All emotions are good/healthy, and they are there to serve a purpose. Parents’ verbal and non-verbal cues play a key role in supporting our children’s emotions and feelings. In this blog, we will discuss how we can support our children’s emotions and feelings… by identifying and labelling emotions, sitting with our children to support them in processing these emotions (co-regulation) and managing these emotions in healthy ways. Also while not forgetting to address our own emotions in the moment, as parents.

What is the difference between emotions and feelings?

A good starting point is to understand the difference between emotions and feelings. Emotions are mostly a subconscious reaction to something that happened, and they start as sensations in our bodies. For instance, when I see daddy coming home I feel light, rosy cheeks, warmth in chest. These are the sensations. The emotion is labelled as ‘happy’ or ‘joyful’. Another example is, when I hear a loud noise, my heart races, I hold my breath, my palms start to sweat. These are sensations. The emotion is labelled as ‘afraid’ or ‘scared’.

The feeling would be the interpretation of the emotions. So they are subjective, and shaped based on one’s perceptions, beliefs, experiences, etc. Feelings usually last longer than emotions, and would be a state of being at that moment. For instance, I feel happy when around daddy as he plays with me, makes me smile and feel good. I feel safe.

Why is it important to support children to identify and label emotions

A young developing brain is unable to make sense of all the wide range of emotions. And some emotions can be quite new and scary. Their brain is still developing, and they cannot ‘connect the dots’ between the different parts of the brain. They need an ‘outside brain’, which would be the adult, to help them make sense of their emotions as they subconsciously arise.

So for instance, a child would feel heart beating faster, mouth dry, because they are afraid of the loud noise they just heard outside. They cannot put all the pieces together, as the emotions are new. So, the adult would ‘speak’ out loud to the child’s brain (kind of the outside reasoning), and say something like “oh my goodness what a loud noise that was, it seems like it scared you, because I can see that you jumped/stopped playing”.

This example would support the child to identify the emotion, and they start to build words (labels) to what is it that they are feeling. In addition, the adult voice reasoning for them (as their brain is unable to do it for themselves yet), supports in calming the part of the brain that automatically would have the fear response. Repeating this process over and over again, supports the child in learning how to eventually self-regulate in a healthy way.

What happens if a child’s emotions are suppressed

For healthy development, children need to process emotions, and learn to make sense of them. They need adults to do this for them. If the adult is not able to do this for them, children learn unhealthy ways of what these emotions mean. These unhealthy meanings become embedded in their unconscious nervous system, and forms unhealthy core beliefs about themselves. For instance, I cannot express my sadness by crying, there must be something wrong with me, I’m not heard, I’m alone in this world, etc. These beliefs/imprints will impact their future lives, relationships, mental health.

Don’t brush off emotions or try to distract your children. Instead learn to sit with them.

This is a hard one, especially if as parents we were raised to ‘ignore’ our emotions. For some parents, certain display of emotions (like sadness or anger) might trigger our own response which might not be a healthy response. It is important that as parents we pass the message (verbal or non-verbal cues) to our children that ALL emotions are healthy. How do we do this?

First, be mindful of our emotional reaction to our children’s emotions, and making conscious effort not to allow our history/interpretation/unhealthy reaction to come in the way of a healthy, appropriate response. This might take quite a bit of practice and work on the parent’s part. For instance, if in your childhood you were told that ‘boys don’t cry’, or ‘don’t be sad/angry let’s do this instead to cheer you up’, then automatically you will react when your child cries, or you might try to suppress their sadness/anger instead of helping them to process it.

Secondly, acknowledge your child’s emotion for what it is. It is just an emotion – our body’s subconscious response to an event. And ALL emotions are healthy and serve a purpose.

Thirdly, you would want to stay with them in that emotion. Children’s brain is not yet developed to process (regulate) these emotions by themselves. They need an adult to support them in doing this – we call it co-regulation.

