Why Teaching Kids to "Be Strong" Might Be Doing More Harm Than Good

And what to teach them instead.

I'm going to say something that might be uncomfortable to hear.

Teaching children to "be strong" — the way most of us were taught — is not helping them. It might actually be hurting them.

I know. This goes against everything we grew up believing. Strength is good. Toughness is valuable. The world is hard, so we need to prepare our kids for it.

But somewhere along the way, "be strong" stopped meaning "you can handle hard things" and started meaning "don't feel."

And that's where the damage begins.

The phrases we all grew up with

Think about what you heard as a child when you were upset:

"Don't cry."

"Be brave."

"Big kids don't get scared."

"You're fine, it's not a big deal."

"Stop being so dramatic."

"Toughen up."

Sound familiar?

These phrases were never meant to harm us. Our parents, teachers, and caregivers were doing their best. Many of them were taught the same things. They believed they were preparing us for a world that wouldn't be gentle with our feelings.

But here's what a child actually hears when we say these things:

Your emotions are a problem.

Your feelings are inconvenient.

You are too much.

Something is wrong with you for feeling this way.

And so they learn very quickly to suppress. To hide. To perform okay-ness even when they're falling apart inside.

What happens when we teach kids to suppress emotions

Children are emotional beings. They feel everything deeply, joy, fear, anger, sadness, excitement, frustration. Their brains are still developing the capacity to regulate these big feelings.

When we tell them to stop feeling, we're not actually teaching them strength. We're teaching them disconnection.

Disconnection from their own inner world.

And this has real consequences that show up later in life.

Adults who learned to suppress emotions as children often:

Can't name what they're feeling. They know something is "off" but can't identify whether it's anxiety, sadness, anger, or exhaustion. They never learned the vocabulary.

Explode over small things. When emotions are suppressed, they don't disappear. They build up. And eventually, they leak out, often in disproportionate reactions to minor triggers.

Struggle in relationships. Intimacy requires emotional vulnerability. If you learned that feelings are weakness, letting someone see your inner world feels terrifying.

Burn out without seeing it coming. When you're disconnected from your body and emotions, you miss the warning signs. You push through until you crash.

Feel a persistent sense of emptiness. Something is missing, but they can't name it. That something is often themselves, the feeling self they abandoned long ago to be "strong."

This isn't weakness. This isn't a character flaw. This is the natural, predictable result of being taught to abandon ourselves at a young age.

The myth of the "strong" person

We admire people who seem unshakeable. Who don't cry. Who handle everything with calm composure. Who never seem to struggle.

But here's what I've learned both through my own journey and through working with people navigating emotional healing:

The most emotionally resilient adults I know are not the ones who learned to suppress.

They're the ones who were allowed to feel.

Fully. Messily. Safely.

They had someone, a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, someone who didn't rush them through their feelings. Who sat with them in the discomfort. Who said, "It's okay to cry. I am here."

These people didn't grow up weak. They grew up with something far more valuable than toughness,

They grew up knowing how to be with themselves.

And that, the ability to feel your feelings without being destroyed by them, is real emotional strength.

What strength actually looks like

We need to redefine what we mean when we tell children to "be strong."

Strength is not the absence of emotion.

Strength is feeling scared and doing it anyway.

Strength is crying and getting back up.

Strength is asking for help and still figuring it out.

Strength is being overwhelmed and finding a way through, not by pretending the overwhelm doesn't exist, but by moving through it honestly.

This is what we should be teaching children.

Not "don't feel."

But "feel it all, and I'm right here with you while you do."

What children actually need from us

When a child is upset, they don't need us to fix it immediately. They don't need us to minimize it. They don't need us to rush them toward "feeling better."

They need us to be present.

Here's what that can sound like:

Instead of "Don't cry" try saying "It's okay to cry. I am here."

Instead of "You're fine" try saying "I can see you're upset. That makes sense."

Instead of "Be brave" try saying "It's okay to be scared. Being scared doesn't mean you can't do it."

Instead of "Stop overreacting" try saying "This feels really big for you right now, doesn't it?"

This isn't coddling. This isn't raising "soft" kids.

This is teaching children that their emotions are valid, that they're not too much, and that they can trust themselves.

A child who learns this doesn't grow up weak. They grow up whole.

The unlearning we have to do as adults

If you're reading this and recognizing yourself, the adult who struggles to feel, who numbs out, who performs okay-ness, I want you to know something.

You're not broken.

You adapted. You survived. You did what you needed to do with the tools you were given.

But you don't have to keep abandoning yourself anymore.

The work of adulthood, for many of us, is unlearning. It's giving ourselves the permission we were never given as children. Permission to feel. Permission to not be okay. Permission to be human.

It's slow work. It's uncomfortable. But it's possible.

And it starts with recognizing that the "strength" we were taught wasn't strength at all.

Breaking the cycle

If you're a parent, you have a choice.

You can pass on what was passed to you, the suppression, the "toughen up," the discomfort with emotions.

Or you can break the cycle.

You can be the person who teaches your child that feelings aren't dangerous. That emotions are information. That they can feel everything and still be okay.

You can give them what maybe you didn't get: the experience of being seen, heard, and accepte, especially in their hardest moments.

This is the education that matters most. And it doesn't happen in classrooms. It happens in the small, everyday moments when a child is struggling and we choose to stay present instead of shutting it down.

A question for you

What's one thing you were told as a child that you're trying not to pass on?

I'll share mine: I was told "don't be so sensitive" more times than I can count. For years, I believed my feelings were the problem. It took me a long time to unlearn that. Sensitivity isn't weakness. It's information.

I'd love to hear yours.