How to Help Your Kids Manage Emotions

*This is a collaborative post*

It can be hard to help your kids manage emotions at the best of times. And even harder if your children experience issues such as anxiety and depression, which are increasing at younger ages these days. However, there are some methods you can use to help them deal with it.

Teach Emotional Association

It is vital that your kids learn what emotions are. But this can be a challenge. You can use association to help them describe and recognize what they are feeling. Of course, inpatient depression treatment can help with severe problems and behavioural issues. But it isn’t always necessary. You can use associations so they understand their feelings and the feelings of others. For example, discuss how they think a character on TV feels during emotional scenes.

Help Your Kids Manage Emotions with Expression

When teaching your children about emotions, it is great to make sure they understand that any emotion is okay. And there is no right or wrong emotion. However, the issues lie in having your kids understand how to deal with their emotions. For example, it isn’t okay for them to deal with anger by hurting others. And this is where the issues become complex because you have to deal with the behaviour and not the emotion. Teaching them to respond appropriately is vital.

Be Empathetic Towards Them

Some kids are more emotional than others. But children, by their nature, are emotional as they are learning how to handle life. Therefore, how you react to their emotions plays a critical role in how they learn to manage them, especially for later life and teen years. So if your child becomes upset at the smallest things, try not to blame them for this. Instead, show you accept they are upset while also explaining that you sometimes get upset when things don’t go your way too.

Show You Accept their Issues

It can be hard as a parent to understand the reasons for a child being emotional. But it is a massive help if you can get them through what they are experiencing. One of the best ways is through accepting that they are working through something, even if you aren’t really sure what that is. Some kids are sensitive, and that’s fine. But it can cause major damage to the emotional and social development of a child if you don’t accept that this is a core part of their personality.

Show them How to Control Emotion

Emotional control is the biggest factor in determining how your kids handle things. It can be a challenging subject to get through, even as an adult. But the benefits are pretty big in the grand scheme of their personality development. So, here are some methods you might want to try out:

• Breathing exercises are just as useful for children as they are for adults.
• Try having your child count backwards from 100 when they are overwhelmed.
• Teach your child to remove themselves from a volatile situation or to calm down.
• Having supplies such as craft artwork or favourite toys can help calm a child.
• Work with your child to identify emotional triggers and discuss their reactions.
• Teach your child to do things that boost their mood when they are feeling down.
• Have them focus on something constructive such as a puzzle, to focus their feelings.

There is never too young an age to begin teaching your kids emotional control. From the age of around 3, they will begin to express emotions verbally and physically as they react to their environment. So it helps to teach them about control just before they enter their preschool.

Make Sure to Respond Appropriately

Your actions and response to emotions form a key role in how your child develops theirs. And getting some of these right is one of the hardest yet most crucial things you can do as a parent. So you need to respond appropriately to your child’s emotional actions. Some of the biggest mistakes you can make include giving your kids rewards for calming down, providing them with too much attention when they are acting out, and raising your voice while saying, “Stop crying”. 

Let them Experience Emotional Situations

It doesn’t help your children to remove them from situations where they might feel overcome with emotions. For example, you may not let them see the end of ET for fear of them becoming upset. But they cannot learn how to deal with such strong emotions if they aren’t exposed to them in a healthy way. Instead, allow your kids to experience situations like this. And discuss why they feel the way they do, and teach the necessary actions to overcome a specific emotion.

Help Your Kids Manage Emotions with Experts

Professional help isn’t always necessary. However, there are situations where expert guidance is required. Very young children can have a hard time processing emotions. But they should learn by around 8 or 9. After this, they might need some expert help. It could be the case they are lagging behind. They may also have development issues due to an undiagnosed condition such as autism. Support is needed if their emotions interfere with normal daily life and school.

Stay Aware of Your Own Emotions

Children learn most of their behaviour characteristics from their parents. So, you play a vital role in how your kids handle their emotions. If you have trouble with emotion, you must work on it in order to prevent your kids from dealing with emotions in the wrong way. For example, if you throw things when angry, you can bet your kids will probably do the same. The key thing to do here is to lead by example and be the person you want your kids to be while they are growing.

Summary

Learning to help your kids manage emotions is one of the hardest things you can do as a parent. You can teach them to associate emotions with experiences, try different emotional control methods, and be an example of emotional control so they learn to do it the right way.

Thanks for reading xxx