What to Do When Your Young Child Tells You That Something Upsetting Happened (with Jenny Hughes)
What to Do When Your Young Child Tells You That Something Upsetting Happened (with Jenny Hughes)
Few moments in parenting are more unsettling than hearing your child say:
"Someone hit me."
"Something bad happened today."
"I'm scared."
In an instant, your heart starts racing. Your mind jumps to the worst-case scenario, and you want answers immediately.
But in those first few moments, your response matters more than your investigation.
How you react can determine whether your child continues to trust you with difficult conversations in the future.
In this episode of The Educated Parent Podcast, I sat down with child psychologist and trauma specialist Jenny Hughes to discuss exactly what parents should do when a young child shares something upsetting. Together, we explored how to validate feelings, improve communication with children, and use positive parenting techniques that help children feel safe enough to keep talking.
Why These Moments Feel So Scary
Children tell us about their day in pieces.
Sometimes they excitedly share stories about playing with friends.
Other times they casually mention something that completely catches us off guard.
Maybe another child hit them.
Maybe someone was mean to them.
Maybe they describe something that sounds much more serious.
As parents, we don't immediately know which category we're dealing with.
Is this a playground disagreement?
An accident?
Or something that requires immediate action?
That uncertainty is incredibly stressful.
Step One: Validate First
One of the biggest takeaways from this conversation with Jenny Hughes is that your first job isn't solving the problem.
It's helping your child feel heard.
That can be as simple as saying:
"Oh my goodness, that sounds really upsetting."
Or:
"I'm so glad you told me."
Notice that neither statement assumes exactly what happened.
Instead, they acknowledge your child's emotional experience.
Learning how to validate feelings doesn't require knowing every detail.
It simply means communicating:
"I believe that this felt important to you."
That validation creates emotional safety.
Attention Is Really a Request for Connection
Jenny shared a perspective that many parents find incredibly helpful.
Instead of thinking:
"My child just wants attention."
Replace the word attention with connection.
Children seek connection because relationships help them feel safe.
Sometimes that need becomes even stronger if they're competing with a sibling or processing a difficult experience.
When we shift our perspective, our response naturally becomes calmer and more compassionate.
This simple mindset shift can dramatically improve communication with children during emotional moments.
Step Two: Gather More Information
After validating your child, it's okay to ask questions.
The key is asking the right kind.
Instead of asking:
"Did he hit you on purpose?"
"Were you crying?"
"Did your teacher see?"
Try open-ended questions like:
"Can you tell me what happened?"
"What happened next?"
"Then what happened?"
These questions allow children to explain events in their own words.
This approach is especially important with young children because their memories and storytelling skills are still developing.
One of the best positive parenting techniques is resisting the urge to fill in the blanks for them.
Avoid Leading Questions
As adults, we naturally want a complete, logical story.
Young children rarely tell stories that way.
If we begin suggesting details, children may unintentionally incorporate those suggestions into their own version of events.
That doesn't mean they're lying.
They're simply trying to answer our questions.
This is why trauma specialists like Jenny Hughes recommend staying with open-ended questions instead of trying to investigate every detail immediately.
Your goal isn't to become a detective.
Your goal is to understand your child's experience.
Step Three: Pause Before Making a Plan
Sometimes parents feel pressure to solve everything immediately.
But that's not always necessary.
If you're driving...
Getting siblings into the house...
Or simply feeling overwhelmed...
It's okay to pause.
You might say:
"I'm so glad you told me. Let's talk more about this when we get home."
Taking a few minutes to regulate your own emotions often leads to much better conversations.
This is one of the most overlooked positive parenting techniques because parents often feel they need immediate answers.
In reality, slowing down usually helps everyone.
What If Your Child's Story Changes?
This is where many parents become confused.
Young children often tell stories that change as they continue talking.
Sometimes details get added.
Sometimes details disappear.
Sometimes they misunderstand another child's intentions.
