Feelings 101: Allow your children to be emotionally vulnerable
Teaching your child healthy, constructive ways to deal with his or her feelings becomes increasingly crucial as your child grows older.
Helping children traverse the tangled web of their own feelings can be a challenge. It is during these formative years that the habits they develop will have a lasting impact on how they handle their emotions.
The following suggestions may assist you in encouraging your child to express his thoughts and emotions:
Be a good role model and express your own feelings openly
If you routinely bottle up your own emotions and return any questions regarding your emotional state with a terse assertion that you’re “fine”, you can’t expect your child to be open and forthcoming with his feelings. Remember, kids model what they see and take their cues from the adults around them. If you want your child to express his feelings readily, you have to be prepared to do the same.
Remember that your child’s feelings are important
When your child is disappointed because he didn’t get the role in the school play he wanted or was picked last for the team, your knee-jerk reaction may be to calm him with words like “it’s only a school play” or “sports aren’t that important”. While you may be genuinely trying to help him feel better, your child hears that his feelings aren’t important, or that he’s overreacting. Don’t minimise his feelings when he brings them to you. Instead, try to show empathy and listen to what he’s saying.
Create an environment in which your child feels safe
Your child isn’t likely to share his feelings with the rest of the world if he doesn’t feel safe sharing them in his own home. Make sure that your child knows it’s always okay to talk about his feelings, even if they’re angry or frustrated feelings.
Help your child process emotions in a healthy way
Emotions can be scary and confusing things for adults, so it’s no wonder that children find themselves overwhelmed by what they’re feeling from time to time. In order to share his feelings, your child must first have a basic understanding of how to process them.
Be on the lookout for communication starters
When a character in a bedtime story encounters something that makes them sad, ask your child how he would feel in her situation. Look for talking points during kid-appropriate television shows and movies, and take advantage of them.
Allow your child to ask questions
Your child can’t share the emotions he doesn’t understand, so make sure that he knows it’s okay to ask questions about the way he’s feeling or the way others are feeling.
Help your child verbalise what they feel
There’s a difference between anger and fear, but it’s not always easy to spot those differences from the outside looking in. Your child needs to know how to properly name his feelings to share them with others, so make sure that you take time to work on his emotional vocabulary when the opportunity arises.
Alow expression without shame
Helping your child to understand that it’s okay to feel anger, fear, and frustration allows him to own those feelings without shame. Let him know that the important thing is how he deals with those feelings and that some ways of expressing them are acceptable and others are not.
Don’t liken emotion with weakness
It’s not always easy for children, particularly boys, to share their feelings of fear in a society that’s eager to vilify anything that could be construed as weakness. When your child comes to you with his fears and you treat them respectfully, he learns that it’s okay to feel afraid. If you shame him or make him think that those fears are silly, though, it can make it far more difficult for him to express those feelings in the future.
Understand reactions are not always rational
Even adults have trouble maintaining some semblance of rational thought when they’re overcome by emotion, and they have a lifetime of experience from which to draw. Your child’s feelings can be overwhelming and scary to him, and his reactions to them may not always be rational. Understand that it may take a bit of time for an upset child to calm down enough to begin the process of expressing himself and that some of the feelings themselves will be irrational fears.
Don’t tell your child to keep quiet
When feelings are too much to deal with, your child may feel more comfortable expressing himself through a tantrum, a crying jag or a screaming fit. Rather than demanding that he be quiet, help your child find the words that he needs to express himself in a way that you can understand.
Explain why physical violence is never okay
Your child needs to know that there is a very big difference between sharing his feelings and showing his anger or fear through a physically violent reaction. Talk about why violence is never okay, and make sure that you work on more productive and safe ways of sharing those feelings.
