What if I IGNORE kids' emotions?
Dear EQuipped Leaders,
As part of our EQuipped Classroom training for leaders and teachers, we teach five ways to respond to emotion:
I want to do a deep dive of each of these over the next few weeks, starting with our first option:
Ignoring emotion.
Ignoring emotion is always an option. Not a healthy one, but it is an option!
In my experience teaching, this is what ignoring a student’s emotion went like:
I’d be excited about the activity or discussion I spent hours prepping the night before. The kids would be filing through the door getting settled, as I was setting everything up. As I walk by Sophie’s desk, I notice she’s off. She’s rocking back and forth in her chair. I know the name for this is “psycho-motor agitation” now, but I didn’t need to know that word to know that when Sophie did this, something bad was about to happen. She was going to explode.
I’m in my 5th period, so I’m pretty worn down at this point in the day. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy trying to support Sophie throughout the year and my patience with her is also running thin. I really want to get the activity that I have planned and not deal with a meltdown from her. She clearly has some big emotions.
What should I do?
I’d be lying if I said I never ignored students’ emotions as a teacher. I mean, I’m a human being. Hoards of kids bustling into the room every hour, and I’m trying to get them to learn. That anything productive ever happened feels like a miracle, and there is no way that I was a 100% supportive of all of my students' emotions. Of course not, I messed up constantly.
Responding effectively to students’ emotions is also massively inconvenient. It is way easier for me as the teacher to just ignore emotion than to address students’ emotional needs.
But instructing emotion is also the only way learning is going to happen in my classroom. If a kid can’t name her feelings and learn how to regulate them, she can’t be in a calm enough headspace to learn and process information. Kids are not floating heads; they’re attached to emotional bodies with lots of needs, which makes teaching them way harder!
Not that I’m one to preach. Take Sophie as an example. I do NOT want to deal with her and her big emotions on this particular day. I’m excited about my lesson, and I just want to teach in peace for once!
But Sophie is rocking back and forth in her chair. Sophie is struggling. If I ignore what her body is clearly showing me, then I’m choosing to ignore Sophie. If I ignore her struggle, her hurt, her rocking body, I ignore her.
If I give in to my own desire for convenience and productivity and ignore her, what happens next?
Maybe it blows up in my face later. She finally explodes, unsurprisingly, and it derails the whole activity anyway. If I had faced the issue head on and helped Sophie when I saw the signs, I could have avoided a blow up. Instead, I look the other way, and Sophie’s issues do not resolve themselves magically.
Maybe Sophie doesn't blow up. Maybe she suffers silently, rocking back and forth, unable to engage and participate with us but not disturbing her classmates. I get my way in this scenario: I get my activity uninterrupted. I get to maintain control. But what about Sophie? What have I taught her by ignoring her struggle? What is the cost of my efficiency?
Ignoring emotion is always an option. It can also be incredibly destructive for kids’ wellbeing. If you want to see a powerful visual of the effects of ignoring emotion in a child, watch the first few minutes of this video of the “still face experiment.” I find it disturbing but also a powerful reminder of what’s really at stake when we’re talking about emotions, especially children’s emotions.
So on my best day, I hope as soon as I notice Sophie’s struggle, I go to her, crouch down next to her desk before class starts, and gently ask her how she's doing. I calm myself down enough to be present and really look at and listen to her. I stop doing and I be there for her.
No one notices or compliments me for it. No one gives me a teaching award or praises my high test scores for it. I’ve just delayed my brilliant lesson, the one I stayed up late studiously working on. But I’ve also done the most important thing I could that day. I show up for a kid who really needs me. I don’t ignore her. I don’t abandon her.
How much work do I have to do on myself as an adult to be able to show up for kids this way?
:)
That’s why I’m here each week. Thank you for being here with me. Your presence here shows your awareness and kindness. The kids in your life are lucky to have an adult like you. In a world of still faces, thank you for staying present, staying soft, being here, growing. It’s no small thing—getting healthy and strong for the kids depending on us.
Better EQuipped Together, Elizabeth elizabeth@appliedeqgroup.com
Elizabeth graduated with a B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of Central Arkansas. She taught English for a decade and got to read and write alongside kids in 7th, 8th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade. The Applied EQ Group played an important role in her own personal EQ Intervention, and she is grateful to be able to spread the love and EQuip, empower, and encourage others. :)
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