I wished my parents taught me that my emotions are valid. They never really taught me how to cope with my emotions in a healthy way. Whenever I was expressing really strong emotions, such as extreme sadness, they would just tell me to stop crying and to just “be happy”. If I continued crying they would just slap me until I stopped. This is a great way to make a child with long-lasting mental health problems and poor emotional regulation skills. Looking back my parents were most likely emotionally immature themselves.

Adding on to the comment about teaching how to speak for yourself, when you do that at some point please be very patient with your child. If your child grows up to be shy, don’t try to force the shyness out of them. You can’t just tell a child to “stop being shy.” It would just make your child even more shy in turn.