Teaching your child to identify and express emotions

5 Ways to Help Children Identify and Express their Emotions

The early years are crucial for your child’s development. It is during this time that they learn about how the world around them works. Along with their new discoveries, they also learn a lot about their feelings and how to express them in the appropriate manner. In this article we share with you the 5 Ways to Help Children Identify and Express their Emotions

Throughout this learning journey, things can get overwhelming for young children who are trying to understand the complexities of emotions. As a result, they may vent their frustrations through emotional outbursts or have a hard time calming down. Although you may find this situation challenging, know that it is all part of your child’s learning experience.

Here are 5 Ways to help your children learning and understanding their emotions better:

The different feelings that your children go through daily may be foreign to them at first, but you can help them out by naming those feelings appropriately. For example, you could say, “Mummy has to go to work, and you are sad to say goodbye” or “You were angry that your friend snatched your favourite toy”. You can also use picture books or videos to point out the various emotions of the story’s characters to your child.

When you teach your child to name feelings when they occur, your child will build an emotional vocabulary over time and get to the point where they are able to identify those feelings and talk to you about them. This will then help them learn the basics of expressing their feelings appropriately.

The best way to teach your children to express their feelings is to set a good example yourself. Start by talking about your own feelings and describe how to best express those feelings. You can also create opportunities for your child to come up with solutions for various situations, and then discuss why they are or are not appropriate.

Here are some questions you can ask for starters:

Remember how Mummy got mad yesterday because the kitchen sink was clogged up? When I get mad, I take a deep breath, count to three, and think of the best way to solve the problem.

Your brother bumped his head on the wall – how do you think he feels?

You are frustrated because you are having a hard time putting back that box on the shelf. What can you do? I think you can either ask for help or try to do it again. What would you like to do?

As your child grows up, you may also consider signing them up for classes where they are encouraged to express themselves. For example, speech and drama classes provide the best stage for your child to express his or her emotions creatively, through physical movements and facial expressions. Drama class for kids would also be instrumental in boosting their confidence, as well as to improve their communication and language skills. 

3. Offer a deep nurturing connection

While babies are soothed by their parents, toddlers and pre-schoolers need to bond and feel connected to mum and dad in order to regulate and deal with their emotions. Thus, when you notice your child getting upset or overwhelmed, the best thing you can do for him/her is to reconnect. This helps you see things from your child’s perspective. This helps you understand the reason behind their meltdowns and allows you to respond appropriately. In fact, experts highly recommend that we hug our children when the going gets rough, as this has shown to do wonders in regulating their emotions.

One of the 5 Ways to Help Children Identify and Express their Emotions is resisting the urge to punish them. Discipline methods such as spankings, time outs, giving consequences and shaming are often used to correct children’s misbehaviours, but these do nothing to help them deal with their emotions. By resorting to these methods, children get the message that their “bad” emotions are to be blamed for their misbehaviours. As a result, they try to bottle their emotions until they get to a point where it “overflows” one day through a meltdown episode.

Instead of using punishment, do help your child to process and manage their emotions in positive ways. You should do that until they are able to handle it all by themselves. Leading through good example can include speaking in a proper tone of voice and not yelling. Giving them activities that allow them to express their emotions can include drawing and shaping with playdough. These two can go a long way to help both of you get there.

Give praises to your child whenever he/she talks about his/her feelings. This brings across the message that he/she did the right thing and that you are proud of him/her for reaching out to you and talk about feelings.

Children should know that it is perfectly fine to express what we feel. They should also be given ample opportunities to respond to their feelings in appropriate ways. You can play your part in this aspect by practising strategies that will help your child express his/her emotions in various situations. For example, you can talk about feelings and coping strategies during dinner, a play date or while grocery shopping. Through the series of events that unfold in each situation, there will be opportunities for your child to express and deal with his/her feelings when interacting with others. The more your children get to do this, the faster they will learn to regulate their emotions independently.

Related: 5 Ways to Raise a Child with High Emotional Intelligence | 5 Ways to Ease PreSchool Separation Anxiety in Your Child

Written by Justina Goh

Part of the focus of MindChamps PreSchool’s curriculum is centred on character building. Find out how this can benefit your child during the early years.

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7 Ways to Help Kids Identify Feelings & Control Emotions

How to help kids identify and express their emotions, and also manage those feelings while controlling their emotions in a healthy, respectful way. Why using emotion picture cards can be a lifesaver! 

