All children in early life will experience BIG EMOTIONS! Helping our children in processing emotions is one of the most important jobs we have as a parent. knowing how to do that can be difficult and different for each unique child.
Here are the Top 7 Steps to Helping Your Children with Processing Emotions that every parent needs to know about!
Raising our children to become emotionally stable adults begins with teaching them the healthy way of processing emotions during their childhood.
In this article, you will learn 7 simple steps you can take to make it easier for your children to process their emotions. Your children processing emotions healthily will, in turn, benefit you in your parenting and peace of mind.
Once you've started implementing these steps into your daily encounters with your children, you will see that their outbursts lessen as your understanding and unconditional love calm their fears and anxieties. Though this is a process, it is worth every effort. Your kids having joy as children and being healthy as adults is worth every minute it takes to walk out these steps!
This post is all about the top 7 steps in helping your children with processing emotions.
Top Tips for Processing Emotions
1. Value Understanding Them.
Processing emotions can be tricky for almost everyone, especially children. As parents, it's our job to value understanding them and their feelings as tiny humans.
In childhood, many of us learned that "big emotions" were considered irrational, overreactive, and silly from the adults in our lives. One of the most unhealthy things we can do to our children is assume that their feelings are somehow smaller or less valuable because of their size, age, or lack of life experience.
The first step to helping our children process emotions is to be willing to put in the emotional work ourselves. Working through big emotions and feelings with children can seem taxing and pointless at times. Still, the value we put on making sure our children experience the security of having a voice and feel heard and understood is the investment that will keep paying dividends for their entire adult life!
Raising emotionally healthy adults starts with us as parents valuing their emotions as children.
HERE ARE SOME RELATED RESOURCES THAT MIGHT INTEREST YOU!
How to Help a Highly Emotional Child Cope With Big Feelings
2. Bad Behavior does not equal bad kid!
(Adults have bad days too)
Perhaps the most common excuse for not seeking to help our children process their emotions is their bad behavior itself. The fear and panic we experience with temper tantrums, falling on the isle floor at Target, screaming, slamming doors, and throwing things, can be crippling. Our need to correct that behavior is all-consuming and leaves little emotional strength for empathy.
Our subconscious fear is that bad behavior will eventually turn them into a bad child or, even worse...a terrible adult. While there is a lot to be said about good parenting and discipline, none of it can be lasting or effective if we operate out of anxiety and fear and not love or acceptance.
When embracing our children's emotions, we must realize that bad behavior in children, like adults, is linked to fear, anxiety, or lack of emotional understanding. If we slowly work through those things with them, without labeling them as bad children, they will work through their emotions just as healthily as adults.
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3. Approach them with love and not frustration.
When learning how to help my daughter in processing emotions, one of the most challenging things for me was looking past her negative attention-seeking behavior and approaching her with kindness and love. My automatic response was to correct the behavior quickly to eliminate my fear of raising an unruly child. So this made it difficult to come to her with love.
I once received a bit of parenting advice from a podcast (drawing a blank on which one), but the host of the podcast said, "I never approached my kids after they upset me until I had calmed down." As soon as I heard this, I applied it immediately. The idea of waiting to approach my children until I had gained composure of my own emotions helped me to be able to help them in processing their emotions- a genius idea, really.
Make it your goal to approach your children only when you have had time to clear your head and make the pursuit of love and connection your highest priority.
HERE ARE SOME RELATED ARTICLES ON THE TOPIC OF FRUSTRATION AND ANGER AT YOUR CHILD!
4. ask simple questions that Drive conversation.
We often expect our children to be good at processing emotions, but we struggle with doing that ourselves as adults.
About 12 years ago, my husband and I attended a marriage seminar class where we learned a method of expressing and processing emotions called "emptying the jug." It dramatically shifted our lives, communication, and marriage when we found out about this. In short, this method is a set of questions that help you ponder your emotions and feelings and allows you to verbalize them.
Here are some of the questions we use:
For hard feelings:
- What are you sad about?
- Is there anything that makes you feel angry?
- What are you frustrated about?
- Right now, is there anything making you upset?
For happy feelings:
- What are you optimistic about?
- In life, what brings you joy?
- Can you tell me what makes you feel loved?
Sitting in silence as the other person responds is the point of the exercise, allowing them to feel free to be themselves completely, with no judgment.
Years later, when we started experiencing the dreaded "tantrums" from our toddler, I decided to try this method (modified for her age) with her. I thought, if it helps a wounded adult get down to the core of their emotions, surely it could help a kid who doesn't have years of experience with putting up emotional walls too! I've created a list of modified questions to ask your children to help them process their emotions. I'll link the printable below!
