Hi, this is Janet Lanzbury. Welcome to UnRuffled.

Today I'm responding to an email that I received from a mom. She's trying to raise her

boys to be caring and empathetic, but she's feeling like her five-year-old is very sensitive

and she wants to make sure that she's teaching him to be resilient when his own feelings

are heard.

Here's the email I received.

Hi, Janet. I recently discovered your podcast and it has been transformative. Your insight

and guidance have helped me be more confident in my limit setting and it has helped me and

my boys tremendously. I've always had the tendency without realizing it to want to fix

every problem. For example, this summer when leaving for camp, my five-year-old would

wine every day and say, but I don't want to go to camp. My instinct would be to say,

I know you don't want to go, but you'll have fun. So instead I started saying that I

hear him and that I understand that he doesn't want to go. And I'd leave it at that.

This transformed our mornings. The simple fact that I heard him and that I wasn't brushing

aside his feelings or trying to fix him made it easier to get out of the house and into

the car and he's happier about it. Here's where I'm stuck though. While I can see how

important it is for me to be comfortable with his feelings to accept them without trying

to fix them, I do also want to start helping him understand the concept of resilience.

He is a really sensitive boy and we are raising our boys, four and five, to be caring and

empathetic. It's tough though to try to teach him to be careful with other people's

feelings while at the same time trying to teach him to bounce back when others hurt

his feelings. For example, one of his friends at school recently told him that he doesn't

...