How To Help Your Child Better Understand Their Emotions

One way to help your child live a happy and healthy life is to help them know what they are feeling and become better at deciphering others’ emotions. When children are little, their emotions feel bigger than they are, and their feelings are just as important as your feelings. So helping them learn to manage and understand their emotions now will pay off for them as adults.

•  Model Reactions and Emotional Behavior – You’re the main person to show your child how to react to things by demonstrating the correct emotional behavior you’d like to see. You don’t need to tell them that either. Just show them.

• Name The Feelings – Your children need to assign a word and a definition to the feelings they have. Please help them do that by reading books together about emotions, talking about your own emotions, and allowing them to name theirs.

•  Identify Feelings in Others – One way to help your children name and describe feelings is to help them identify feelings in others. While you won’t always be right about someone else’s range of emotions, the basics like anger, sadness, and so forth will help.

•  Talk About Your Feelings – When you have emotions, share them with your child. For example, if you’re sad, tired, angry, happy, or whatever it is you’re feeling, tell your child what these emotions are and how you’re going to deal with them.

•  Accept Your Child’s Feelings – Emotions are messy sometimes. It’s not a good thing to make your child deny their feelings, even if they are negative. If you can help them by holding them close or letting them blow off steam in a healthy way instead of making them deny their feelings, it will help them in the future.

• Practice Expressing Emotions in Healthy Ways – Sometimes, it can help play games with your children to showcase different emotions and get ideas about how to express them healthily. For example, show them that they can exercise, journal, color, or even cry for a predetermined time to help themselves cope.

• Hug and Praise Your Child Often – The more you hug and praise your child, the more emotionally balanced your child will be. Instead of focusing on the things your child fails at, focus on what they’re doing right and catch them doing it and make a big deal out of it.

• Pay Close Attention to The Environment – Clutter, lots of loud sounds, fighting, and a poor environment can lead to an inability to cope with their emotions because there is no safe place for them. Your home and your presence should be the safest place for your kids.

• Don’t Punish Children for Expressing Emotions – Sometimes, kids have meltdowns or don’t express themselves the way you’d like. Don’t punish them for having emotions or doing the wrong thing; instead, redirect them to a new way to handle it next time.

• Teach Your Children Coping Strategies – Show your child how you deal with your own emotions through meditation, exercise, nature, art, or however you do it to be able to cope with their own emotions.

We are all born with emotions, but some of the feelings we have are taught. If you want your child to have high emotional intelligence, it’s important to understand the impact of emotional development on their lives. You’re the main role model for your kids, and how you manage your own emotions will guide your children more than anything you tell them.