Inside Out has done an amazing job making talking about emotions an easy thing for parents. It is a great guide and way to bring things up! As I have navigated talking about emotions there are five emotions that I feel parents need to talk about with their kids. It's back to school time so emotions can be running high.
When school started this year my child’s teacher told the class that they had earned “double outdoor recess” at the end of the week as a reward for all the kind and helpful recent classroom behavior and great start for the year. Wonderful, right? My child was ecstatic, counting down the days until “double outdoor recess day". Except that when that day rolled around, it was raining and thundering. That was the end of “double outdoor recess.”
In an instant, my kiddo was flooded with shock, surprise, disappointment, and frustration at the change in plans. Some kiddos can just roll with changes on the fly…others not so much. My kiddo spent the afternoon trying to process the internal tornado of feelings as the teacher rolled on with the activities of the day.
The truth is, we won’t always be there to help our kiddos every time big feelings pop up, or manage their reactive behaviors. What happens when disappointment, frustration, loneliness, jealousy, or embarrassment pop up in school, during a playdate, on the soccer field, or in dance class?
Teaching our children to identify the basic emotions puts them in the driver's seat of their reaction - whether we are there to coach them through it or not.
Where are they feeling it in their body?
How do they know what type of emotion it is?
Which simple strategies can they use next?
Here are my top 5 emotions that every parent needs to talk about with their child.
1. Believe it or not, “happiness” is useful to identify
We may think that managing our emotions only means managing the difficult or negative emotions, but really it’s recognizing all the emotions. With new language and awareness, kiddos can understand what makes them feel good…and what makes them feel bad and why.
Happiness can come in many forms - including joy, amusement, contentment, and pride so teaching how happy feels and looks is the place to start! Using physical cues like smiles and laughter can help your child identify when they feel happy. For example, asking “do you smile when you are at dance class?” can help you and your child understand what situations make your child feel happy or content.
2. “Sadness” is often elusive
Sadness is a deeply felt emotion that is often hard to put labels on. Feeling sad over the loss of a pet might be obvious, but feeling lonely at lunch or embarrassed over a mistake in front of peers may make our kiddos feel bad but they don’t know why.
Talking about sadness helps children later when they are trying to identify loneliness, disappointment, emotionally hurt or embarrassment. Learning about sadness first helps them have accurate words to communicate to you, their teacher, or even understanding it for themselves.
3. “Anger” is probably the most outwardly expressed emotion
A parent can usually read the internal emotions of their child by their facial expressions, body language, or behavior. But when a child (or anyone) is full of anger, there is usually no mistaking it. Teaching about anger ahead of time really helps for situations when it’s a little more nuanced, like envy, jealousy, or frustration.
Anger has a way of manifesting itself through behavior - I’m sure you’ve seen it all. Foot stomping, yelling, hitting… just to name a few. What if they could catch the emotion of anger before the behavior shows?
Unfortunately, behavior rooted in anger is often problematic in the home and in social settings. For example, your child might become disruptive in the school setting or hurt other people physically or emotionally.
Once the anger has subsided, it can be helpful to help the child identify where in their body they felt the anger. In their chests? In their fists? How can we recognize the anger in our bodies before the anger makes us act out?
Help them identify where the anger, frustration, or jealousy begin to grow inside their body - and then give them strategies to manage it once they have realized it.
4. Fear is an emotion that we often avoid talking about
Everyone experiences fear in one way shape or form. It’s one of the strongest instinctual emotions - and for good reason, it helped keep our ancestors alive long enough to keep the species going. We haven’t outgrown our primal fear response, which means it still lives strong in our emotions no matter what our age.
The irony is that many parents are afraid of talking about fear with their kiddos! Maybe this is a difficult topic because many of us weren’t taught how to manage it ourselves.
Teaching our kiddos where they feel fear in their bodies or how they know they are afraid helps them understand the instinct. Then you can work with them on what to do when they feel afraid.
5. Surprise is an often overlooked emotion for young children
Wy Surprise? Well it's a critical emotion to manage, because it often leads to anxiety, fear, and disappointment. For many kiddos, when things don’t go as expected, it can be a difficult adjustment. This is especially true for those who struggle with transitions in general.
Helping them understand how surprise and shock feel inside their body can help them ground themselves before reorienting to a new situation. It also helps them learn to handle disappointment which is a very hard concept for kiddos to grasp.
It’s not always easy talking about emotions with our kiddos. Believe me, I get it. It’s taken me years a long time to gather the right tools to help children locate the feelings within their body and give them labels. Once they understand these 5 emotions, it builds the foundation for understanding the big (and often scary) feelings inside of them, then we can teach them coping strategies to manage them any time they pop up.
Does your child have a hard time identifying big feelings? What have you noticed? I’d love to hear from you. Email me at krista@tranquillittleone.com and share more!
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