That doesn't automatically mean your child is lying.
Young children are still learning how to organize experiences into complete narratives.
Their goal usually isn't deception.
They're trying to make sense of what happened.
Don't Punish Your Child for Opening Up
One of the biggest mistakes parents can make is reacting harshly if they later realize the story wasn't completely accurate.
Remember:
The goal is to raise children who continue talking to you.
If children learn that sharing difficult experiences leads to punishment or disbelief, they become much less likely to come to you when something truly serious happens.
That's why how to validate feelings remains important even when every detail isn't perfectly clear.
Sometimes It Really Is Serious
Of course, there are situations where children are reporting something that genuinely requires adult intervention.
If your child consistently reports that another child is hurting them...
If they describe inappropriate behavior...
Or if your instincts tell you something isn't right...
Take those concerns seriously.
Validation doesn't mean assuming every detail is factual.
It means creating enough emotional safety that your child continues sharing information while you calmly gather what you need to make an informed decision.
Building Trust Through Communication
One of the greatest gifts we can give our children is becoming a safe person to talk to.
That doesn't happen because we always have the perfect response.
It happens because our children learn that we'll listen.
We'll stay calm.
We'll help them figure out what to do next.
That kind of communication with children strengthens trust far beyond the individual conversation.
Final Thoughts
Your child won't always tell stories perfectly.
They'll leave out details.
They'll mix up timelines.
Sometimes they'll exaggerate.
Sometimes they'll minimize.
That's part of childhood.
When your child shares something upsetting, remember these three steps from Jenny Hughes :
Validate their feelings.
Gather more information with open-ended questions.
Pause before deciding what to do next.
These simple positive parenting techniques help children feel safe, strengthen communication with children, and teach them that they can always come to you when something difficult happens.
Because at the end of the day, the goal isn't raising children who tell perfect stories.
It's raising children who trust you enough to tell them at all.
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CONNECT WITH JENNY HUGHES:
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[00:00:00] Leah: Welcome to The Educated Parent Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Leah Clionsky, and today we're gonna talk about a topic that will come up for us as parents, and that's when our little kids tell us that something bad happened to them. We don't know if it's a big, terrible thing. We don't know if it's a small thing that they just need to be heard on.
[00:00:20] Leah: But that moment when that happens to you as a parent, your stomach just drops, and so we're going to help you navigate that conversation today. And that's why I brought on the amazing Dr. Jenny Hughes. She is a child psychologist and infant mental health specialist, and she specializes in treating trauma and PTSD.
[00:00:41] Leah: As a clinician, she practices brainspotting, EMDR, and cognitive processing therapy, and she's the author of The PTSD Recovery Workbook and Triggers to Glimmers: A Vicarious Resilience Journal. So I'm so glad to have you on the podcast. I'm so excited to hear all of your thoughts on this, Jenny.
[00:00:58] Jenny: Thank you so much for having me. This is such an important topic. It happens seriously all the time to any parent. And when we're thinking about our littles, maybe even more
[00:01:08] Leah: Yeah. Oh, yeah, because they're hopefully talking to us or communicating to us about how they're doing, and that means that they're going to tell us about the times they're happy, and they're gonna tell us about the times they're upset. And then because of where they are with, in terms of communication, you don't always know going into the conversation, are they about to reveal something very problematic, right?
[00:01:31] Leah: Something that I'm going to have to report to somebody, or are they just talking about like, an altercation they had with a friend? Which is still important to them, but not at the same level. It's tough
[00:01:41] Jenny: I can even get us started with an example that happened, I think it was just last week.
[00:01:45] Leah: No, I was just gonna ask you the ages of your kids again so the audience knows
[00:01:49] Jenny: my son is two and a half, and my daughter is five, going on five and a half. And they both go to the same preschool. And so I pick them up and drop them off together. And it was a week or two ago during pickup from aftercare, there's always lots of energy and excitement, and the kids are both, they're drained, but then they have that like, adrenaline zoomies at the end of the day.
