Indeed, Aristotle would discourage us from shaming ourselves over feeling sad when we “should” feel happy. He rejected “shoulds” altogether when it came to feelings, since he believed them to be natural and, without accompanying wrong action, harmless. All feelings, for Aristotle, are potentially useful in that they provide an opportunity to practice behaving well. Feelings alone can’t jeopardize virtue, he believed, but actions can and often do. Mister Rogers agreed: “Everyone has lots of ways of feeling. And all of those feelings are fine. It’s what we do with our feelings that matter in this life.”

Rogers believed that all children (and adults) get sad, mad, lonely, anxious and frustrated — and he used television to model what to do with these difficult and often strong emotions. He wanted to counter the harmful message kids typically receive, some version of the ever-unhelpful you shouldn’t feel that way.

In one episode, when he couldn’t get a flashlight to work, Mister Rogers expressed frustration in front of the camera: He admitted feeling disappointed at the fact that the trick that he had wanted to show his viewers didn’t work. In doing so, he validated his disappointment and showed his audience that talking about it helps. One of Rogers’ core beliefs was “what’s mentionable is manageable,” and he considered an urgent lesson for kids to learn to name their pain. Rogers believed that if children were encouraged to talk about feelings instead of being shamed for them, they could get to work finding appropriate outlets. One of Rogers’ recurrent lessons was on anger. Inspired by a child who asked him a question about anger, he wrote a song about it:

What do you do with the mad that you feel

When you feel so mad you could bite?

When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong …

And nothing you do seems very right?

This song was Rogers’ way of teaching kids how to be angry, instead of how not to be angry. The first step is for the child to recognize their anger as well as their temptation to bite, hit, kick. The second step the song suggests is to find appropriate outlets for that anger:

What do you do? Do you punch a bag?

Do you pound some clay or some dough?

Do you round up friends for a game of tag?

Or see how fast you go?

Playing the piano as a child, Rogers wrote, taught him to express the whole range of his feelings. He recounts banging on the low keys when he got mad, and I imagine him exploring the minor keys when he felt sad. In multiple episodes, Rogers showed viewers how to tell their feelings through the piano. When he had famous musicians like Yo-Yo Ma or Wynton Marsalis on the program, Rogers would ask whether they played differently when they were sad or angry. They always reported that yes, they did, and that playing their darker emotions helped.

“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” was purportedly a show for children. But I think Rogers also meant it for adults. We’d be better off if we’d stop negating children’s dark emotions with stifling commands like “Don’t cry,” “Calm down,” “Be quiet.” If we are convinced by Rogers’ and Aristotle’s claim that feelings are not wrong and that “what’s mentionable is manageable,” we should begin mentioning our own sad, lonely and disappointed feelings. In doing so, we would show children — and our grown-up selves — how to appropriately manage them.

Mariana Alessandri is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Now in print: “Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments,” and “The Stone Reader: Modern Philosophy in 133 Arguments,” with essays from the series, edited by Peter Catapano and Simon Critchley, published by Liveright Books.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.