she did the only other thing she could - i.e. to explain to you that they were wrong. You might not have needed it in that particular case, but generally speaking kids do tend to internalise what their caregivers say about them, and it wasn't a bad idea in principle to reassure you that you were normal. When I was a child I was often pretty sure that my parents' harsh words were wrong, but the power of repeated suggestion can be quite strong, and I think I internalised some of it even though I would have defended with my dying breath that I wasn't half as bad as they said I was. I grew to be an adult with rather brittle self-confidence and self-esteem.

It might have been a bit different if I'd had somebody to offer a better, more understanding view of my behaviour when I was in my formative years. But it's hard to know how effective that kind of thing is, and getting my parents to stop the character assassinations would seem a much more effective fix for such problems. Nonetheless, if that's not possible, then the validation thing is the only thing anybody could have done for me.

Where did you get the idea that when a parent validates the child's feelings "the parent still gets to enjoy the fact that it's their child and not them that's unhappy"?

I feel badly that your parents were terrible to you, but try to generalize against parents, or therapists.