Ten Ways To Help Your Child Learn To Regulate Their Emotions
Emotional regulation is the ability to exert control over emotional responses. Just like walking and talking, children need to learn to regulate their emotions. Parents play an important role in helping their children learn to regulate their emotions. A child’s ability to successfully regulate their emotions depends on a number of factors:
1. Biological factors such as the child’s health and development
2. A child’s temperament
3. Environmental factors such as stress, stability, safety and security
4. Parent-child interaction
Some children are more vulnerable to emotional difficulties, particularly where there may be a chronic health issue, developmental delay or disorder, or where they are exposed to environmental stress and threats to stability, safety and security.
Whilst parents cannot change some biological factors and some children’s temperaments can be more challenging, here are ten ways you can help your child learn to regulate their emotions:
1. Validate your child’s emotions and help them understand that all emotions are normal and natural. Let your child know that you understand that they are feeling hurt/angry/disappointed or upset. Listening to your child empathically, and showing you understand how they are feeling, can help your child learn to manage difficult emotions.
2. Encourage your child to talk about their emotions. Being able to talk about both positive and negative emotions can help a child understand and manage those emotions. Help them be able to express their negative emotions in a calm and non-aggressive way. Being able to talk about emotions also reduces the need for them to act out their emotions through their behaviour and can help them feel more comfortable expressing their emotions in relationships.
3. Talk about your own emotions in an appropriate way - being open about your emotions can help children to identify emotions and be able to language emotions correctly.
4. Model emotional regulation to your child – show your child how you regulate difficult emotions. Being able to stay calm when your child is upset can help them learn to calm down. Talking to your child calmly about something that has happened, instead of yelling, can help them learn to stay calm and regulate their emotions in difficult situations.
5. Encourage your child to take slow, deep breaths when they are upset to help calm down. Having some space or doing a quiet, relaxing activity can also help them calm down. Apps like “Smiling Mind” have guided meditations for different age groups that can help with relaxation.
6. Teach your child positive self-talk. Negative self-talk is more likely to result in negative feelings. Examples of negative self-talk might be: “I can’t do anything right”, “It’s not fair”, “He/she did that on purpose”. Helping children substitute positive self-talk for negative self-talk can help reduce negative emotions. Examples of positive self-talk might be: “Everyone makes mistakes”, “I can have a turn another time”, “It was just an accident”.
7. Teach your child how to solve problems. Children sometimes experience negative emotions when they are faced with a problem they don’t know how to solve. The first step in problem-solving is to define the problem. Next, identify possible solutions to the problem. Evaluate the solutions in terms of possible outcomes and then choose a solution to implement. Finally, evaluate the result – how did it work out? Having a way of solving problems can help children be able to reduce negative emotions.
8. Help your child to recognise triggers for negative emotions and early warning signs. Being told “no”, losing in a game, or being asked to do an activity your child doesn’t want to do, such as homework or chores, can sometimes trigger negative emotions. Helping children practice how to handle situations that normally trigger negative emotions can help them regulate their emotions when those situations occur in the future. Intervening when parents notice their child looking grumpy, restless, tense or irritated to talk about what is happening, how they are feeling, and what they can do to manage the situation and their feelings can help prevent an emotional outburst.
9. Praise your child’s efforts to regulate their emotions. This can help them develop positive beliefs in their capacity to handle difficult situations. It is important to praise self-control and persistence, particularly in frustrating or disappointing situations.
10. Minimise stress, and ensure stability, safety and security. Stress can come in many forms, such as work, financial, relationship and illness. Minimising stress as much as possible can help reduce emotional arousal. Providing stability, predictability, safety and security at home can help children develop the emotional resources to manage more challenging situations outside the home. Ensuring adequate amounts of sleep, exercise and a providing a healthy diet can help support emotional functioning.
