Beth M. Broom, LPC-S, CCTP-II
I counsel a lot of adults who never learned how to regulate their distressing emotions. They come to me because they find themselves yelling at their kids when they feel anxious or escaping their sadness by misusing alcohol or social media or video games. I often wish these adults had access to some good training when they were young.
If you’re someone who cares for or counsels children, hats off to you! You’re helping children build a foundation that will serve them for the rest of their lives. Many of my friends counsel children, and they often say that the thing they’re working on most with kids is helping them understand and regulate distressing emotions. It’s not something kids learn in school, and most kids don’t learn good skills from watching the adults in their lives.
What are some ways to help kids with their emotions? What do they need to understand and learn? The first thing I want to do when I’m working with a child is to connect with her. I want her to know that our space is safe. That means she can bring her big feelings into the room, and she won’t get in trouble for them. She doesn’t have to be embarrassed about her big feelings. Instead, she can learn to see them as signals.
I like to use street sign terminology, because that’s something kids seem to understand. I’ll say, “When you’re riding in the car and see a stop sign, what does that mean? What about a sign with an arrow?” Signs help us know where to go and what to do. The sign only works if you’re paying attention to it. Also, a sign can’t jump off its pole and make you obey it. It’s just a sign.
That’s how emotions are. They are signals that help us know what’s happening. I talk with her about the main emotions that are distressing: sadness, worry, embarrassment, confusion, and anger. I ask her to share or draw a time she felt each of these feelings. I also want to know how big the feeling was. Then I ask what she did to help those feelings get better. This leads us to talking about how we cope with distress.
For kids, simple is better. There are a few things you can teach a child that will help her regulate emotions. But try not to teach too many tactics or she might get confused. I like to teach deep breathing, physical movement, and mind-calming exercises.
I teach deep breathing by asking her to imagine blowing up a huge balloon inside her belly and then letting the air out slowly. Then we experiment with body movements that are calming, like swinging her arms back and forth slowly or reaching high into the air and then down to her toes. Then I teach her a mind-calming exercise like humming a nursery rhyme while holding her hand against her chest. We practice these exercises, and I ask her to notice how her distress gets weaker as she exercises.
It’s also important to teach kids about sharing their feelings with someone they can trust. Talking about our feelings helps us feel more connected – to ourselves and to someone else. This is important because we’re not meant to be alone. It’s also a way for us to get help if there’s a problem that needs to be solved. We should be able to say what we feel and ask for what we need. This is a concept many kids never learned, and it has led to all kinds of suffering.
If you have influence in a child’s life, remember that this is a gift from God. We need to train our children well, and we also need to BE with them. They are people, too. They don’t know how the world works, and they need someone to compassionately show them how to move through the world. We have created a resource called “Push the Brakes” to help kids remember tools for calming their big emotions. This tool is available for all CTHN Members. Click HERE to access it, and click HERE to learn more about membership with CTHN.