[00:02:14] Jenny: And my son has really started to put sentences together as a two-and-a-half-year-old, and so he really is enjoying experimenting with that. my daughter is super talkative, but they can start to amp each other up, right? I pick them up that day, and I guess at aftercare they were playing send you to jail.
[00:02:34] Jenny: They were playing cops and whatever. Because we get into the car, and my son is talking about how he put his friend in jail, and he kept talking about, "I put my friend in jail." And it was, I could tell that was just a game that they were playing at aftercare. then my daughter, he's excited about that.
[00:02:50] Jenny: She's wanting to be a part of the conversation and the relationship that's happening, all in the backseat, right? I can't see them except for my son in the mirror. And she tells me that not only did this kid get put into jail by my son, Bodhi but that he punched her in the face.
[00:03:09] Leah: Oh, wow
[00:03:10] Jenny: I had to pause, right?
[00:03:12] Jenny: And for me, as a parent first, and then a child psychologist later I kind of went through my head of "Wait, what? This kid hit you?" Because he is, he's not the hitter in the class. And so that had to go through my mind while also everyone is still chattering and going off, and I'm driving, and I have to be a mom and figure out what's going on.
[00:03:35] Jenny: And so that's the conundrum that I found myself in.
[00:03:39] Leah: That's so hard because your mom instincts are all over the place. You're like, "How dare someone hit my child in the face?" And then you're thinking did that actually happen?" And you don't want to not be there and validate your child's actual experience. Yeah. And then there's also the panic feeling, right?
[00:03:57] Leah: That doesn't happen when you're being a clinician. Like, when you're a clinician, you're in there, you're prepared for people to tell you things like that. But when you're driving home, and all your guards are down, it's a different sort of situation
[00:04:08] Jenny: And I also had this information of like, this kid that she's talking about is so sweet. And so I was skeptical. I was doubting of my daughter. And so I also didn't wanna call her a liar, but I was like, "Okay, how do I deal with this in terms of mama bear, but also the information that I know about this kid?"
[00:04:28] Jenny: And them both amping each other up and wanting attention and interaction at the same time in that moment
[00:04:34] Leah: Imagine if a child psychologist had been there to help you out
[00:04:37] Jenny: I know. What would she have said? So should we tell everyone what I did or...?
[00:04:46] Leah: Yeah. I think that would be great, but I also can... if you are a child psychologist and this happens and you get freaked out, I can so imagine the experience of a not child psychologist in this moment, because this happens to every single parent where our kids tell us they're upset.
[00:05:03] Leah: So yeah what, what did you do, Jenny? How did you handle it?
[00:05:06] Jenny: So this is gonna line up with the, the three takeaways that I want everyone listening to, to really feel and hear in their brains and bodies. So the first thing I did was for me personally, this is pre-step A, is I was like, "Okay, Jenny, just slow down and stop."
[00:05:23] Jenny: Then first step with my daughter is I validated.
[00:05:27] Jenny: I was like, "Oh my gosh, that sounds awful." I didn't know if it was true or not. I had all these things going back in my h- back and forth in my head. But she was telling me this for a reason. She was really reaching out for connection. Something that I really like to reframe for parents, a lot of times it feels like our kids are just coming at us 'cause they want attention, and then that can feel really annoying.
[00:05:49] Jenny: Replace attention for connection and just notice how it feels when you talk about your kids and when they're asking for you. And so I had to do that myself and say, "She's needing connection for whatever reason." "Oh my gosh, Bridget, that's awful." just validating. I don't remember exactly what I said next.
[00:06:04] Jenny: It may have just been, "Oh my gosh, Bridget, that's awful." Then I needed more information, so that's step two, gather more data. And not in a, I have to investigate this and uncover all the facts and know the exact truth, but I needed more information. So how did this happen? Were the teachers there, right?
