Emotion in life starts right from a very young age. All kids undergo emotions once in a while.
Moreover, kids are similar to the adults in feeling all types of emotions–happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and many other feelings.
However, children cannot always understand what is happening with them and may not know properly what to do when they feel a particular type of emotion.
As children cannot express their emotions clearly, parents often misread their emotions as sadness or anger [Controlling anger in children].
On the other hand, children occasionally feel emotions very strongly and fluctuate easily from one emotion to the other (happiness to misery) when they get frustrated.
Thus, identifying emotions in children is sometimes very difficult for parents.
Tips to help children manage their emotions
As a parent, help your child understand how to react to a particular emotion when it arises. Also, teach how to manage emotions.
Learning these skills can benefit your child in many ways: emotionally intelligent, able to control emotions effectively, make feel good about themselves, cope with others freely, understand other’s feelings easily, attain less impulsive behaviors, self-confident, focus on things with better attention, and academically very active.
It is clear that as parents, you need to protect your children from their complex or painful emotions. In fact, everyone knows that most of the emotions of children are very simple to resolve. As a parent, teach your children that emotions can be relieved easily by understanding the methods to control them. So, help your child understand how to manage emotions using the tips below:
- Reassure your child that emotions are common for all and needs to learn how to manage emotions.
- To manage emotions of your child, first you need to have close communication with your child and try to understand and encourage your child to express what is happening with him/her and its reaction.
- Help your child identify when he/ she feels emotional.
- Make some time to talk to your children about their reaction to the emotions.
- When suitable, try to share all your emotions in life with your child.
- Discuss about emotions and answer to questions of your child openly. However, always keep the developmental age of your child in mind.
- Teach the child to stop emotions by following cool-down technique such as taking a deep breath, imagining a peaceful scene, recollecting sweet memory, or counting numbers, pleasurable activity for some time as a means of relaxation.
- Teach your kid to manage emotions by watching favorite album, listening to soothing music, exercising, or spending time with a pet.
- Involving in some or the other activities (games, writing something, or doing other physical activity) and keeping him/herself busy can be helpful to alleviate emotions.
- Teach your child that following a healthy diet and taking plenty of rest can control emotions.
- Instruct your child to value the rights, feelings, and emotions of others.
- Provide your child with lot of books on developing positive outlook.
If the emotions in your child continue to intensify, consult your doctor or a mental health expert as early as possible.
