Focus on Feelings

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As you know, there’s much more to your child than reading, writing, and arithmetic. These are monumentally important areas in your child’s learning and development as are the observable milestones such as learning to sit up, crawl, walk, talk, etc. However, they aren’t the whole picture. While most parents stay on top of tracking junior’s motor skills, knowledge of the alphabet, and homework completion, there’s a critical and related part of the child that is constantly engaged, emerging, and evolving- often without much guidance. A child’s emotional life and development, though harder to observe with the naked eye or during a well-child check-up, underpins major components of their personality and can shape their functioning, social interactions, worldview, and behavior.

Children’s emotions are, in part, reactions to what goes on around them as well as drivers of their behavior. Added to the mix is individual temperament, which can vary dramatically from one child to the next. Some children bounce back quickly from upset while others can sustain an extreme level of distress for long periods of time – as though their high-powered emotional systems, once revved up, have a hard time calming back down. Neither is “wrong,” but each having unique needs and both can benefit from guidance, nurturing, modeling, and teaching.

Emotional development, which is intertwined with all other areas of development (especially social skills), may seem like a big, vague thing to take on as a parent. Nevertheless, it doesn’t have to be out of reach.

Dr. Bruce Perry, a senior fellow at the Child Trauma Academy, developed the following list of six core strengths for healthy emotional development that can provide a “strong foundation for.. health, happiness, and productivity:”

1. Attachment: How to form and maintain healthy relationships. Children begin to learn this in infancy based on their experience of bonding with a safe, trusted caregiver or parent.

• One thing you can do: Do special projects together.

2. Self-regulation: The ability to think before acting, which also involves learning to notice and manage urges such as hunger and sleep and feelings of anger, frustration and fear.

• One thing you can do: Model self-regulation by using a calm and matter-of-fact tone when responding to your child’s mistakes. Label your own feelings in a calm way, i.e. “I am feeling frustrated because…”

3. Affiliation: The ability to join others and contribute to a group. This strength is very related to a child’s ability to form attachments.

• One thing you can do: Get to know your child’s friends and offer opportunities for your child to be with peers their age at your home or in your presence.

4. Attunement: Thinking of others. This strength is about recognizing the needs, interests, strengths, and values of others. Responding to the needs of others is a core element of successful human communication.

• One thing you can do: Talk with your child about how to listen to others. Model un-biased approaches to interactions and people rather than stereotypes.

5. Tolerance: Accepting differences. This is the capacity to understand and accept how others are different from you.

• One thing you can do: Notice judgmental statements and work with your child to correct them whenever possible. Model openness to and interest in new situations, places, and people.

6. Respect: Respecting self and others. This involves appreciating the value in yourself as well as others.

• One thing you can do: Help your child feel valued and special; this builds self-respect and allows them to respect others. Focus on the positive with your child and remember the power of your words to undermine the development of a positive sense of self- especially critical/negative/disrespectful comments.

Building your child’s self-awareness about their feelings is a big piece of the emotional development puzzle. There are lots of ways to teach children to identify and verbalize their feelings while also having fun. Here are just a couple of ideas to get you started:

• For young children, put up a feeling faces chart somewhere central, like the kitchen. While you’re making meals, ask them to point to how they are feeling.  Download basic blank feeling faces chart or follow this link for some other chart ideas.

• Using a sharpie and a Jenga game, write feeling words on each Jenga wood piece. Play the game according to the instructions, adding that when a player removes a block from the stack during the game, they have to talk about a time they experienced the feeling written on their piece of wood. Follow this link for a list of feeling words you can use for your game.