Raising an emotionally expressive child is one of the biggest challenges of parenting for those of us who weren't allowed to express our feelings as children. Here's how to encourage your child to be expressive, yet respectful.

Not so the disconnected infant. A baby who is dutifully scheduled, left to cry it out, and whose well-meaning parents fall prey to the fear-of-spoiling advice, learns early that the caregiving world is not responsive to his needs. He learns to stop asking. This baby learns to ignore his feelings at an early age. He learns neither to identify nor to express them. On the surface, this little person is a "good" baby; he doesn't bother anybody. He adjusts to the inflexible schedule, sleeps through the night, and is convenient to have around. This "good" baby, seemingly so "well-disciplined," is at risk for becoming a withdrawn child and an internally angry, depressed adult. Other disconnected infants cry harder when they receive no response, becoming obnoxious and openly angry. These babies become children who are very hard to manage. They carry these feelings into adulthood, and like the "good" baby are at risk of ending up in the psychologist's office. (This "good baby" or "obnoxious baby" is different from the temperamentally easy baby or difficult baby.)

Lauren, our two-year-old, hurts her finger. She holds her hurt finger up to me, "Daddy, kiss owie." I know she's not really hurt, because she'd be crying in pain if she'd pinched her finger hard. I could dismiss this and get back to my important agenda, but my heart looks behind the eyes of my child. I realize that this very healthy looking finger is not the issue. The fact that Lauren feels her finger is hurt is the issue. Lauren learned she can use her feelings to get my attention and my sympathy, and by showing my own emotional interest in her plight, I can help her develop her expressiveness and let her know I care about her finger just as much as she does. "Show me where it hurts. How badly does it bother you?" I look into her eyes sympathetically and sensitively examine her finger. "Let me show you how to make it better." I put a bandage on her finger or show her how to go to the freezer for the "boo-boo bunny" (a cloth container for ice cubes). I then hold her on my lap for a few minutes until her attention is diverted to something new. The inexperienced parent may hesitate to make such a fuss over "nothing." The veteran realizes how sensitive little children are to insignificant trauma to their bodies. From a child's viewpoint, the tiniest pinprick represents a hole in his body, and he needs the bandage to repair the leak.

Don't try to get a child to stuff her feelings. When a child is upset, sit back, look into her eyes, and give her time and space to express herself. Resist the urge to unload your reaction—anger, judgment, logic. Your child is not in a receptive frame of mind to receive any of these. Remarks that convey your adult assessment of the situation tell the child that she should suppress her own feelings. Feeling stuffers give the child the message that you are not accepting of her emotions, and cause the child to clam up. It's a lose-lose situation. The child loses the ability to express herself, and you become an unaccepting parent whose child learns not to open up to you. A distance develops between parent and child.

Instead of lashing out with feeling stuffers:

• "Stop that horrible crying."
• "There is nothing wrong with you."
• "You're being a baby."
• "You're overreacting."
• "It's not a big deal."
• "You don't need a bandage."
• "Quit bothering me."
• "You're not cold" (or hungry, or thirsty, and so on)

Try helping your child identify her feelings:

• "Do you think you were bad?"
• "That made you angry."
• "ouch! That must hurt."
• "Does that make you sad?"
• "What a happy feeling!"
• "That really hurt your feelings, didn't it?"
• "Scraping your knee hurts a lot."
• "I'll bet you feel good."

Past six a child can take more responsibility for keeping harmony in the household. If your seven-year-old is glaring at you with hateful looks and seems bent on wallowing in turmoil, resisting your invitation to communicate calmly, you can calmly request that he or she go into another room where the foul mood will not affect your harmony.

Martha, on the other hand, was able to match the child's emotions with her own. Instead of locking into her adult mind, she clicked into the child's view of the problem. She first matched the child's emotional state. If the child's emotions registered a "10" on the boo-boo rating scale, Martha's empathy would rate a "10." She was using the oldest negotiating trick in the world: First, meet people where they are and then carry them where you want them to be. Martha gradually began lessening her worry signals, which would help the child wind down into the realization that the scrape was not the end of his life. He would realize that if the hurt was no big deal in mommy's eyes, it was not worth wasting energy on, and he would go back to his play, happily sporting a Band- Aid.

Children, and adults, often need to express their negative feelings before they can solve their problem. Watch masterful negotiators. They first try to understand the other side's viewpoint rather than making judgments about it. Next, they let the other person present his whole argument before offering a solution. Use similar strategies for helping a child work through her feelings. Give a child the opportunity to present her whole story. Listen attentively and match emotions with the child. Don't jump right in with advice or solutions. If you are busy constructing your own arguments while the child is talking, she'll know it. You won't get her viewpoint and you won't be able to help as effectively. Knowing when to speak and when to hold back is the key to being a good listener—and a good disciplinarian.

Avoid playing amateur psychiatrist. "And how does that make you feel?" older children, especially teenagers, sense when someone is fresh out of Psychology 101 or has just finished the latest discipline class. They may resent you trying some outsider's methods on them; at best, they may find it embarrassing, at worst, infuriating. Personalize your approach; if you use tips from this site or another outside source, ease into them. Make them your own. Use your own words and your own style of communicating.

Avoid cover-ups. Shallow people shy away from deep relationships. If you are blessed with a deep-feeling child and you offer shallow responses, a distance is likely to develop between you. One day Erin's bunny died. She was heartbroken, and shared her tragic discovery with me when I was busy. I should have focused first on her feelings, second on the bunny's death, and third on my inconvenience. Instead I offered a lame, "We'll get you another bunny." That was a cover-up, a refusal to deal with deep feelings. Instead of addressing Erin's sorrow, I offered an economic remedy, as if money could change her feelings. Besides encouraging her to stuff her feelings, this cover-up modeled shallow attitudes: we live in a disposable society where broken relationships can be quickly healed by buying new ones. It turned out that Erin's sorrow was laden with guilt because the bunny didn't have any water when he died, and giving him water had been her responsibility. It took some careful listening and empathetic counseling to help her work through these heavy feelings.

FEELING PUPPETS. Ideally, the way for children to deal with fears and feelings is to talk to you. In reality, children often clam up when asked "How do you feel?" Yet, they will often tell a go-between, such as a puppet or a favorite doll how they feel. Take one puppet yourself and give another to your child. The friend puppet asks your child's puppet what he is feeling, and often your child will release his feelings through his puppet. These stand-ins are less threatening to your child if he worries that you might pass judgment on his feelings.