Why Sadness Can Be Good for Your Children

Our daughter adores cats, and not in the cute way children often love small animals, but in an all-consuming, almost obsessive way. At home, we have a lot of animals, including two aging cats, a kelpie puppy, and an assortment of farm animals, but it’s the cats that are our daughter’s favorite. Her bedroom is decorated like a shrine for all things ‘cat’, with cat-themed wallpaper, curtains, bedding, and an ever-growing ornament collection. Even when we travelled overseas in 2016, our daughter managed to find every cat within a one mile radius, or so it seemed anyway. When people ask what the best part of our holiday was, she tells them it was playing with the barn kittens at her friend’s riding school … even better than Disneyland and Universal Studios, apparently! So, last week I booked our daughter into a ‘Reading Buddies’ school holiday program at an animal shelter, where kids spend a couple of hours patting and reading to animals waiting for adoption  – our daughter was beyond excited, and didn’t even complain during the full hour it took to travel there. The thing is, although I knew our daughter would have an amazing time at this program, it didn’t occur to me we might actually have trouble leaving. I’m not sure why it didn’t cross my mind, especially given the tears earlier in the week when we left a local ‘cat cafe’ … Anyway, long story short, after the program finished, our daughter insisted upon showing me the cats and kit...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Children and Teens Parenting Personal Child Development Coping Skills Emotional Regulation Emotional Resilience Sadness Source Type: blogs