Child psychologist's warning about the 'worst things' parents say to their kids

A child psychologist has shared his top tips and outlined the 'worst' phrases parents can say to their child. Child psychologist Professor Sam Wass is an expert in child stress and attention and has given some key insights in an exclusive for The Mirror.

Proff Wass may be familiar to many as he has previously appeared on the Channel 4 show The Secret Life of 4 and 5 Year Olds. The absolute worst thing a parent can do is to try and tell their child not to feel their emotions, be it, sadness, anger, or something else entirely, as this would be a big mistake.

Speaking in partnership with Virgin Media O2's Connected Playground, he said: "Inhibiting emotions doesn't work, it doesn't work for adults and it definitely doesn't work on a child, you can't just tell someone to cancel an emotion.

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"So for example in September you always see all these parents marching their children to their first day of school, dragging them by the hand and their child is in floods of tears and the parent is walking along and saying in a really cheerful voice 'it's going to be fine, you're going to have a lovely time, don't be scared'. And that is exactly what not to do as it just doesn't work."

He said that instead of telling them what not to feel, you should try and explain to your child what their emotions are.

"What we think does work is just describing what a child might be feeling, we call this building metacognitive awareness and it's the awareness of the inner child and what they are feeling," Professor Wass explained. "It's something we never teach children in schools but it's something we have to learn.

"Children aren't aware of what