Today I wanted to talk to you about children expressing their emotions. Now
we live in a society where it's very difficult to express emotions or your
feelings and, actually for males it's discouraged, largely because we live in a
society where sharing your emotions can be shown as a form of weakness. So how
does that play out for a parent and a child when a child is trying to express
how they feel about something? Are parents open to that or do they shut
that down? I wanted to talk to you today mainly about being able to open up that
communication and why it's important. The reason that it's important for parents
to listen to the emotions and the feelings of children, is that emotions
actually lead to actions. Now I had talked about this in a previous post, of
how there is this continuum of how your thought process is and what your
thinking, leads to actions and then actions lead to consequences. So having a
child come to you and express their feelings and emotions may not be a
natural thing, and it actually may be a very difficult thing for children to do.
The idea behind opening up the communication is to help the child
understand what is happening with them, so you can avoid the action and avoid
the consequences. We had talked about that before. Now how do you do that? Children
don't just come out and say, "I'm feeling depressed," or "I'm feeling low." Depending
on the child, some children have the vocabulary to express their emotions, but
most children do not. In fact, teenagers struggle with it. Which is why you'll
find they're moody, they're irritable, and then when you ask them how they feel
about something, they they become aggressive. They become standoffish. They
don't know how to communicate. Now, for younger children one of the best ways
that I have used, in working with clients that are young, is to use a chart with
faces on it. You can find this on the Smarter Parenting website. The chart
itself just has different emotions and then children can point out what emotion
they're feeling, and then you can begin to explore and expand on that. For older
children it's a little trickier and so you asking your child how they feel
is too broad a statement. What you need to do is be very specific about what
they think of what's going on in their lives. For example, I wouldn't go to a
teenager immediately and say, "How do you feel about school?" I would actually say,
"Ok what do you think about school?" and by bringing that up first we're actually
dealing with something that's not emotion related, but we can later get
into that as they describe what's happening. Now another technique you can
use for older children is something we call Observe and Describe. So in this
skill, if you look at it on the Smarter Parenting website, you're simply
just observing something and describing what it is that you're observing. Now it
seems like it would be super easy to do, the reality is is this is a tricky skill
to master and to do well. So I would recommend that you actually go to the
smarter parenting website and watch it. It's only a couple of minutes long. It's
super easy. Using Observe and Describe with a teenager who may be hesitant or
resistant to your communication, you can observe a child rolling their eyes and
then you can observe that and describe that. "So I noticed that you were rolling
your eyes at me when I told you what you needed to do, so tell me about rolling
your eyes." Okay. so it's almost a non-direct non-emotional approach, but it's
just observing something that your child is doing at the moment and then
describing that. For example, "I noticed that when I asked you a question you
put your arms together like this and looked down to the ground." Okay. That
actually is something that is observable and that you're using to describe what they're doing. And
then you can, it's almost like a springboard, into more conversation about
what's happening with your child. So those are two techniques that you can
use. For younger children I would use a chart. Any feelings emotions chart that
you can find on the Smarter Parenting website. And for older children I would
use Observe and Describe. Just observe them. Describe what they're doing and
then further questions, or ask them to clarify
what those actions are. Instead of going the route of, "How are you feeling about
this?" Another one is, What are your feelings about that?" Sometimes children
don't have the vocabulary to communicate that and sometimes it's super difficult,
even for adults to express their emotions in a way that's concrete and
easy to do. So you can try it with those. And I would recommend that you try it
with another adult. If you're having a communication with another adult, that
seems to be difficult or they seem to be standoffish, Observe and Describe them.
Just observe what they're doing. Describe what they're doing, and then ask them for
more details about that. Because they can't deny what they're doing. Or they
can deny what they're doing, but then you can Observe and Describe that too. So,
"Oh. So you're denying that, okay. So that's what I saw you do and now you're telling
me that that's not what you're doing so tell me about that, okay." So they're
indirect ways to actually get into feelings. Again, this is important because
what they're thinking, and their thoughts will lead to actions, so if we
can address thoughts, we can actually prevent negative actions from happening.
And by preventing negative actions we actually affect negative consequences. So
that is the tip for this week. So don't forget to subscribe. And visit Smarter
parenting website for Observe and Describe. It's a simple video. It doesn't
take very long and it'll give you the ins and outs of how to do it effectively.
That's it for me for this week we'll see you again next week.