I need clarity in using Self Govornment…Something doesn’t feel quite right…

Dear Nicholeen,

I apologize that I’ve been misspelling your name in the past!

Something isn’t sitting right with me about correcting my daughter when she gets a “No” answer and she is genuinely sad or disappointed and allows herself to feel it and cry for a while.  For example, she was truly hoping to go out with certain friends who she feels close to and loves to be with and I don’t let her because of concerns about these friends behaviors being unsafe.  When I said no, she said, okay, but was disappointed and crying quietly in her room for a while, (about half an hour) and I chose not to correct her but to be with her while she felt her emotions and processed them.  It seemed the compassionate response. She realized she will likely lose these friendships…a good thing, but hard.  She did not challenge the no answer but felt sad about it.  I actually want to be able to be with her in these moments of pain and accept and validate her genuine loss and grief, but without moving the boundary.  Do you disagree with this?  I have no problem giving her no answers, instructions, and correcting her with consequences when she is acting out, or using her emotions to control or manipulate, or simply get her way.  Sometimes though, when the no answer is truly painful and disappointing, it feels wrong to ask her to turn off her normal feelings of loss, grief, pain, or disappointment.  I know from personal experience that in order for me to truly  accept a no answer, I need to be able to feel and process my genuine pain and loss in order to accept the no answer, drop the subject, and be happy successfully.  If I skip acknowledging, accepting, and validating my own feelings, the anger, resentment, and fear step in, and even though I am usually able to drop the subject in the moment and feel calm, the unprocessed and invalidated feelings come up to bite me at a later time.  Some of life’s no answers are genuinely painful and take time to process, from personal examples, abuse by a loved one, a death in the family, a house fire, loss of respect or status.  I don’t think its healthy to force a calm face when you really need a good cry.

When a young child is feeling angry at someone for grabbing a toy and smacking him (crying, not calm), or so happy about seeing his dad and is jumping up and down with excitement that he forgets to flush the toilet, (happy, not calm)  I would normally validate and accept all of the child’s feelings, and understand the reasons for them, and 90 percent of the time they will calm down BECAUSE of the validation and acceptance, after which we can solve the problem and talk about it calmly.  A consequence for not having a calm face, body and voice in these situations seems really inappropriate to me.

Please help me understand.