Helping Your Child Manage their Emotions

Helping your child learn to manage their emotions will enable them to deal with challenging or disappointing situations, like exams stress or problems with their friendship group. There are lots of ways you can help your child develop a sense of self-control when it comes to their emotions, as explored below by a boys’ school in Surrey.

Teach Your Child About Emotions

Start by helping your child understand what different emotions are called, so that they can use vocabulary to explain how they’re feeling. Label emotions as and when they arise. For instance, if you’re shopping and you see a customer arguing with the manager, after you’ve left you can say to your child “That lady seemed very angry, didn’t she?”. If your child is crying, you can say “I can see that you are very sad right now. Do you want to talk about it?”. Share your own emotions too. If your child is able to label their emotions, they will find it easier to talk about what’s running through their mind. On the other hand, if they don’t understand how or why they’re feeling a certain way, it will be harder for them to cope and ask for help. 

Explore Coping Strategies

Be sure to point out when your child is behaving inappropriately and suggest some alternate ways they could react. For instance, if they throw a tantrum because they are losing a board game, tell them that you understand they’re frustrated, but that it’s unacceptable to shout. Instead, tell them to go into another room and take some deep breaths to calm down. Try and avoid making them feel like the way they feel is wrong, because all emotions are valid; it’s how we respond to our emotions that counts.

Encourage Your Child to Forgive Themselves

You should also try and teach your child to forgive themselves when they make mistakes. After all, they’re only human. If they’re crying in the car on the way to school because they forgot their homework, for example, remind them that everyone messes up sometimes and getting upset over it won’t change the fact. Ask them what you can all do as a family to help your child remember their homework going forward so that it doesn’t happen again. 

Praise Good Emotional Control

When you can see your child taking the right steps to manage their emotions, let them know that you noticed and that you are proud of them. This will be far more beneficial to their emotional development than showering them with attention every time they cry, because this will send the wrong message.