Understanding Child Development

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Emotional neglect is defined by what did not happen, making it difficult to see or remember.

Small, repeated moments of missed emotional response can shape a child’s sense of self.

Adults often blame themselves because they cannot identify what was missing in childhood.

Making the invisible visible is the first step toward understanding and change.

What didn’t happen for you as a child?

Over 20 years of practicing psychology, I started to see a factor from people’s childhoods that weighs upon them as adults, sapping their joy and causing them to feel disconnected and unfulfilled.

This factor is so subtle that it goes virtually unnoticed by everyone, while it does its silent damage to people’s lives. I call this factor emotional neglect, and it’s the topic of my book, Running on Empty.

Emotional neglect is a parent’s failure to respond enough to a child’s emotional needs. In other words, emotional neglect is something that failed to happen in a person’s childhood.

Why “Nothing” Is So Hard to See

To demonstrate why emotional neglect is so invisible, I’d like to do a little experiment. I’d like to ask you to close your eyes for just a moment. Get comfortable in your chair, and think back to yesterday. I have two things I want to ask you to think of:

First, I’d like you to think of an event that happened yesterday. It can be anything, big or small…just something that happened.

Now, I’d like you to think of something that didn’t happen yesterday.

My guess is that the second request was quite a........

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