[00:06:23] Jenny: What happened next? And she's five and a half. She's highly verbal. But I could also tell that she was fighting for that connection that her brother was taking as well. And so as she started to share some of the details, things weren't quite lining up, and so my activation in my body, my anxiety and concern started to calm down.
[00:06:45] Jenny: And then I wanted to wait until we were home for step three, which is to talk more about it and figure out a plan or next steps, if anything, because we were driving. It was important for me to validate what she was sharing with me, and to get some information then and there while it was fresh, because we all know with our young kids, everything changes within two seconds.
[00:07:09] Jenny: But then to hit the pause button so that when we got home, I could carve out some time specifically with her just to talk about it, because I could tell that what she was sharing was not accurate. I, it wasn't... I also could tell that she wasn't lying. She wasn't trying to be manipulative. She was looking for connection in this moment where she was competing with her brother for it.
[00:07:31] Jenny: And so we were able to carve that time out when we got home, and it was just she and I.
[00:07:36] Leah: Yeah, I think it's so hard to hit the pause sometimes 'cause your adrenaline rushes. And it is always better if you realize that you are not in a place to have a conversation to wait. It is always better because you don't wanna react out of your emotion and panic in the moment. And I can see what you're saying too about the kids, like, competing for attention.
[00:07:59] Leah: And my thought always about attention is that everybody needs attention. It's a biological need. Healthy children want your focus because the children who get the focus survive. Attention is good, and so it makes sense that kids want it any way they can get it. It doesn't mean that they're bad, manipulative.
[00:08:19] Leah: I have my fingers making quotation marks as I say that because I hate that reframing of children. But they're trying to be seen, and so sometimes they're more likely to make a big comment like that in front of a sibling when they're competing, trying to get you to react to them. And then later on when you talk to them about it, they're like, it didn't quite happen that way.
[00:08:39] Leah: But sometimes they're right. Sometimes they are talking about something that really did happen, and sometimes it's serious. Sometimes it's very serious, and you never
[00:08:49] Leah: really
[00:08:49] Jenny: this week, later on, a week or so later, it was maybe yesterday or the day before, she told me that another kid hit her at school, and it was the kid who hits everyone at school . And so I was like, "Okay, that's probably pretty legit." And so a- again, it happened in the car.
[00:09:06] Jenny: I feel like those drive homes from school and pickups, so much happens on so many different levels . But of course a lot comes out right then. And so it was, again, going through those steps of, acknowledging and validating, collecting that information, hearing what she wanted to share, and then again, we talked about it separately when we got home, because these were two different pathways and outcomes
[00:09:29] Leah: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. For me, these revelations always come at bedtime. Like, when I'm, like, one-on-one if I'm putting my son to bed, my son's the four-year-old, and he'll just... We- He- My husband's "You have a deep conversation with him every night." It's true, like very deep. Like, why do people die? Deep conversations.
[00:09:52] Leah: But if something is on his mind and bothering him, that is the moment where I'm gonna hear about it. And sometimes it's, a small conflict with a friend, but a couple of times it's been situations where I actually had to take some very real protective action. And that's why you don't wanna be dismissive, but you also don't wanna be overly reactive.
[00:10:13] Leah: You're trying to find your balance of, "I'm gonna really listen to this w- as much as I can, and also I'm going to take it with a grain of salt until I get some more information."
[00:10:25] Jenny: And lean into, as the parent, whatever it is that you know works to help you regulate, right? And so for me, a lot of that starts in my brain where I literally, like I said, I have to tell myself to pause, to hit the pause button because I can feel everything welling up in my body. And when I can tell myself to hit the pause button, whether that is I take a breath or I take a sip of water, or I orient and check something else out in my environment, even just a couple seconds can make a big difference.
[00:10:59] Jenny: And often it's only a couple seconds that we have in these interactions with our young kids. And so think about what already works for you to regulate and start doing that even more so that you can show up in moments like this or any other time that you're activated and your kid needs you.
