Family Life Education Series
How your emotions affect your children

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It is often said that "Happiness comes from within". Have you ever wondered why some people are, in general, happier than others? Do you think that your emotions affect your children? In this article, Positive Living United Services Chairman, Professor Wong Chung-kwong, shares his thoughts on the subject.

Emotions & Feelings

Many people think that emotion is another word for feeling. That may well be true but it also means very much more that! Emotion is an important component of personality functioning. First, it is our driving force. Positive emotions such as love and joy drive people to bless and to do good things. Negative emotions such as anger and hatred drive people to destructive acts. Second, emotions also shadow or even dictate our perception. Through the eyes of love, people see beauty. Through the eyes of hatred, people see ugliness. Third, our emotions affect how we evaluate ourselves. Positive emotions confirm self-value whereas negative emotions erode it.

Parents' emotion strongly affects their children. Almost all parents will say that they 'know' they love their children. But do all of them actually possess the 'power' to do so. Just think about the occasions when parents go home overwhelmed by negative emotions related to their work: anxiety, frustration or anger. No matter how hard they try, they find it impossible to enjoy being with their children and laughing along with them. They remain preoccupied and absent-minded. Quite often, anger at their situation is transferred to anger towards the children.

Parents' emotional states also shadow and even dictate how they see their children. Parents see their children as being innocent and full of vitality or as naughty and disobedient dependent upon the mood they are in.

Handling chidren's problems

Let's take the practical example of handling children's emotional problems. Parents who have good emotional maturity, free from turmoil, are able to contain and empathise with their children's emotional problems (even if their children are angry at them). They have an optimistic and positive appraisal of their children and can accept them as they are. They also have the power to love them. On the other hand, parents who are overwhelmed by negative emotions or who are emotionally immature behave quite differently. They often misunderstand, under-estimate or over-react to their children's emotional problems. They often develop a problematic relationship with their children, including rejection, ambivalence or entanglement. Even though they know that they should love their children, they lack the emotional power to do so.

There is one more very important reason why parents should really be happy. Not only do parents love their children, children love their parents, too. In my clinical practice of helping disturbed children and their families, I have come across just too many children who in tears say to their parents, "I see and feel your unhappiness, but I don't understand and I can't do anything. I feel very unhappy, too!" To be successful and effective parents, and to ensure that our children are happy, we need first to be happy people ourselves.