Helping Your Child Understand the Why of Emotions

In a lot of school boards, it’s right there on the front of school report cards: self-regulation. What it entails, in most cases, is the ability to react in an acceptable manner, to problem solve, to manage interpersonal conflict and to not disrupt the order of things. It is, no doubt, an essential skill for even small children, and one that we take with us into adulthood. Orderly classrooms, orderly workplaces, and orderly organizations do hinge on us being able to demonstrate at least some degree of self-control. At some point or other in our lives, we all need to be able to keep a lid on our emotions and reactions.

There is, however, a big difference between regulating one’s emotions and understanding them. For the sake of peace in a group setting, like a classroom, it’s tempting to rely more on the former than the latter, asking children to keep calm and go with the flow. But there are a couple of very important reasons why this is both short-sighted and harmful.

For one thing, straight-up self-regulation is really just a temporary fix, and a challenging one at that. Perhaps your child is highly sensitive, or has sensory issues that make it extremely hard to turn down the dial at will. Your child could be at an age when their emotions are running high and their ability to articulate them is underdeveloped. They could be facing difficult circumstances that are difficult to process or tune out. It’s not easy for a kid to control their emotions for any length of time. It’s a learned skill that often takes years to master.

In addition to this, relying too heavily on regulation, and not enough on reflection, means missing an important opportunity to develop thinking skills. There’s very little that’s more fascinating to human beings than our own emotions, and understanding how they work brings a clearer picture of ourselves, but also valuable insights about others and the world around us. Our emotions play into our grasp of morality, law, beauty, leadership, fairness, and so many other big ideas that are fascinating to thinkers of all ages. Our hearts and our minds aren’t as separate as we think they are.

So, how do you start a productive conversation about emotions with a little thinker? Here are a handful of big questions to help:

·      Can people feel more than one thing at once? Can we be a combination of happy, sad, angry and surprised all at once?

·      How do you know what you’re feeling? What does it feel like to feel?

·      Is it possible to feel nothing at all?

·      Is happiness the only good emotion? Are some emotions better or worse than others, or are they all valuable in some way?

·      How do we know what others are feeling? Can we be sure?

·      Why do we sometimes feel such different things from other people?

·      Do animals have feelings? How can we tell?

·      Do things that aren’t animals, like robots and computers, have feelings? Why does it sometimes seem like they do?

·      What important information can our feelings give us about ourselves? How about others?

There’s no quick fix when it comes to regulating our emotions, and maybe that’s a good thing. Taking time to slow down, reflect, and discuss could give you and your little thinker an amazing opportunity to really understand not just what they’re feeling, but why they’re feeling it. A child’s emotional intelligence deserves and requires time, effort and exploration, and not just management techniques.