"Don't Be Sad" and Other Things We Say That Hurt Our Kids

I'll never forget the look on my client's face when I told her that saying "don't be sad" to her daughter was actually making things worse. She looked at me like I'd told her breathing was bad for her health. "But I'm trying to help her," she said.

Of course she was. That's what makes this so tricky. The responses we default to when our children are upset feel caring, but they often send a message we don't intend. It tells them what they're feeling isn't real, isn't important, or needs to be fixed right away.

In my years of working with moms and young children, I've found that the single most powerful skill a parent can develop is emotional validation. And the research behind it confirms what I see in my office every week: this skill matters more than most of us realize.

What Invalidation Sounds Like

Invalidation is the process of denying, rejecting, or dismissing someone's feelings, even when we don't mean to. Most of us do it without thinking. "Don't be upset, it's no big deal." "There's no reason to be afraid." "At least it could be worse."

Here's an example I use in my course. Your daughter comes home from school and says, "Nobody played with me at recess. Nobody likes me." The instinct is to say, "Oh no, honey, lots of people like you!" and start listing every friend she has. But in that moment, her brain can't connect to those facts. The feeling of aloneness is so big that she doesn't feel like she has friends, even if she knows she does.

What she needed wasn't a correction. She needed to be seen.

A 2024 meta-analysis found that family-level emotional dynamics, including how parents respond to children's negative emotions, are significantly linked to internalizing symptoms like anxiety and depression.¹ And another study found that childhood emotional invalidation was associated with chronic emotional inhibition in adulthood, including thought suppression and avoidant stress responses.²

How we respond to a child's sadness today can shape how they handle emotions decades from now.

What Validation Actually Sounds Like

The good news is validation isn't complicated. It's often simpler than the elaborate reassurance we default to. In my practice, I teach moms that it sounds like this:

"That does sound hard." "I hear you." "It makes sense that you feel that way." "Ouch, what a tough day."

That's it. No fixing, no correcting, no silver lining. Just a simple acknowledgment that what your child is feeling is real.

In a 2024 randomized experiment with preschool-aged children, those who received emotional validation showed significantly higher levels of persistence than children who received invalidation or no feedback.³ Validation didn't just make kids feel better. It made them more capable.

Start With Yourself

If you didn't receive consistent validation as a child, giving it to your own kids will feel unnatural. You might not even recognize when you're being invalidating because it sounds like the voice you grew up with.

I encourage moms to start by noticing how they talk to themselves. "It's okay for me to feel sad about this. I'm allowed to have my feelings. My mistakes are a part of being human." That internal shift, treating your own emotions as real and valid, is what makes it possible to offer the same to your child.

Research from Kristin Neff at the University of Texas supports this as well. Self-compassion in parents is linked to lower stress and greater life satisfaction.⁴ And a 2025 study found that parents' ability to regulate their own emotions directly predicted their children's mental health outcomes, with parenting stress serving as the key pathway.⁵

How to Apply This Today

1. Notice your default response. The next time your child comes to you upset, pause before you speak. Are you about to fix, correct, or minimize their response?
2. Try one validating phrase. "You're having a hard time. I see how upset you are. I'm here." It might feel like you're not doing enough, but you're doing exactly what the research says matters most.
3. Practice on yourself first. When something is hard today, say: "It makes sense that I'd be upset right now." That's the skill in action.

Learning to validate instead of fix creates something powerful: a home where feelings are safe to have. That's not just good parenting. It's the foundation of emotional health for your whole family.

This blog explores the basics of emotional validation, but putting it into practice takes guidance. In my course Mental Health for Moms, I walk through the full skill of validation across four dedicated lessons: what it is, what it isn't, what it sounds like in real conversations, and how to practice it with yourself first. The course is available through our Pay What You Can pricing (minimum $10). Start the course →

About The Author:

Beth Hewitt, RMHCI, is a therapist at Charis Counseling Center in Orlando, Florida, specializing in work with mothers, young children, and families. She holds an M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Palm Beach Atlantic University (CACREP-accredited), is EMDR Trained and a Certified Trauma Model Therapist, and spent over 12 years directing a preschool program serving 160 children. A mom of two, Beth draws from both clinical expertise and personal experience in her course Mental Health for Moms. Learn more →

Source References

1. "Meta-analysis: child emotion regulation mediates family factors and internalizing symptoms" — Lin et al., Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Cited for the link between parental emotional responses and child anxiety/depression. Accessed Mar 9, 2026.
https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.13894

2. "Childhood emotional invalidation and adult psychological distress" — Krause, Mendelson & Lynch, Child Abuse & Neglect (ScienceDirect). Cited for long-term effects of childhood invalidation on adult emotional inhibition. Accessed Mar 9, 2026.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0145213402005367

3. "Emotional validation promotes persistence in preschoolers" — Jeon et al., Developmental Science. Cited for causal evidence that validation improves child persistence. Accessed Mar 9, 2026.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.13523

4. "Self-compassion research overview" — Kristin Neff, University of Texas / self-compassion.org. Cited for self-compassion in parents linked to lower stress. Accessed Mar 9, 2026.
https://self-compassion.org/the-research/

5. "Parental emotion regulation and children's mental health: longitudinal mediation" — Multiple authors, Personality and Individual Differences. Cited for parents' emotion regulation predicting children's mental health outcomes.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886925002247