It is upsetting whenever I see how our parents furiously protecting our children’s physical safety, but being totally clueless about or even damaging the children’s emotional safety. Worse, many parents often threaten their children’s emotional life in totally unconsciousness. Parents are often oblivious about what they do or say might impact their children. Sometime there is this itchy feeling of guilt or uneasiness creeping in, to shrug them off, that is when you hear a parent might say or think: "Oh, well, I did my best" (granted that is true) or "Ok, kids are resilient." (this is a myth I’d like to challenge).

We have learned the physical safety early on in our life because our parents are constantly telling us and protecting us from anything that could physically harm us, such as knife and sharp objects. How many of us are instructed about and made aware of the importance of our emotional safety? At the best, children are left alone to fend themselves emotionally. However, more often than not, parents are the one threatening their children’s emotional safety.

There are much more attributes in resulting an emotional wound than physical wound. It is a subjective process rather than a tangible objective process, such as a knife cut my figure. When Eleanor Roosevelt said: "No one can hurt me without my consent", she was talking about emotional wound. However, "my consent" requires certain cognitive capacity, which often our children have not yet fully developed in the early years.

So, children are at much higher risk of being wounded emotionally, especially by their parents. Parents often re-experience the emotional wounds of their childhood but do not know it. Without the clarity of where our emotional reactions to events come from, we tend to think it is our children behavior that makes me feel what we feel and makes us do what we do, even in the name of discipline.

For example, when we like to say to our children: "you made me so mad" . The reality is that we are mad because we are afraid of something in us: losing our control of the situation? not being able fix the problem? being incompetent as a parent in front of other? the thought that the kid would be this way for ever? the thought kids would ruin his/her life?…. Without the clarity on what causes our emotions of anger and fear, we unintentionally inflict our old emotional wounds on our children. As the result, we might put their emotional safety in danger!

As parents, we must pay extra attention to protect my children’s emotional safety as much as their physical safety. We have been taught what physical safety is and we know how to teach and protect our children. But imagine a parent who was emotionally wounded as a child and never knew what emotional safety is, how he or she gives the unbeknown emotional safety to their children? So, as parents, we have lots to do. First, we must grow up, and grow up quickly emotionally!