Leave No Doubt Fatherhood Podcast

#17 Three Words That Are Undermining Your Child's Emotional Well-Being


Listen Later

There are three words that almost every parent says multiple times a week—sometimes multiple times a day. They're said with pure love and the best intentions. They feel helpful in the moment. And they're quietly teaching your children that their emotions are wrong, shameful, and need to be hidden.

In this eye-opening episode, we expose the single most damaging phrase parents unconsciously use when their kids are hurting, and reveal why our instinct to immediately stop our children's tears is actually setting them up for emotional disaster later in life.

Drawing from 15 years of working with the Grief Recovery Method and helping thousands of people process unresolved trauma, we break down not just these three toxic words, but the four other damaging messages that typically accompany them. By age 15, children receive an estimated 26,000 signals to suppress their emotions. Is it any wonder so many adults don't know how to process grief?

In This Episode You'll discover:

  • The exact phrase that invites your child to share more instead of shut down
  • Why emotional paraphrasing changes everything (and how to do it naturally)
  • The hidden message kids receive when Dad stays stoic 
  • How to recognize the 40+ life events that cause childhood grief (it's not just death—it's pet loss, moving, betrayal, loss of trust, even finding out Santa isn't real)
  • Real scripts for supporting big emotions without being overwhelmed by them
  • Resources mentioned: "When Children Grieve" book, Grief Recovery Handbook

    ...more
    View all episodesView all episodes
    Download on the App Store

    Leave No Doubt Fatherhood PodcastBy Sam Trapkin and Cole James