When your child is shouting, screaming, throwing a tantrum and exploding with big emotions, it can be a real battle to find ways to teach your children about emotions without losing your own cool.

Parents can struggle to help their children learn about feelings and how to appropriately express their emotions, especially toddlers whose frontal cortex isn’t fully developed yet (also the biological reason behind toddler tantrums.)

The benefits of teaching your children about feelings and helping them develop emotional intelligence aren’t only great for minimizing power struggles and tantrums, but a lifelong skill they’ll reap the rewards of in school, business, personal relationships and friendships.

One big benefit?

Children who learn self-regulation and how to control their emotions are shown to have longer attention spans, understand appropriate dynamics of interacting with others, are less impulsive, more self-aware and better communicators.

Let’s talk about how you can first teach children how to identify and express their emotions respectfully, and then strategies for control emotions especially when they want to burst out in unwelcome ways.

☑️ Emotions A – Z: From Chaos to Calm Teaching Emotions eCourse

☑️ Emotions Picture Card Set to Help Kids Identify Their Feelings

☑️ Calm Down Picture Cards Set to Help Kids Begin to Self-Regulate

☑️ “How I’m Feeling” Personal Reflection Journal Pages for Kids

1. Model Reactions and Emotional Behavior

Children look to their parents to be the prime example of how to act, behave and react.

Basically you are their role model for navigating life.

Children are also exemplary at mimicking the behavior and mannerisms they’re surrounded with, no matter if the behavior is good, bad, appropriate or inappropriate.

It’s important to practice what you preach which means instead of matching your child’s intensity with your own, you must be the rock-steady and calm your child needs.

Your “cool as a cucumber” response will teach your kids a better way to handle challenging situations, disappointment, and adversity than with big, explosive emotions.

The coping strategies you demonstrate will help your children develop their own coping strategies to main control and reel it in.

2. Talk About Emotions and Feelings with Kids

Children often feel overwhelmed by what they are feeling particularly because they don’t know what it is.

• What are emotions? 
• What are feelings?
• What does this feeling I have mean?
• What is the emotion that matches this feeling?
• Why am I acting this way?

Butterflies in the tummy often equate to nervousness and clenched fists, anger. But does a child automatically know this?

The very simple answer is no they do not.

Children must learn the different kinds of emotions and how they relate to what you feel inside.

The best way to do this is to help name your child’s emotions as it matches their behavior.

• Crying = Sad
• Throwing a Toy = Anger
• Laughing = Joy
• Fear, Guilt, Happiness, Excited….

You can help your child identify facial expression in others and by watching themselves in the mirror, to recognize what behavior is saying.

You don’t just want to point out the negative behavior and reactions like being angry, sad, or upset. Also, point out the entire range of emotions including happy, excited, lonely, etc. so they learn all the emotions and can read body language.

Talk about your child’s emotions by having regularly conversations about feelings and using emotion picture cards to help kids identify what they’re feeling.

If your child is unable to name what they feel, help them by describing the emotion and pointing to the picture in the emotion picture card set, until they make the connection.

3. Identify Feelings of Others

Teaching emotional intelligence isn’t only about your child, it’s about modeling the connection between behavior and feelings for your children in a teachable way.

• When you feel frustrated, tell them.
• When you are happy, express it.
• When you feel angry, explain why you feel this way.

It’s important to help children learn to recognize feelings and emotions in others by reading facial expressions and also identifying body language. The emotion picture cards can help kids identify body language and cues in others too.

When kids can recognize the emotional state of others, they’ll be equipped to understand how to interact with others and communicate with them better.

4. 4.

   Praise Behavior Your Want to See Repeated

When you watch your child catch themselves and walk back out of what could have been a tantrum or a big emotion situation, shout your praise from the rooftops!

Praising behavior tells kids the should repeat it because of the positive reinforcement you give them.

It’s like when your children first learn how to walk. When you sit on the sidelines and cheer them on, the more they want to try standing and walking towards you.

Positive praise works just like this to reinforce when your kids make good choices when it comes to behavior, too.

5. Notice When Environmental Factors Play with Emotions

There are a lot of environmental factors that come into play when a child experiences big emotions.

Help your child identify other reasons why they get off track or preemptively could get off track by looking at their surroundings.

The big four are:

• Sleep
• Food
• Overstimulation
• Connection

Most often, poor behavior and misbehavior are the result of being tired, being hungry or overstimulated. This can also be because of a lack of connect the child feels to you or another person they’re close to and acting out is a way to gain your attention.

