5 Beneficial Ways to Help Children to Regulate Emotions- Parents can Teach their Children.

Do your Child often cry for any silly matter? Do your children often show the outburst of anger? Do your children often show mood swings ? Yes, it is normal for the children to experience mood swings or start to cry for little little things. But, when they show extreme emotional outburst in the form of Anger, Sadness or Irritability associated with temper tantrums, the matter must be taken seriously. Here the parents must help children to regulate emotions- to express emotions in proper way and not let the emotions to come out as the Emotional Outburst.

What is Emotional Regulation?

The Emotional Regulation is the ability to deal with the emotions in a healthy way- express emotions in such a way so that it is accepted socially and also not hampering the mental health and well-being. It is not the inborn quality; we can learn it in our life through experiences and practice. It is the ability to identify, manage and regulate our emotions so that we can respond positively to all the emotional experiences of life.

.Any Person Capable of Angering you Becomes your Master,” EPICTETUS

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Why Emotional Regulation is needed in Children?

The skill of emotional regulation help us to know ourselves in depth with all of our qualities and shortcomings and make us capable to enhance our skills of socialization and communication. Emotional regulation help us to grow the qualities of tolerance, resilience, empathy, attention and co-operation. It ensures not only the socio-emotional growth of children but also the cognitive development and also aesthetic development. So, for the holistic development of children, we as elders should help children to regulate emotions and grow to their full potential.

. It’s the Emotional Regulation that make us the Winner in life.

Ways to Help Children to Regulate Emotions

Emotional regulation is the acquisition of skillsets achieved through practice- various ways or methods are used to regulate emotions as meditation, mindfulness techniques, yoga etc. The most beneficial 5 ways to regulate emotions in children are shared here.

.’Your Emotional Self is the most Delicate part of your self.’

Talk about Emotions

Talk with your children about your emotions in different situations of life, the consequences of extreme emotions, the loss caused due to your emotional outburst etc. Ask them about their emotions – when they feel angry or sad, when they feel happy, what is their emotion in this moment etc. Talking about the emotions help children to regulate emotions by identifying their emotions in different situations and labeling those. By knowing about the outcome of emotional outbursts surely help our children to manage their emotions.

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Draw your Emotions

It is very beneficial way to help children to regulate emotions- to identify and label their emotions. The parents can practice together with their children to identify and draw their emotions like drawing emojis to express emotions or draw pictures of their present emotional status. If the children can identify and draw their emotions, they will surely feel the consequences and can regulate their emotions to some extent.

Modeling the Response\ Reactions

If the children show that their parents or other family members respond in a nice way to their emotions, they can regulate their emotions in a healthy way, the children will surely model those responses and behave in such a way in responding to their emotional status. The parents can also explain the proper response system to extreme emotions through role play method or by imitating the behavior of the child. Then the children can easily understand the healthy way of execution of emotions and thus we can help children to regulate emotions.

Find out the Triggers and Avoid them

The parent should help the children to find out the triggers of their emotional disturbance and also try to avoid those triggers so that they can regulate emotions- they can express their emotions in a healthy way. For example, if a child is in fear of darkness, we should assure them that they are not in darkness. Similarly, if a child is not comfortable with public speaking, we should not force them. The situations which are painful to them, the place or people or situation which make them uncomfortable, we should help them to avoid those triggers and thus help children to regulate emotions.

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Take a Break

It’s very beneficial for the children to learn to take a break in extreme emotional situations so that they can explore their emotions properly and express emotions in a healthy manner. We can teach children that if you are too angry to somebody, you should take some minutes, take deep breathe and then response. Taking break for some moments is really beneficial for them to regulate emotions as here their attention is distracted from the trigger point and the intensity of emotion is decreased.

Going for a short walk, deep breathing, counting numbers etc. can act as the breaks here. The parents should help children to regulate emotions by teaching them to take a short break and then show their emotional response

Words from Wingsofwishes.in

To learn to regulate our emotions is the most important skill of us in today’s world as emotional regulation increase our attention, resilience and self-esteem. If we can help children to regulate emotions , their growth and development will be maximum as the emotional regulation fosters the growth of cognitive, social and emotional development.

‘ Never allow Emotions to control you but allow you to control Emotions.

References

1.Emotional Regulation: 6 Key Skills to Regulate Emotions (positivepsychology.com)

2.Emotional self-regulation – Wikipedia

3.Emotional Self-Regulation: What This Is and How You Develop It (healthline.com)

4.10 EMOTIONAL REGULATION ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS – Your Therapy Source

5.How Can We Help Kids With Emotional Self-Regulation? (childmind.org)