[00:11:16] Leah: I think another point that it's important to make to the, to our audience right now as well is that little kids are also very suggestible. And so if you ask a lot of questions and you lead them down a path, they may follow you even if it's not true. So if you said to your daughter something like, "Oh, Charlie hit you.
[00:11:40] Leah: Did he hit you with a fist? And then did your teacher see it? And then did you cry?" And then, and like she might be like, "Yep, that's exactly what happened." And then she might then tell that story in those, in that way. And so there's this part where you're trying to get information, but you're not trying to suggest a logical adult pathway onto it because what you don't want your kid to do is believe that something terrible happened to them that actually never happened, but you just suggested it a lot.
[00:12:10] Leah: And there's some pretty scary research I think it was from like the '80s, about how you can suggest to a child very strongly that they were abused. And if you suggest it enough, kids will report they were and nothing happened to them. So I'm just putting that in with a grain of salt that talking to your child about something like this is more about open-ended questions and being okay if it never logically lines up than like trying to get them to lay out a clear framework for you because you don't want, you don't wanna make accusations against things that aren't real, and also you don't want your child to believe that something bad happened that did not happen to them
[00:12:52] Jenny: Absolutely. I'm so glad that you're sharing all of that. And it can be hard to ask open-ended questions in those moments, and so sometimes it's just as simple as having in your back pocket, "What happened?
[00:13:06] Jenny: Tell me what happened." And just asking that same question in multiple different ways. What happened next?
[00:13:12] Jenny: It's okay. Your kid is young. It's okay for you to be repeating yourself and be redundant as long as you're asking those open-ended questions. And I love what you're saying, too. We're not the investigator. We don't have to know everything that happened and have a conclusion. We don't need a logical explanation.
[00:13:28] Jenny: They don't need a logical explanation. We want one. But in these moments, asking them the open-ended questions, then we have the data that we can start to weigh ourselves with our grown, fully grown neo-cortexes to decide what to do next.
[00:13:43] Leah: Yeah. It's like we want our kids to present things in this detailed, s- multiple step way that follows a clear storyline, and that's not how kids process information, and it's not how they report information back to you. It's not how they're gonna talk to you about the thing that happened to them.
[00:14:03] Leah: Yeah. Yeah, what did you end up having to do about the child who hit your daughter when you confirmed that was accurate? What did you end up saying to her or talking to her about?
[00:14:14] Jenny: So with that one, the, we agreed that we were gonna talk to the teachers the next day at school. This is a situation where a lot of things have happened with this other kid with both of my kids and other kids at the school. And it, the school has been very responsive to it, and so I wasn't super activated or upset and feeling like they weren't going to protect my children.
[00:14:39] Jenny: And it was important for my daughter and I to talk about, "Hey, this is how we share this with the adults that are here to sup- to pr- protect you and keep you safe." And she wasn't part of the conversation when I talked to her teachers about it. That wasn't necessary, but she knew that I was gonna talk to them about it.
[00:14:56] Jenny: And that's important too, because when something stressful or scary happens to us, and especially to kids, even if it's, their friend pushed them on the playground and it was an accident if we don't believe them, if we don't give them that validation and understanding, that's when it can turn into a lot more stress and anxiety and even PTSD if it's a big thing.
[00:15:20] Jenny: Not being believed is such a risk factor for things getting worse for that kid over time. And so again, that's why the first step is to just validate, "Oh my gosh, that was awful," even if you don't know it happened or not. Then you gather the information, gather the data, and then you can make the plan and figure out what you're gonna do about it
[00:15:41] Leah: It's the worst thing you could do at a point like that is say, "I don't think so. That kid never hits anyone."
[00:15:46] Leah: Just starting off with that as your statement, because what if it did happen?
[00:15:52] Jenny: Right
[00:15:52] Leah: Every-- s- kids have bad days. Any child is
[00:15:55] Jenny: Even the sweetest kid
[00:15:56] Leah: even the sweetest kid, every kid is capable of losing their temper and getting dysregulated and hitting a friend.
