Most parents know the frustration of dealing with a child’s unexpected public tantrum.
But parents are often too quick to call out their child’s negative behavior — chastising them for that unnecessary meltdown or even telling them to “cheer up” when they seem sad — while ignoring the underlying emotions behind those actions, according to parenting expert Reem Raouda.
Focusing solely on children’s behaviors, particularly bad behavior, rather than investigating and validating their emotions is a common parenting mistake that hinders your child’s ability to develop emotional intelligence, says Raouda, an author and certified conscious parenting coach.
“Stop focusing on their behavior and start focusing on their [well-being],” she says. “Children are not robots, and their emotions are being completely ignored, dismissed [or even] punished.”
Experts often link emotional intelligence to success, because it helps people manage the kinds of negative emotions that could otherwise lead to burnout, anxiety or depression, research shows.
“Your emotional well-being is your success,” says Raouda, adding that parents who ignore their kids’ emotional development are less likely to raise happy, successful adults. “Who cares about how much money you have, if you are anxiety-ridden, depressed, [and] don’t know who you are?”
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Parents do need to enforce boundaries, Raouda says, particularly when a child’s outburst involves mistreating other people. They also need to remind kids that their feelings — positive or negative — are normal, and that it’s healthy to express them constructively, she says.
Focus on “not making them feel bad for their anger [and] not telling them to cheer up when they’re sad,” says Raouda. “Letting them be in their feelings is No. 1.”
You might, for example, ask your child what they were feeling that led them to act out, break a rule or otherwise cross a previously established boundary. Helping your kids name their emotions is the first step toward them developing the ability to manage those emotions, Raouda says.
Some other experts agree: Children who feel heard and not shamed for their feelings typically become more open to avoiding negative behaviors, according to psychologist Caroline Fleck. “The point is to validate the emotion and then focus on what’s not valid, which is the behavior [and that’s] what needs to change,” Fleck told CNBC Make It in January.
Parents who overemphasize obedience, which can require the suppression of big feelings, run the risk of raising people-pleasers who can’t advocate for themselves and are more likely to grow into anxious, unhappy adults, Raouda says.
A mother herself, Raouda says she’d practice emotion-naming exercises with her son even when he was too young to articulate how he was feeling on his own. That involved asking if he was angry or frustrated and, if so, having him rank the severity of his feelings on a scale of 1 to 10, she says.
And when parents feel emotional themselves, they can tell their children directly: I’m upset, or I’m sad. The idea is to show your children that you don’t have to suppress those negative feelings, says Raouda.
“Naming it takes away from the [negative] stigma,” she says. “It’s just, like, ‘Yeah, I was angry, I was embarrassed, I was sad, I was nervous’ … Feelings are normal and healthy and fine.”
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