Posted on November 09, 2010 by admin

1. Begin to understand that your girl genuinely feels strongly about the challenges in her child/teen world. Although it might seem trivial to you (“It’s one bad hair day, you can’t always get what you want”), right now, in this stage of her life, it is all consuming. So how do we help and support her through her challenges? We fully enter her world and we begin to see things the way she does (from her perspective).
2. Empathize with her distress. It is a simple response but sometimes the hardest thing to do as a parent. When we empathize we RECOGNIZE and ACCEPT someone else’s emotions. When we see our girl’s in distress we want to fix it fast and taking the time to recognize our child’s pain can leave us feeling some pain too. Yuck. However, it is important to remember that when you empathize you not only help your daughter through a rough spot but you are conveying two deeper messages. A) You create the opportunity to discuss with your daughter what she is going through. B) You give your daughter permission and support to have the emotional experience she is feeling.
3. When you challenge, deny or ignore her emotions you may communicate that what she is feeling is unacceptable. So providing empathy is an opportunity to validate your girls evolving sense of self. This will begin to add successes to her bank of emotional experiences.
4. When your girl expresses an emotion, try to affirm or empathize with her experience. For example: “Mom, she made fun of my outfit and then said, ‘Just Kidding.’ But everyone was laughing.” An empathetic response would sound like this: “I can see why you feel hurt. That sounds embarrassing or I’m sorry this happened to you.”…and then you can go on to problem solving together.
5. In our adult world it would something like this. Say you had a really bad day and you tell your friend about it and she/he says, “It couldn’t have been that bad, or your getting upset about THAT!?! or that’s life.” I’m sure at some point you’ve had this happen. It doesn’t feel good. We recognize that our feelings have been denied and as a result the conversation usual stops, we might shut down or choose not to confide in this friend anymore. But what about when we say the same thing to a friend who replies with, “You sound so upset, tell me about it or I’m sorry it was so hard for you, I’m here to help.” You probably felt comfortable sharing more, confiding and afterwards felt a sense of being cared for, a sense of relief or renewed hope. 
6. For your girl, sometimes just having someone understand how much distress she is in makes her charged emotion easier to handle. This will help her think and use her own problem solving skills instead of getting wrapped up in the fact that she was not heard or validated in the first place. After using this tool for just a short time you should see conflict and those forever dreaded power struggles decrease. 

So give it a try (with your girl or a friend), be consistent, and let us know how you are doing on our blog!