Asking your kids straightforward questions that allow them to begin processing their emotions, whether happy emotions or hard ones, is a great way to get them to open up!
CLICK TO PRINT
Check out our shop page for all the free resources on goodbye anxious!
5. It takes time.
I'll be frank with you, once you embark on helping your kids process their emotions, you will discover a few things that can be frustrating.
First, it can take a lot of time.
Some children will quickly process their emotions or may want to revisit them when they're ready. However, if your child is anything like mine, it could take an hour (or multiple discussions) to work through it all. Be patient and committed because each scenario could be different.Starting the process and then rushing them due to inconvenience will only leave both of you more frustrated.
Secondly, while you take your precious time out of your day to help them process, you could discover their frustrations are with you.
That's always a tough pill to swallow.
For example, my oldest daughter's love language is quality time, and we are 10,000% positive of this. We do our best to make sure she gets all the time she can with each of us. Still, there are times when our schedules do not permit for the 24 hours-a-day attention she so desires. Sometimes we fail by being on our phones too much or answering too many emails during game night. Which often leads to big emotions, meltdowns, and sometimes not-so-desirable behavior.
We must remain humble in these moments as she tells us what "we" did wrong. We can't make excuses or be defensive because that will only lead to frustration as she doesn't feel heard (TRUST ME, first-hand experience here).
A key component to healthy communication is to feel heard, loved, and valued; no matter who you are, child or adult, time and humility matter.
HERE ARE SOME RELATED RESOURCES ON THIS!
Love Languages Ideas for the Whole Family – Free Printables
The 5 Love Languages® of Children- BOOK
The 5 Love Languages of Children - ARTICLE, PARENTS.COM
6. Do not compare them to others
or gang up on them.
If you have one child who is better behaved than the other, comparing them can be challenging to stop. As parents, we tend to see others' Facebook highlight reels and pretend that their kids and lives are perfect. When you're in the thick of a tantrum or teenage yelling match, you can almost see your neighbor Suzanne's 11 year old getting an award for "kindest kid on the planet" at their 5th-grade graduation a few months back. It's almost as if we are hardwired to compare our kids to other kids!
As tempting as it may seem, comparison will kill any chance you have of truly understanding your child's emotions. Think about it, would you want to tell your boss what was bothering you at work if all you ever heard from her was how your co-worker did every single assignment without complaint and how they wish "every employee was like..." Nope? Didn't think so.
Another detrimental thing to helping a child in processing emotions is ganging up on them. When Mom, Dad, and siblings all gang up on a child to point out how bad their behavior is, this does nothing but produce emotional loneliness in that child, which is the complete opposite of your goal. Think about it, as an adult, do you like to have a group of people take turns slamming you or putting you down when you have a crummy day? Of course not. No one does, especially not children.
We must listen to their feelings while also expressing how their behavior has impacted us. However, we must do so healthily and kindly, without comparison or in groups.
RELATED RESOURCES:
Parenthesis: Why you should stop comparing your child to others
HOW (NOT TO) COMPARE YOUR CHILDREN
7. provide the outlet they need for processing emotions.
There are many ways you can provide an outlet for your children to begin processing emotions safely. Here is a list of a few ideas:
- Give them a sketch pad and markers to draw how they are feeling.
- Provide a journal to write their feelings and promise not to read it.
- Schedule a time each week where they can empty their emotional jug. (see point 4 for a free printable).
- Put a value on healthy communication in your family. Talk about feelings and the importance of not letting them become bottled up inside.
- Some children like private time to process. Let them have that without putting a time limit on it.
Each child is unique in the way they will find most comfortable processing emotions. Our job as parents is to help them in whatever way possible to freely provide them with the outlets they need to do that safely and securely.
"How is your daughter so good at expressing her feelings?" This question is perhaps the most asked one I get as a mom. It's the reason I wrote this article, to help other parents discover how to help their kids in processing emotions in a very practical and straightforward way from a very practical and average mom.
Emotions are tricky at any age, especially in childhood, but if you use these 7 tips to help your children with processing emotions, your efforts will not be in vain. you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. you got this!
HERE ARE SOME GREAT FREE PRINTABLE WORKSHEETS FOR YOUR KIDS TO HELP THEM WITH PROCESSING EMOTIONS, FROM EDUCATION RESOURCE HUB ON CANVA.COM
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