As an example: child feels sad/angry (depends on child) that another child took his toy, and starts to fight to take toy back or cry or throw things, etc. As an adult, we might say to ourselves – what is the fuss about the toy when there are 20 other toys, and might either ignore it and tell child “find another toy”, or we might react to (‘punish’) the child’s instinctive outside behaviour response and tell child “to find a quiet space as he is fighting the other child”. However this is dismissing child’s emotions, and passing the message that emotions are not okay. So we check ourselves, and instead say:

• I see that you are sad/angry, because so and so took the toy that you were playing with. (acknowledging emotion and labelling it)
• I would feel sad/angry too if someone took the toy I was playing with. (normalising emotion)
• Instead of pushing/crying, let us together find a way to get the toy back maybe by talking to so and so. (teaching child other ways to manage their emotions)

Another example might be, child cries because they are upset that they did not do well in the basketball game. As a child, our first reaction might be “don’t cry it is only a game” and some might add “let’s watch TV together”. However this is dismissing child’s emotions about the game – for your child the game is important, it is not ‘only a game’, and their emotions are real. So by dismissing, you are (unintentionally) minimising child’s emotions towards the game, and making it about how you feel about the whole situation (instead of seeing the child’s point of view and that for child the emotions are real). Also, if “let’s watch TV together” is added, as a form of distraction with the well-meaning intention so that child feels better; this again minimises child’s emotions and passes the message to child that instead of acknowledging all emotions and processing our emotions, we just distract ourselves. To add to this, as parents we have to analyse why we choose these options – does crying make us uncomfortable, do we feel uncomfortable sitting with our children’s all emotions and want to provide quick solutions. So instead we say:

• I see that you are sad/upset that you did not do well in the basketball game, because basketball means so much to you, because you trained so hard, because you might feel that you let your team down. (acknowledging and labelling emotion, and give ‘because’ statements – don’t use ‘but’ statements as ‘but’ statements feel dismissive)
• I know that you did the best that you can. I believe in you. And can give a hug. (this provides emotional support)
• Do you have any ideas of how we can make it better. (coming up with solution together)

As parents, managing our own triggers

As mentioned already, this can be quite a process. Usually we react to our children’s emotions automatically/second nature (because it is a learnt response of how we were parented). For instance, we might be uncomfortable with our children crying, being angry, because when we were young we received (most of the times unintentionally) the message that crying is not okay, that being angry is not acceptable, etc. So automatically we continue with this trend in our children. It is a learnt response – so something similar like breaking a habit. However, it might also be embedded in our own nervous system, and we would get an automatic trigger – this might take more work to process.

Some things we can do:

• analyse your core belief of the emotion that your child is displaying
• remind yourself that ALL emotions are okay, and all are healthy
• practice sitting with your child in the difficult emotions. Sometimes you don’t even need to say anything (hard I know!). And at times you can even say “I don’t know how to support you, can you let me know”.
• remembering that children develop their ability to understand the sensations and manage their emotions at a much older stage, and that as an adult you are their co-regulator (teaching and modelling to them how to do it in a healthy way).
• regrouping – so this could be two ways. Either (if you feel lost in the moment) saying that you hear child and feel that this is important, and can we discuss this later – gives you some time to gather yourself. It could also be that if in the moment you feel that you did not respond appropriately, revisiting the situation at a later time – apologising (repair work is a learning experience in itself for our children) and validating then.

How to support infants and non-verbal toddlers/children

Children as young as newborns pick up on our verbal and non-verbal cues. So it is important to start labelling emotions from the beginning – same as we say “that’s a dog”, we would say “oh you are crying because you want your milk” or “oh you are getting frustrated because you cannot reach your toy”. In addition to this, notice the difference in your tone when you say the following:

• “oh you are crying because you are teething”
• “oh you are crying but soon you will feel better”

If you notice, the tone of the ‘because’ statement is more validating than the ‘but’ statement. And children as young as babies pick up on this, even if they don’t understand the words you are saying.

In addition, to your verbal and non-verbal cues, depending on your child’s temperament, at this age they would need a lot of physical co-regulation – so being near them, picking them up, hugging them. Also, at times maybe a favourite item of theirs, such as blanket.

Again, non-stop crying might be quite triggering. However, it is important to remain ‘calm’ and warm (as much as possible) as they pick on our emotions and can become dysregulated – our emotions will throw them off balance/homeostasis, and they can react by being more fussy, etc.

Emotions that arise after setting a limit

So you set a limit (such as no snack because dinner is in 20 mins, or switching off TV after 15 mins) and your child has an eruption of an emotion (anger, sadness, full blown tantrum, etc). Do you remove the limit? NO. Children need boundaries. Children need adults to set limits for them, otherwise they would feel too lost with all the freedom, and it will back-fire. So remain firm in your boundary and when the emotion comes after setting a limit, just sit with them like the above examples – labelling the emotion, validating (using ‘because’ statements), offering emotional support and practical step. You are kind of passing the message (through your verbal and non-verbal cues) that by setting this boundary (that has to be reasonable and appropriate) you are for-them and have their best interest, and that you are not working against them. In a future blog post, I will address appropriate boundaries and how to set them to prevent as much as possible an eruption of emotions and a battlefield!

