No well-adjusted parents enjoy seeing their children sad, in pain, or fearful.

Yet …

When your children are experiencing negative emotions, do your best to remain calm. Do your best to receive those emotions and communicate that they are acceptable. Demand of yourself that you step back and allow your children to work through these emotions.

You can and should help them process their pain through conversation, of course, but do not rush to sweep their icky feelings away.

When you rush to do anything—everything!—to make your children feel better …

When you panic and, through language and tone, express that you are also flooded with pain …

When you step in and save the day …

… think about what you inadvertently communicate …

You communicate that pain is an unacceptable condition. You model the frantic need to make pain go away at all costs. You model the behavior of reaching for anything to make negative feelings dissipate.

This is...

Do you revisit conflict when tempers have cooled?

Or …

When your child has a giant emotional meltdown, do you breathe a sigh of relief after it passes and go about your business?

Don’t prod a sleeping bear, right?

The truth is, the gold is in the second half. When you and your child revisit a conflict with clear heads, you can find solutions. This is where growth happens. It is where you and your child can begin to appreciate each other’s perspectives, and it is where you can find solutions absent of the flood of emotions that were clouding your thoughts in round one.

I’ve been ignoring my kids a little more than usual this summer. The last two weeks, in particular, have been hectic: I’m working my normal job as a ghostwriter, working with Kristin to get MacDermott Method off the ground, and helping coordinate a philanthropic event I committed to.

As a result, the kids are sitting around the house during their summer break.

I would rather be taking them to the beach, vacationing, or sitting poolside with them. I will probably have some time to do that later in the summer. For now, though, I feel some guilt. More than once, I have thought that I am not being as good of a mom as I would like to be.

It occurred to me this morning that I have failed to “wrap words around the situation.”

One of the pillars of great conversations is leveling with kids—giving them words that express the reality of what they are observing.

At some point or another, we will all be “too busy” to give our kids what we want to give...