WHEN DO CHILDREN LEARN EMOTIONS
Just like labeling farm animals, favorite toys and foods they eat; you should also be labeling emotions for young children. Young children learn what feelings are, the words for them, and how to deal with them by parents modeling and talking about these skills.
Children as young as two years old can learn basic feelings like happy, sad, mad and scared. As your child masters labeling these basic emotions then you can talk about the quantity of that emotion. When we work with kids on emotions we talk about feeling a little mad or a lot sad. This is a simple way to introduce the concept of emotions having quantity.
As children master the fundamental emotions then we teach children about more subtle emotions like proud, frustrated, excitement and embarrassment.
Once a child is able to label their own emotions they are able to cope with big feelings and/or hard feelings.
In what way does one teach their child about emotions? One of the best ways you can do this is by labeling emotions in a non-judgmental way as they happen. For example, “You seem like you are a little sad right now. What is making you a little sad?” Be sure to label your child’s feelings, your own feelings and even feelings of others in books or on TV. Make sure that your child knows it is okay to feel all kinds of feelings. Many children believe it is not okay to feel angry. This is because of the reactions of adults around them. If a child is angry and can express it appropriately this is a wonderful step towards dealing with anger and prevents subsequent undesirable behaviors.
Here are some fun ways to work on emotional knowledge:
1. Make faces with your child and have him guess what feeling it is. It is also fun to take pictures of different feeling faces.
2. Ask your child questions about what they can do with their feelings throughout the day. “You are feeling mad because you can’t go outside. What could make you feel better?”
3. When reading stories ask your child how they think the character is feeling.
4. During mealtimes have a feelings check-in. Every can talk about a feeling they had that day and what made them feel that way. For older kids you can talk about ways of dealing with big feelings. Always remember that one should feel their feelings. They can be uncomfortable, but they never last forever. Feeling hard feelings is ok.
5. You can make believe different emotional situations with dolls and puppets. For some children this is a more comfortable situation as they may have strong reactions to big feelings.
These are just a few ideas for fostering your child’s emotional growth at home. If you believe your child is struggling with emotional regulation or any other emotional difficulty we can help! Call us at 651-636-4155.