The more in touch your child is with their feelings, the more connected they’ll be to their body and the instincts to rest, eat, chill out or ask for affection when their tank is on empty.

6. 6. Coping Strategies to Control Emotions

Even if your child has identified triggers to their big emotions, they still need coping strategies to get the emotions under control.

Different coping strategies that are useful are:

• Create a calming / quiet retreat in your home when your child can retreat to be alone
• Listen to music (and dance if it helps)
• Take a bath
• Create! Draw, color, paint
• Drink a mug of something comforting like warm cocoa or apple cider
• Blow bubbles
• Squeeze a stress fall or play with fidget toys

Calm Down Resources: 

• Anger Management: Calm Down Tools Kids Can Use Anywhere
• Parents: 5 Steps to Teach Kids How to Manage Big Emotions (Free Printable)
• Helping Kids with Transitions: Switching Gears without Tears

7. Be His Safe Spot Before & After Big Emotions

While the wave of big emotions rains down, the one thing your child needs is to know you are there and that you still love him.

Even if your child doesn’t want affection or your presence at the time, being there for your child gives him safety and lets him know you’re on his team. It also tells him you’re a safe place to share his feelings with once the meltdown has passed.

Match your child’s force with calm reassurance, and counter fury with empathy and gentleness.

If you match his intensity with your own, you can’t provide the safety net he depends upon you for. Whereas, if he feels helpless, out of control, exhausted and distraught, but you gently respond with empathy and understanding, he’ll be able to pull himself together after a good cry versus keeping the tantrum raging on long after it could have ended.

Soon, your child will become the master of his big feelings and emotions and the chaos will be evened out with more calm.

8. Use Calm Down Cards to Ease Big Emotions 

Calm Down cards are a great tool to give kids options about how they can calm down, and when they have the choice of what they want to do, it’ll help them calm down even faster!

Print this set of calm down cards, laminate if you can, and let your child shuffle through the 45 cards until they find a solution they’re comfortable with.

There are 45 kid-tested methods that will help them cool off when big emotions take hold!

The best part?

With consistent practice of using the calm down card set, kids will turn to their set of calm down cards without any prompting from an adult and begin to self-manage their big feelings all on their own!

Need a little extra handling your child’s big emotions? Here’s a FREE Parenting Course to help you both turn things around. 

 

• Create a Quiet Spot at Home For Your Child to Calm Down
• Helping Kids with Transitions: Switching Gears without Tears
• Navigating the After-School Meltdown: How to Help Your Child
• Anger Management: Calm Down Tools for Kids to Use Anywhere
• Help Your Children Understand Emotions and Develop the Emotional Intelligence They Need

5 ways to teach your child to express feelings

Children's cognitive abilities are the same as trying to eat cereal with chopsticks. Just imagine: all your child wants - toys, love, toys again - is cereal. And the inability of children to express their desires are sticks, and when a child cannot, symbolically speaking, grab an elusive grain with sticks, then he explodes from emotions and screams, kicks, hits the floor, and so on e.

This anxiety can be reduced simply a trick called "emotional literacy" in which you teach your child to decipher his feelings in a way that you understand and help. Even if he just needs to open a pack of cereal. nine0005

Adults sometimes confuse the concepts of "emotion" and "feeling", but children do not understand them at all. While research by a team of psychologists from New York University and the non-governmental organization MDRC shows that children with developed emotional literacy are less prone to anxiety and aggression. They develop prosocial problem-solving behaviors that improve learning and mental health.

There are several ways to help your child recognize and manage their feelings:

Do not underestimate

Do not deny your child feelings, otherwise he will think that experiencing something is not good. Therefore, it is not a good idea to tell your child not to be sad or angry, even if you have the best intentions.

Name it

Make sure the child knows exactly how to label a particular feeling, this will help him navigate this stormy emotional sea. Along the way, this will help him explain what's going on, and you'll find a solution. The key here is to keep the conversation going about feelings. When children yell because someone took their toy, help them name their feelings. You can say something like, "Looks like you got mad because that boy did something bad." nine0005

Talk about feelings

Even if you think it's inappropriate to talk about feelings, it's important to do this with children. Everyone is crying, including adults and strong men and women. Telling your feelings will allow your child to directly recognize them in the other person. It is better if the child hears that you are sad and at the same time do not lie on the floor and do not kick. This will show him how to express feelings.