Years ago, I asked my husband a question I’d read in a magazine somewhere: would you rather be loved or understood? “Loved,” he answered right away. “Everyone would choose loved because it’s a basic human need to be loved.”
I didn’t challenge him on that. I was suddenly questioning my grasp on basic human needs because, honestly, I would have chosen to be understood.
Flash forward an unspecified number of years. I’m walking through my neighborhood, earbuds in, battling the same ten pounds I’ve battled for those same unspecified number of years, when I’m hit by a thunderbolt of unexpected validation. Ha! The guest on the Hidden Brain podcast I was listening to, Harry Reis, a psychologist at the University of Rochester who studies interpersonal relationships, intimacy and attachment, told me that I was right.
Well, kinda.
Research Shows that We All Have a Deep Need to be Understood
Reis explained that his research shows understanding is one of the most important things we need in life, especially in our closest relationships. Real understanding. We all have a deep drive to be seen and known, to be validated and accepted, for who we actually are. He said love, trust, caring – they just don’t land if they don’t swell from a place of understanding.
But Reis expanded this need for understanding beyond what I had intuited. It’s important to be understood, he found, but it’s even more important to feel understood. We’re understood when another person really gets us. But feeling understood is different. It’s entirely within the mind of the perceiver. It’s the belief that another person gets us, our likes and preferences, our personality and character traits, our feelings and needs.
But We Have an Even Deeper Need to Feel Understood
It’s a consequential distinction. Reis’s research showed that feeling understood is a better predictor of strong, connected, happy relationships than actually being understood. People who feel understood also feel more confident, safe, and happy in their relationship. Feeling understood makes it easier to connect. It frees us from constant self-monitoring – lest our “true selves” creep out – and gives us permission to actually be our “true selves” without fear of rejection. This is especially important in families. Reis says that children who feel seen for who they actually are, are much more likely to have loving, stable, connected relationships with their parents.
It’s an excellent podcast. If you find yourself with forty-nine minutes on your hands, I absolutely recommend you listen to it, just for understanding-people-better purposes. For myself, though, I was prompted to think about how Reis’s research impacts raising kids.
We Need Not Only our Feelings, but Our Selves to be Known
When I was coming up as a mom, all the talk was of teaching kids empathy. Showing them that we cared about and understood their feelings. Helping them to understand and care about other people’s feelings. That kind of thing. As I understand it, at least, empathy has a lot to do with feelings.
Now, I’m a huge fan of empathy. I think modeling it and offering it and teaching it are absolutely critical to raising loving, self-aware, good human beings. But I think Reis is getting at something bigger here, and it’s something that I’ve noticed with my own kids: kids really feel seen when we can honestly and accurately connect with and reflect back to them, not just their feelings, but also their own unique personality and character traits.
A significant job of childhood is developing a sense of self. This is big doings when you’re growing and changing as quickly as kids do. We can help by showing them that we’re excited to engage in this whole “who am I” question with them and by giving them the language to answer it.
Active Listening is the Key to Helping our Kids Feel Heard
I made a habit out of doing this with my kids. Maybe it’s because that “being understood” thing is huge with me. When I would notice something about them, especially if it was a pattern, I would often ask questions to see what about it, at least at that point in time, resonated with their sense of self.
“I notice that you don’t really like playdates after school. Is that because you like a little quiet time at the end of the day or because there’s something you want to do at home?”
“You don’t seem excited about Jamie’s party. Is that because Anna wasn’t invited?”
“Why did you ask to meet with Mrs. Dogood after class? Was it because you misunderstood what she was teaching or because you wanted to learn more?”
“Why do you seem so much happier playing soccer than you were playing T-ball?”
Then I would listen to their answers. The listening is everything. This is something the research not only backs up but emphasizes. We need to make it clear and obvious to our kids that we are, in fact, listening. Even if we think we know the answers. Even if we’re sure we know the answers. It’s the act of listening itself that makes our kids feel heard and understood.
One way to show your child that your listening is to ask relevant questions about what they’re saying. Another is to repeat back to them what you’ve heard them say to make sure you got it right. But do your level best to get it right. If you praise your daughter to the moon for her courage in trying out for the school play, only to hear her respond, “Are you kidding? I was born for the stage!” you’ve actually made her feel less understood than if you’d just kept your mouth shut and bought serial adds in the playbook.
And as to knowing your kids’ answers, don’t be so sure on that one either. Kids grow and change and develop so quickly that what was true of them yesterday literally might not be today. We can easily see their preferences change – from baby dolls and blankies and chicken nuggets to iPhones and TicToks and . . . chicken nuggets. But it’s more subtle when their skills and needs change – from needing us to manage a difficult situation for them to wanting us to listen while they talk through a difficult situation.
Reflecting Back to Them What We’re Hearing Helps Them to Understand Themselves More Deeply
So listen to your child’s answers. For me, I would often reflect back to them what I had heard, but in terms of a character or personality trait. It wasn’t about labels – I usually try to dance lightly with labels – it was about language.
“I’m glad that you realize that quiet time is important to you. That’s very self-aware.”
“So Anna was the only one not invited to the party and you want to be loyal to your friend?”
“It makes me so proud to see you chase your curiosity. Do you want to head to the library this weekend to see if we can learn more?”
“It sounds like T-ball was just too slow for you. You need a more action-packed sport.”
If you adopt this practice early, I think you’ll be glad you did. You’ll be giving your children a lot of nuanced words that they can use to help understand themselves in a lot of nuanced ways. You’ll be showing them that you’re open and able to talk about the big question of who they are, and that you understand and accept the fact that they – like all of us – change.
It Also Helps Us to Understand our Kids More Deeply
This is going to come in super helpful when your confident little cherubs evolve into teens, questions of “WHO AM I?” thundering through their heads and high school hallways like so many storms of self-doubt. A history of feeling understood can be a life raft in these tempests. Reis’s research shows that conflicts – even unresolved conflicts, and you’ll likely have a few of those through the teen years – are less damaging to relationships when the parties feel understood. Plus, once people have a sense that they’ve been truly heard, they respond with more openness, more willingness to consider other points of view. That’s definitely something you’ll need from the late tweens until, like, forever.
It’s a completely false dichotomy, of course, this choice between feeling loved and understood. But, with my sincerest apologies to John Lennon, love clearly isn’t all you need. It’s not all our kids need, either. So I hope you’ll give some thought to how you can make your kids feel more understood. I hope some of my suggestions and experiences are useful to you. But if you don’t, or they’re not, no worries.
I completely understand.