Emotions

I often receive questions regarding children's intense emotions. One of my favorite books that I recommend to families is Be The Boss of Your Stress by T. Culbert & R. Kajander. The book is geared towards children 8 years and older. However, I highly recommend reading it with your child the first time. I read it with my son when he had just turned 6 and we just read the pieces that would make sense to him at the time. Now he goes back to this book on his own every so often. If your child is younger than 6 I still highly recommend getting your hands on this book, because it provides parents with words and phrases that would be helpful when helping your child calm him/ herself.

The use of the word stress in the title is not exactly how you and I necessarily think of stress. The way they define it and the way I see it is that it's anytime the child's heart starts to beat faster, their blood pressure might go up, they may begin to yell, hit, or scream, their head might feel like it's spinning, they may get shaky, etc. For some kids they may show these signs when they simply do not get their way and for others it might be much bigger things. Either way, these are all ways the body shows us we are stressed.

I believe it is incredibly important to teach children what these signs mean and provide them with the tools so they can manage these emotions. The book covers all of this. The emphasis is on teaching the child ways to calm themselves down. It gives them the control. One of the tips they recommend is taking deep breaths. Another one is being your own coach. This is the one that has worked beautifully with my 7.5 year old son, as he is our more emotional child. For the most part now, we simply have to say "coach" to him in a calm way with a smile and he remembers what he's supposed to do to bring himself down again. It's essentially self-talk. He begins to tell himself what he would tell his friend if his friend was feeling how he is feeling in the moment. He coaches himself through it. There are many more recommendations beyond these two examples.

I also look at emotions in terms of zones. There is a green zone (when all is well), red zone (when the child has lost it or is so emotional you can't even speak with him or her about it), and the yellow zone (where they are starting to have some of these signs, but they have not lost it yet). The yellow zone provides space for learning. However, once in the red zone it's too late until after the moment. You can of course still regroup after if your child does move into the red zone; however, you want to be able to catch this before their emotions get to this point. The key is to identify what these yellow zones look like for your particular child and then begin to teach him or her how to identify these moments. It's such a gift for children to be able to understand their emotions and be able to take control of them. This doesn't mean they don't allow themselves to be really sad about something, but rather when they are sad they are able to keep it in check and remember that there is a bigger world out there than this issue at that moment.

When I work with families individually one of the things we often spend quite a bit of time on is this idea of emotion coaching and identifying and thinking about what these yellow zones look like and what the opportunity for learning is at that particular time.

Over the next few weeks think about what your child's different zones look like and how you can begin to teach them how they can begin to calm themselves when they are still in the yellow zone. Please share your observations!