Analyzing Your Children Sentiments Positively - Final Part III

Blog by Tushar Sheth

Parents, I am continuing my new series on Analyzing Your Children Sentiments Positively - Final Part III here sharing my insights and experience in parenting children further

If mom or dad get really upset mom or dad can take care of themselves and they can calm themselves down some other ways that you can practice emotional regulation in families is you know take a feeling thermometer print went out and let your kids color it in and stick it up on the refrigerator maybe at dinner each night you can say a red zone in a green zone moment from the day from each family member. If you don't want to use the feeling thermometer or red zone green zone language you can simply say let's each say our thumbs-up or a thumbs-down for the day for younger kids you might take a mirror a hand mirror and actually practice making silly faces and mad faces and scared faces and have your child look in the mirror and really look at how their face looks appears in the mirror. As they're making those faces you can also help kids think about when they feel a certain feeling we're in their body they feel it so a lot of kids have heard the term butterflies in my stomach so you can use that and say okay what does that mean sometimes when people get a little anxious maybe they're nervous because they have a spelling test the next day they might have some upset in their stomach so helping them to label that in link where in their body they feel different emotions can be really really helpful. 

Here's just another example of a feeling thermometer that a child could color in and just again make it kind of playful so that it's not all about sitting down and having a conversation about emotions also you can do this through reading and I love this activity. Just take a book that has a lot of pictures in it maybe a lot of pictures of animals or or human depictions that have feeling faces and go through a search through the book and look for different feelings kind of a scavenger hunt. Through the book you can also use something that's called dialogic reading which is really just essentially you can take a picture walk through the book. You don't have to read every word that's on the page but just turn open the book open to any page and say what do you see on this What do you think is happening on this page? What do you think the tortoise is feeling? What do you think the rabbit is feeling? and all of that are ways that you can weave in emotional labeling emotional expression so that in the moment when you're finally having a tantrum and having to deal with it your child already knows those feeling words they already know those coping skills. So you can in the middle of that tantrum say we need to calm down we need to go and take three deep breaths and then we're going to go take a break just like how mommy takes a break before she calls her sister because that's what makes mommy feel better feeling charts can also be really really helpful. 

This is a great way just you know if you have on the refrigerator when your child comes home you can say How was your day? What feelings did you have today? and it's just a great conversation starter you can also make a list of coping skills you can make a list of things that can help kids get from the red zone down to the Green Zone. So, in other words find their own getting to green strategies and I just want to end with acknowledging that I have a lot of really great programs here with me that can help teach parents help work with kids around tough feelings and I put a few up here and feel free to contact me if you have any questions I have some that really focus on infant and parents that's the family development program. I have some that focus on preschool age kids called The seeds Program helping them get ready for school and the transition into school and really focuses a lot on social and emotional development and the care center that child anxiety resilience and education. It shows help enhance or regulate your child's emotions. Well, there's actually a great movie that just came out this year an award winning movie called "Inside Out" and this movie I think really takes a good glimpse into the life of a child. And I think for parents to watch it is really helpful to see that children's emotions are so complex and sometimes you're looking at your kid you're like I don't I just don't get it what is possibly making them so sad or so mad. But it really can be a conversation starter if you watch that movie with your kids. I think you could have a great jumping off point to some really nice conversations about their own emotional experiences and about yours as well. 

I've heard some parents you know ask about TV or a few times during their talk. I've said you know let them play for a moment on the iPad. If they have a favorite game and we certainly don't want to over use that coping strategy like any coping strategy we want to have you know a wide range of them and not overuse any one of them. So, for a parent it may be fine to have a glass of wine but you don't want to over use that strategy for a child taking a break it to play their favorite game on an iPad may be fine for 20 minutes. But don't over use that strategy now that said. There are some great resources and games that actually have teach feelings and teach about emotional regulation. One example is a program that I have created here called focus on the go and there's a version of it for foster families as well called focus on foster families and there's just some great games and activities that can help kids to learn different feeling words learn coping skills and figure out some ways that they strategies. They can use to help themselves calm down also. Another question here is mind-body approaches and are these useful for children and families? and the answer is absolutely. There's a lot of work that's happening now about using mindfulness even in kindergarten classrooms and in preschools anytime you can connect what's happening in a child's mind you know. What are the feeling states they're having with their body? You're helping them to identify yet another way that they can identify when they're triggered. So if you teach them okay What happens when you feel sad? Well, I start crying okay so when you have tears in your eyes that's a cue that you're feeling sad or I get those butterflies in my stomach that's a cue that I'm starting to feel a little nervous. So when I feel those initial triggers in my body What are the things I can do to calm myself down? and that's where are things like deep breathing you can take a stuffed animal and place it on your child's abdomen and teach deep breathing that way teach them to bring the breath all the way down into their stomach and rock the stuffed animal up and down. Sometimes I say it's like rocking the stuffed animal to sleep on their belly. So that's essentially belly breathing also you know teaching some of the coping strategies like exercise let's go on a walk or play basketball or go on a run those are other great ways that kids can see that they can get their energy out and it teaches them about how their brain and their body are connected any other questions okay thank you so much for this opportunity to share about emotions and I look forward to hearing more from you.