When a child gets excited about something, many parents tend to react by pulling them back -- which leads to happiness and joy being dulled. Don't do that, says the columnists. — 123rf
When I was in secondary school I discovered I was a decent goalkeeper, and the more I played football, the more excited I felt about the game. I remember talking about that excitement at home, and my mum telling me she was glad, but reminding me that only a tiny number of people make it as professional footballers.
At the time, I found her words bizarre. I knew I wouldn’t become a professional and had no desire to try. Nevertheless, it dampened the enthusiasm I felt, and it was some time before I shared similar experiences. Friends of mine also encountered this. Some who loved music were told how unlikely it was to make a living from it, while others who enjoyed painting, writing, or cooking were nudged towards more "practical" pursuits. There was obviously a reason for this advice, but it can hinder rather than help.
This week, I listened to an interesting podcast in which Prof Mark Williams was interviewed about mindfulness, faith, and emotional life. Williams – professor emeritus at Oxford University – spoke of how often we respond to people’s happiness by trying to tone it down, particularly in relationships where there is a power difference, such as parents with children or teachers with students.
Psychologists call this “dampening”. It describes the habit of diminishing positive feelings the moment they appear. Comments such as “Don’t get too excited”, “Let’s see how long it lasts”, and “It probably won’t work out the way you hope” are meant to guard against disappointment. But the actual effect often leads to feelings of happiness and joy being dulled.
Prof Williams was careful to point out that the tendency to offer warnings is well-meaning. Many adults carry the belief that the world is tough and that children need preparing for that reality as early as possible. From that perspective, dampening can feel like emotional training – a way of toughening children up so they’re not naïve or unrealistic when life inevitably lets them down.
In practice, though, this approach frequently backfires. Confidence and resilience tend to grow when children experience adults staying with their excitement or disappointment, rather than immediately correcting or talking them out of it. When excitement is consistently toned down, children don’t become tougher – they become more wary about expressing themselves.
This is a pattern I regularly see in young people. Many struggle to celebrate achievements without immediately qualifying them, and some downplay good news before anyone else has the chance to do so. It’s also common to hear students describe efforts to talk about stress or worry, only to be told that they should be grateful or that they have nothing to be anxious about compared with older generations. With time, they learn that expressing happiness or excitement attracts correction, while vulnerability attracts dismissal, and that keeping things to themselves feels safer.
What tends to be missed is how resilience develops. Being able to cope with disappointment later on is often supported by having experiences of encouragement earlier. When children are allowed to feel excited without immediately being warned about the risks, they learn that positive emotion needn’t shrink. When disappointment arrives, as it does, they develop a healthier perspective to help them cope.
There’s also a habit of talking about these issues as though children are the only ones who need to learn. We focus on how young people need to toughen up, manage expectations, and prepare themselves for adult life. What we forget is that adults are always part of the emotional picture.
How we communicate with younger people is more important than we realise. There’s a proverb about noticing the plank in our own eye before pointing out the speck in someone else’s. Before worrying about whether children are resilient enough, it’s worth asking how comfortable we are with strong emotion ourselves. Dampening often reflects adults’ unease with disappointment more than it reflects children’s ability to manage expectations.
Research over the past decade reflects what many therapists notice in the room, which is that people who regularly play down positive experiences tend to struggle more with low mood, and find it harder to bounce back after things go wrong, especially when that habit starts early.
Encouraging excitement and joy isn’t going to lead to unrealistic expectations, but it is likely to lead to young people being able to express themselves more often and appreciate the good things in life – a message therapists often try to instil.
On the other hand, disappointment and setbacks will happen, and people deal well enough with them when they arise; prior training isn’t necessary.
Children remember how we respond when they share something that matters. Whether that experience encouraged them to keep opening up or taught them to close down tends to travel well beyond childhood. When young people share positive events with us, they’re not going to be ruined by our encouragement; they’ll be sustained by and made stronger for it.
