DeepSummary
The episode discusses the importance of allowing children to fully experience and express feelings of grief and loss, even from a very young age. Janet Lansbury shares personal examples of her own children grieving the loss of a family pet, and how allowing them to fully feel and express those emotions helped them process the loss in a healthy way.
Janet explains that many parents have an instinct to try to distract or cheer up a child who is feeling sad or grieving, but this can send the message that those feelings are not okay. Instead, she advocates for listening, acknowledging, and holding space for children to move through feelings of grief without trying to change or stop them.
The episode covers how grieving losses like a parent leaving the room temporarily or welcoming a new sibling can help build emotional resilience from a young age. Janet shares examples of how to respond in supportive, validating ways when children express sadness over separations or changes.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- Allowing children to fully feel and express emotions like grief and sadness over losses helps build emotional resilience.
- Parents should resist the urge to distract, cheer up, or minimize a child's difficult emotions, and instead listen and hold space for them.
- Even temporary separations and small changes can trigger grief in young children, providing opportunities to model healthy coping.
- Being honest with children about separations and responding with validation when they express sadness helps build trust.
- Children's grief processes are unique and can come and go - it's important to allow them to move through the emotion naturally without judgment.
- Modeling the ability to experience and move through one's own grief in a healthy way sets a powerful example for children.
- Suppressing difficult emotions can lead to adverse effects later, so it's vital to let children learn they can survive uncomfortable feelings.
- With support and the space to express themselves, children can emerge from experiences of loss with increased emotional freedom.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “Because if I can feel all the hardest emotions, to feel the most uncomfortable ones, I'm free. I can do anything, right? I don't have to be afraid of life.“ by Janet Lansbury
- “So everything I knew about this child and about emotional health and what my role was in my child's feelings. To listen, to hold space for, to be there if she wanted to reach out to hold me or something like that, but not to force myself on her like I wanted to do.“ by Janet Lansbury
- “If we can share that with our parents, we've got nothing to fear or to hide.“ by Janet Lansbury
- “And we make sure that the parent tells them that they're leaving so they're not sneaking out. I would never recommend that. Respect is about honesty.“ by Janet Lansbury
Entities
Company
Product
Person
Book
Episode Information
Respectful Parenting: Janet Lansbury Unruffled
JLML Press
2/6/24
Most of us wouldn't consider it part of our job to allow the small children in our care to grieve. And yet, our lives are filled with losses—some are significant, most are minor. The way we process feelings of loss can have profound, lasting effects on our mental health and overall quality of life. In this episode, Janet shares how we can encourage our children to experience and express loss in the healthiest manner from the very beginning, starting with the first type of loss our babies experience: momentary separation from a loved one. Our response can provide them the messages and experience they need to learn to deal with loss capably and, most important of all, know loss is survivable.
Learn more about Janet's "No Bad Kids Master Course" at: NoBadKidsCourse.com. Her best-selling books "No Bad Kids: Toddler Discipline without Shame" and "Elevating Child Care: A Guide to Respectful Parenting" are available in all formats at Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Google Play
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.