The Value in Validation

Parents reach out and they want advice in terms of how to communicate with their children effectively cuz it's all about the relationship. You know, we can't just start when there's a crisis. We always have to be working on the nature and the level of the relationship, making sure that there's a level of comfort. The child feels comfortable to open up, to be honest, to be vulnerable with their parents. That starts at a young age already. And even if you're starting at an older age, you can always begin wherever you can begin. Uh but the younger the better. And every time they speak with you, it's never punitive in nature, even if they revealed to you something really difficult that's hard for you to hear, a bad decision that they made, something unhealthy. It's really important to imagine that happening and prepare yourself to not react in any sort of volatile or disgusted, you know, God forbid type of way. Because that's only going to serve to discourage them from continuing to open up. And that's what you want first and foremost. Time is your ally. I always tell parents, time is your ally. You always have a chance in the future to revisit, to come back and discuss and say, you know, let's discuss a little further what you revealed to me the other day. And maybe there needs to be a consequence, maybe there are natural consequences, maybe there needs to be further discussion as to how to better ensure safeguards, you know, to make sure it doesn't happen in the future, but the key first impression is, I'm so happy, I'm so proud of that you opened up, that you were honest with me about that. So, that's really important. Just establishing that baseline of comfort and welcoming their vulnerability towards you, which is only going to help moving forward. Now, one of the key strategies you want to use in doing this is that whenever they're speaking to you about anything they did, and this is true even if unfortunately you caught them doing something, so there isn't much room for I'm so proud of you for telling me if it really I caught you. But even when you catch them, you can still say things like like after you catch them and they give you a little bit more detail. Thank you so much for acknowledging, for not trying to deny. You know, you can always look hard for genuine and sincere areas to compliment and be proud of them, which is so important. And once you do that and they start to open up and they start to speak, it's super important to validate. And sometimes it can be difficult for us to do that because the child might be speaking about excuses and might be speaking about how maybe it's justified and might be speaking about where they were coming from and in our mind it's like that's crazy. No, this is not okay. But we have to remember that the only way it once again they're going to be willing to continue to come back is if they feel heard. So they have to not feel like they're in trouble for telling you, number one, and number two, they have to feel like they're being heard by you, that you're really listening. So what does it mean to listen? Obviously to not be distracted by other things and to really make be making eye contact and paying attention to them, but also that when you're listening, you're able to show them that you're understanding them. Showing them that you understand them is merely validating them. Just showing them that they exist, that their feelings are real, that they exist. It does not necessarily at all mean that you're agreeing with what they're saying. Key thing to keep in mind, validation does not necessarily mean agreement. But it does mean, and a great simple technique to do this, is that you might paraphrase what they're telling you. Oh, so what you're saying is this and that and this and that and and this is why that happened. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, you understand, you get it. Yeah, I get it. Even though maybe in 5 minutes, maybe tomorrow I'm going to continue the conversation and make it clear that I definitely don't agree with that line of thinking, with that judgment call, but I do understand and what you're saying makes sense from your perspective and there's there's an understanding to it even though again I want to make sure that you understand that it's not the right judgment, wasn't the right decision and I want to share with you next my opinion. But, the only way they're going to be willing to listen to your opinion on the matter, which most probably is the right idea, is if you gave them that generosity of listening to their opinion, really validating, paraphrasing what they have to say.