How do I instruct emotion for kids?

Dear EQuipped Leaders,

Hi!!! We’re here. We’re doing it. We’re being it! It’s really August now. How’s it going for you?

What’s your orientation to school this year?

Teacher? Leader of teachers? Parent? Student yourself? A combo?

Wherever you’re finding yourself this August, I hope school/life/work is going well for you. I hope you’re feeling all your feelings and building the life you want.

This has been a big week for my household. My oldest started kindergarten and my youngest turned one. Big transitions happening for us!

Transitions are healthy, hard, and messy. I’m trying to remember as a parent that my job is to support my new kindergartener through his struggles, not to try to prevent him from having them. It’s hard to watch a kid you love so much go through a new transition and inevitably struggle a bit to adjust. It’s also healthy. And it brings up A LOT of feelings. So for me that means it’s time to take a big full belly breath and reach for an emotional regulation tool. Because emotions are happening! They’re happening BIG TIME. So I need to be EQuipped. Let’s talk about it!

When a kid experiences an emotion, we have some different ways we can react:

1-3 Ignore, inhibit, and invalidate are not going to help our kids grow in emotional maturity. They seek to avoid emotion. They don’t teach a kid how to regulate their emotions.

If you are going through a big transition in your life, and you only have option 1-3 to turn to, you’re not going to be able to regulate your emotions. You will not be EQuipped to handle the inevitable emotional upheaval of trying something new. Because transitions are hard and if you can’t let yourself feel and learn how to regulate your feelings, your growth is going to be limited. Your world is going to have to stay really small to keep you emotionally regulated. I don’t want that for my children. I want them to have lots of practice going through hard transitions, failing, feeling their feelings, and regulating them.

So how do I teach them that?

Here is our map for instructing emotion:

My favorite step and the one I think most adults skip is this is #2 Validate the feeling. Emotions are neither good nor bad.

Here is the kicker with this one. It only works if you actually believe what you’re saying and live it out in your own life.

I can tell my kid: “It’s okay to feel frustrated. All of your feelings are welcome.” until the cows come home, but if I’m not modeling that with my own way of being, it means nothing.

I experienced this with my son earlier this summer. He was doing this ninja gymnastics class with a few of his friends. It was going well and then suddenly he ran out to me crying and demanding to go home. The situation went from 0 to 100 in a matter of moments. My son was struggling, and I had to show up. And I had an audience of about 15 other parents watching me which only added to the intensity of what was happening. Deep breath. This is what we’ve been training for! Emotions are happening. I can handle this!

I got down on his level, breathed deeply, and asked him what he was feeling. It took us a while to get to the root of what was going on, but between tears and angry demands to “GO HOME RIGHT NOW” he was finally vulnerable and honest with me: “I’m so bad at this.” This was the first time the class had really challenged him, and he was frustrated.

Something popped into my head, and I switched out of parent-problem-solver role and switched into fellow human mode: “I know that feeling!” I said excitedly.

He stopped demanding to go home and looked at me.

I kept going. “I just started going back to my gym’s classes, and I’m usually the weakest person in the class. Everyone else is doing pushups on the ground, and I have to do them on the bar because I’m not strong enough yet. It doesn’t feel good.”

That was the turning point. Before that, it looked like we might not make it through the tunnel. We might have to call it and go home. But what my son needed more than anything was just a bit of space to feel the frustration of being bad at something new. And to know he’s not alone in feeling that way.

I’m bad at new things too. And it doesn’t feel good to me either. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean we’re doing anything wrong. It doesn’t mean we are wrong.

I knew what to say next, “It’s okay to be frustrated. AND you are worthy of getting to experience this class today. I don’t want you to miss this. You are worthy of this.”

He took a deep breath and walked back in and finished the class. I was so proud of him and so proud of me.

I can’t validate feelings for my kids that I haven’t yet validated for myself. I have a lot of validating to practice. What about you?

Just because you or your kids are struggling right now, doesn't mean you’re doing anything wrong.

The messy middle in me honors the messy middle in you. We’re still worthy of being here, of trying and failing, and beginning again.

Better EQuipped Together, Elizabeth