An emotional rollercoaster.
I have been thinking a lot about emotions recently. Mainly because I have had to write an essay about teenagers and their emotions but also because I’ve been working with children where their emotions are overwhelming for them and us.
When we think of emotions we tend to just think happy or sad. But feeling emotion is an incredibly complex process, which includes our bodies and our brains and a lot of connections between the two.
The frontal lobes are responsible for social behaviour, controling our emotions and our character and personality. Then there is the Amygdala which is found just under the Hypothalamus, which mainly directs our fear response, fight or flight. Then there is the impact that our emotions have on our bodies.
From an Open University Reader by Cindy Kerawalla (2020)
So when our children have an over response to you giving them the wrong coloured cup, we see that there are a number of the parts of the brain getting involved and the body is getting involved too. Whilst this is all happening, our children may get scared which makes everything worse. But half the problem with our children’s emotions is the parts of the brains that involve emotions are just not properly developed yet. In fact (sorry to scare you) the frontal lobes don’t properly develop until they are in their 20’s!
This is a very simplified description of what’s involved in emotions, but hopefully it gives you a glimpse.
How can we help?
Understanding
You’ve already started with the first one. You’ve started to try and understand what is happening. This has been revolutionary for me, when supporting my little one. As mentioned before he has ADHD, so experiences emotions to a high degree. When he is having a melt down, I try to imagine what’s happening in his brain. Normally his amygdala is processing this emotion and he doesn’t go into flight mode (move away from the situation). He goes into fight mode! This is really hard, because he can say hurtful things. But knowing that his amygdala is taking charge, helps me to keep calm and not respond to the things he’s saying. It’s almost like a dinosaur emerges and there is no point at that time trying to tame it. So I let it ride out and then when he’s completely calm I then discuss what happened. Obviously if your child is attacking you, you need to keep your self safe and others in the family. Normally for us, that’s moving him to his room, until calm descends.
Expand your child’s emotional vocabulary
Often our kids really can’t express how they are feeling. Mainly because they don’t have the emotional vocabulary. But also in the moment, they find it really difficult to say how they are. There are a few ways to expand their vocabulary. Firstly start by sharing your emotions. Now I am not saying that you use your child as a free counsellor. You don’t need to share all of your feelings with them. But when appropriate, maybe explain how you are feeling, how it might have had an impact in how you acted. Give them the words to say in a future situation and help them know how those feelings impact us.
When watching TV or reading a book together , you can comment about the characters feelings or ask your children what they think the characters might be feeling. It’s really interesting listening to their responses. Sometimes you might need to give multiple choices of feelings to help them along.
We have a Makaton feelings chart at home, so at the end of the day he chooses a picture that best describes his feelings about a particular situation and then we talk about what happened to change the feeling.
Use your emotional vocabulary to describe their emotions at the time. ‘You seem to be really sad’ or ‘that must be so frustrating’.
Strategies
Come up with some strategies that support calming down when they are cross or sad or super excited. It may be they like a hug or they really like hiding under the table. Maybe allowing them to productively shout or hit a pillow could be a better solution than hitting a person. Write them down and have them somewhere so when they are feeling that emotion they don’t have to remember it and neither do you. Breathing patterns are also great for children who get anxious.
Emotions are ok
Another aspect to understand about emotions, is that all emotions are valid. We all get angry or excited and we all get sad. We have to teach our children that it is how we act and behave when having those emotions that’s the important thing. So when we are angry there must be a valid reason for the anger, but it is never ok to hit someone when angry. Helping your children understand that its ok to feel their emotions is so important, but we have to learn how to act too.
I hope this has helped understand emotions a little bit more and I hope you can experience a bit less of an emotional rollercoaster.