[00:16:03] Leah: Or I've had times where one of my kids has told me that they were hit, and then they afterwards explain that it was actually an accident. But it's hard to think about intention when you're little, and the amount of anger that you feel can be the same. Like I've watched one of my kids hit the other kid before and say, "It was an accident," and it was not.
[00:16:26] Leah: I saw it. And I've seen the exact opposite happen, where one of them has hurt the other one, and it truly was an accident, and they're saying, "You did it to me on purpose." And I'm watching, and I can tell that it was absolutely an accident. So that intentionality can be hard for kids to judge. So-- And I know my son ended up with a little hurt lip yesterday because he bumped his face on his friend's head playing a game.
[00:16:54] Leah: But he was furious with the friend, even though he knew that it, he knew that was an accident, but it still made him, as he said, super mad. It's tough. It's really tough. It's tough for adults, so it's definitely tough for littles.
[00:17:06] Jenny: Agreed
[00:17:07] Leah: Yeah. Any other last thoughts about this, Jenny? Any other big dos or don'ts in a situation like this?
[00:17:16] Jenny: The main thing for me is to give people permission to be imperfect. You're not gonna get this right every single time. We do not require parents to be perfect in order to be really amazing and great and good enough parents. So take this and see what lands for you, start to practice it, mess it up, and then learn from what went right and what went wrong so you can turn it into something that really works for you, for your family to be able to be present for your kids when they need you, to do your best to gather information from young kids or even older kids, and to have the information that you need to make an informed plan about next steps
[00:17:58] Leah: And don't punish your child if you find out that their story was not accurate in the way that you think of accuracy, because they cannot think that way at a young age. Embellishing details is normal, and what you do not wanna do is teach your child to not talk to you. I would rather my kids tell me things that end up not matching how an adult would view them at all than have my kids be afraid to talk to me, because the-- what you're really trying to teach is in an actual emergency, you want your kid to talk to you.
[00:18:29] Leah: You always want your kid to be able to talk to you if there's a safety concern. So you can, if they've embellished, it sounds like as maybe that situation happened with your daughter, you can have a conversation about what would happen if you'd acted on it and it hadn't been true.
[00:18:45] Leah: A teaching moment because I don't think kids think about those consequences. I've s- I've said things to my kids before "If this is completely exactly what happened, then I'm going to have to take these steps." And then maybe that's not exactly what happened." But you don't wanna scare them and make them afraid that they can't tell you the r- the reality of their experiences.
[00:19:07] Jenny: And that's a great way to start to, to help you as a parent figure out all these illogical things and put them together in a little bit of logic. Again, not as an investigator, but so that you can make that informed decision about what you have to do. So it's being transparent, telling your kid if this is how it happened then these are our options.
[00:19:26] Jenny: This is what I'm gonna have to do or what we will have to do." And n- again, like you're saying, not in an accusatory or in a way that makes them be punished, but just so that they know, like you said, what the consequences are.
[00:19:38] Leah: 'Cause they don't understand. Like a child telling you, "This happened to me," does not understand how you will interpret it and then what you might have to do with that information. And sometimes you might have to do something very serious depending upon the information given, though they don't know that when they're telling you.
[00:19:56] Leah: No. Jennie, I'm so glad that you came on to talk about this. Tell everyone how they can find you
[00:20:03] Jenny: You can learn all about me and my work at my website braveproviders.com. In addition to being a trauma specialist, I do a lot of support in helping and supporting other therapists, and so you can learn all about that and me and my work at braveproviders.com
[00:20:20] Leah: Yeah it's such an amazing resource. It really helps therapists who hear all these terrible stories all day long, have resilience and coping skills and not feel alone with secondary trauma. I'm so glad that you offer that, Jenny. Yeah. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for listening to Educated Parent.
[00:20:38] Leah: I'll be here next week, and I hope you have a wonderful week.