Ep 7. Raising Successful Kids Skill #2 - Emotional Regulation

Hey mamas, welcome back. I'm so excited that we are in the depths of our six part series.  Highlighting the five essential skills that you need to practice with your child every day to raise them into great human beings who add value to the world.  Today we are on skill number two out of five.

So if you missed the overview and skill number one, you might want to go back and catch those episodes. If you're just joining us, welcome. It's so good to have you here in this special space where we support each other. and talk about everything that is easy and hard about being a mom to a new generation of kids.

Emotional Awareness

There's a lot of talk these days about not just IQ, your cognitive quotient, EQ, your emotional quotient, and that they both need to be nurtured and massaged and practiced and developed to be a holistic, well-rounded adult.  So today we're talking about how to support opportunities for learning for your infant, toddlers, and preschoolers, emotional awareness and regulation.

I think we really just should start by owning that this is hard for us as adults, that there is a whole sector of adult human beings who struggle intensely with this. And there's lots of reasons why.  But coming out of a pandemic has made it so much harder. I'm sure you can hear in my voice, I'm an extrovert. I'm a talker. I'm a connector. I'm social. But two years of isolation, and by the way, I live in the rural mountains of Vermont. Two years of isolation later, when the world started opening up again, I was actually really hesitant to go to gatherings. And the first few I went to, even though they had small amounts of people, mask, no mask, none of that mattered to me as much as how uncomfortable it felt to be emotionally engaged and regulating with other people again.

So know that you're probably in some type of recovery from this still, and your kids too. The easy way, the way our brains and bodies want this post pandemic parenting thing to be, is to just snap back to the way it used to be. Even if our kids never knew that way, we just want it all to go back to normal. It's not.  And it can't. Because there's a new normal that is normal for your kids.  So we need to teach them how to be aware of what they're feeling, what it means inside their body, and how they can express it.  Bonus! We get to practice too, and we need it. It's been a lot.  Here's an example of a toddler who is 18 months old.

In this example, this 18 month old has quite a bit of speech and a little bit of sign language. Both of those things really help. With emotional regulation, right, the communication frustration is lower, the ability to say things or sign things that are in her head to her parents that she wants to communicate. But even still, it's a moment, and she wants something. In this case, she wants a snack. She wants a cookie snack, and she's been told, no, we're not having a cookie snack right now.  And that resulted in hitting a parent.  Dangerously so, right, the way toddlers hit, just little smacks on the arm or the leg.  What is that?

That is instantaneously her feeling an emotion to being told no, not knowing what to do with that emotion and it manifesting inside her body. So she had to get it out by using her physical hands to communicate how she felt.  That's just what happens. We are feelers. We need to know what we're feeling and what to do with it.

So what was she feeling? Could be any myriad of things. Disappointment, anger, frustration. Let's communicate that with her.  “Wow, you are feeling frustrated. You really wish I would give you that cookie. You are feeling mad. You want that cookie right now”. You empathize with how she is feeling and label it in different ways.

Did you notice that? We have this habit and I'm not entirely sure where it came from, but maybe it's because our kids are so little. We think we have to bring things down to their little level. We have this habit of dumbing down their emotions to happy, sad, mad.  No matter what the experience they're having, no matter what the emotion is, we label it for them as, you're so happy, you're so sad, oh, you're so mad.

We have thousands of emotions.

So do they. We need to broaden the way we use emotional language and vocabulary. And in a moment like this, with this 18 month old, we need to label that emotion in multiple ways.  “Oh, you're so frustrated. You're really disappointed that you can't have that cookie right now. Oh, it looks like your body is starting to get so mad”. And when the hitting happens, that's where we draw the line, because that's not how we express our emotions.  It's not a healthy way to. And so you can say things like, “You're allowed to be angry, but you're not allowed to hit my body.  It is okay for you to feel disappointed. It is not okay for you to hit my body”. Can you hear how you've blended the labeling of the emotion, the empathy for how they're feeling with the line in the sand? This is how we're going to do it. Okay. So what do we say? 

“It's not good to feel frustrated. It doesn't feel good to feel angry. You could run in a big circle around the kitchen. You could stomp your foot three times. Here, I'll do it with you.  You could go jump on your pillow”. Give them ways to move their body and move the emotion through and out it. And if possible, go do it with them.

Modeling this is the superpower.

And do this over, and over, and over, every time you see the opportunity, to label an emotion, to empathize with it, to give them ideas of how to use their body to express it. And someday, you're going to have a kid who runs up to you and says, “I am so mad right now. So and so just did this. I'm so mad right now. I'm gonna go up to my room and jump on my pillow, but I'll be right back”.  Mama, that's a winning day. You gotta do the work. 

Today's skill, emotional awareness of what we're feeling and how to regulate the feeling and express it properly. I hope this has been really eye opening. I hope the strategies are landing with you, but I'd love to hear from you.

Please subscribe. Tell your friends to come listen too. Do this together when you go to playgroup. Hang out and try your strategies together. Be like, ‘Oh, we're Core Four Mamas’.  And then come on back here and share with me in the reviews, in the comments, and of course, our virtual village, our parenting community that's private and safe just for you, is always available, where I am there to support you every step of the way.

Alright, so, oof, that felt like a really meaningful episode, and if I'm feeling it here, I really hope it's landing for you where you are. So, till next week! We're, we're going to talk about, what are we talking about next week? We are going to talk about flexible thinking. So have a great week practicing emotional regulation and awareness, and we'll see you then.