The importance of validating and connecting, before offering suggestions

So when your child (any age) is in the midst of the big emotions, their mind is not reasoning at all. We call it they are in their ’emotion mind’. So any attempts to reason/offer suggestions from the get-go will not get through; and you are likely to be faced by resistance and “you don’t understand me”. You have to connect emotion mind to emotion mind first. This is done by sitting with the emotions, listening and validating – using the ‘because’ statements. Once the connection is built, then there will be a shift in the child’s brain and they are able to use their ‘reasoning’ part of the brain. Now they are open to working on the practical steps and listening to what you have to say – because of the connection piece that you worked on initially, they would feel that you are on their side.

Looking at a personal experience to be able to understand and support our children

Let’s say for example, at your work place someone said something to you. It make you really angry and upset. So now you are dysregulated – not homeostasis or balanced. Notice the sensations in your body – maybe clenching teeth, heart racing, feeling hot, etc. What do you do? – do you maybe call a friend to just vent, or maybe you do some deep breathing, or listening to music, or going for a brisk walk. This helps to regulate you – and in a way is seen as co-regulation, because you are doing something to support your own regulation. Now, let’s say when you call your friend, there are 2 possibilities – either friend will listen and validate you, or else friend will straight away tell you oh maybe your colleague was having a bad day and will tell you about a time s/he faced something similar. Which method would be more likely to regulate you? It would be the first most probably, where you feel heard and validated; and then you are ready to get ‘unstuck’ and ‘move on’ with your day. So something similar goes on in our children, and even more so as their brains are not fully developed to self-regulate – they need us to support them by hearing them, validating them, and being with them to help them get ‘unstuck’ and ‘move on’.

Connecting all this to a Christian Worldview

The Bible shows us how human beings throughout the years have shown various emotions, and God met them where they were at. We also see Jesus displaying various emotions throughout His life – joy, sadness, fear/worry, anger; and most of the times He went to the Father with His emotions. This gives us comfort in knowing that we can go to God the Father with all our emotions – He listens to us, He comforts us, He walks with us every single step of the way (Isaiah 41:13, Isaiah 66:13, Psalm 147:3, Philippians 4;6-7).

Likewise, as parents, we know that we can go to Him with our own emotions and He can comfort us. In addition, we can look at God the Father’s relationship with His children as an example of how we can sit with our own children’s emotions and provide that warm comforting relationship and connection that our children need. God does not promise that it would be easy, because we are human beings and will fail. However, we know that by strengthening our relationship with Him to be more like Him, we can continue bettering ourselves and our connection with our children.

Recommendations

Acknowledging that all emotions (both yours and your child’s) are okay is a HUGE first step.

Start small steps:

• Think of an emotion that your child often displays which you think you are not responding appropriately.
• Reflect on your response – is the emotion a trigger for you, how can you react differently, what can you tell yourself in the moment so that you catch yourself when you are about to automatically respond how you have in the past (it can be a deep breath, counting, singing or humming, saying a mantra like it’s a healthy display of emotions or it does not define my parenting).
• Then rehearse the statement beforehand (using ‘because’ statements) that you can say once your child displays the emotion. Also include the emotional support piece, and the practical steps. (See the two examples above). If it is an infant/non-verbal child, rehearse how you would support them – saying the ‘because’ statement, offering emotional support through physical contact, and the practical step (such as a teething comforter if teething).
• Once you act this out the next time your child displays the emotion, reflect on what went well and how you can continue tweaking it. Remember to be gentle on yourself.

Got some insights? Would love to read your comment below…

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Greetings! I’m Claire, a Child & Family Therapist, Educator and Founder at myCaRE&CO; supporting Christian families with their 6 to 12 year old child’s challenging behaviours. Thank you for taking up your time to read this article, and hope that you found it useful to answering your questions.

Would you like more support, maybe more personalised to your situation? Check out myCaRE&CO’s services and e-mail me directly at info@mycareandco.com. You can also schedule a free ‘discovery call’ to discuss your child’s and family’s needs and goals. 

Claire Esikalam MSW, RSW, B.Ed. (Hons.) Child & Family Therapist, Educator and Founder at myCaRE&CO.

www.myCareandCo.com

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