How To Talk To Your Child About Feelings?

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

You do not need to specifically teach your child to speak, basically, he will learn to speak by imitating you. But if in early childhood you did not show your child what the language of emotions is, then he will have to learn this at a more mature age, as a previously unknown foreign language

And learning a language, if you want to speak it like your own, is still better from early childhood.

- Why upset him?

- Yes, he still does not understand anything, why explain to him?

- No, I never cry in front of a child, I do not want to frighten or upset him.

- We sort things out only when the child is asleep, the child does not see when we are fighting.

- We do not tell him that we divorced, we just said that dad is on a business trip.

I would like to start with the fact that most of the first and fundamental experience of what life is, who I am, how to interact with the world and people, children adopt when they still cannot really speak. Learning, to a large extent, occurs by example or imitation of adults, by experiencing experience. But even then, when they can understand your explanations in words, the family is the first and main source of these ideas about themselves and the world around them.

The basic principle of upbringing, in my opinion, is the proverb:

Do not bring up children, they will still be like you, educate yourself

Emotions are an important part of our life. Understanding your own emotions and the emotions of others is an indispensable quality in interacting with them, as well as in understanding your own desires and motives.

The development and formation of emotional competence or emotional intelligence begins from the first days of a baby's life.

If we compare this process with the process of developing a child's speech, then it is easy to understand that teaching a child to understand and manage emotions can be done in the same way as teaching him to speak. Simply put, he needs to see how his parents experience these emotions, express them, and also help him explore his own emotional world.

How you yourself manage your experiences will determine how your child will handle them. And we are talking not only about how he will express joy, love, tenderness, but also fear, anger, confusion.

Some families adhere to the idea of "emotional sterility", which is that children are tried in every possible way to protect them from such experiences as sadness, regret, sadness, fear, anger, resentment, grief, disappointment. As if there is a period during which children should not know about this part of life, reality.

"He still doesn't understand anything, he probably didn't even notice that dad was not at home longer than usual."

This often happens because the parents themselves do not know how to deal with their own fear, anger or frustration. They may be afraid of such difficult and intense experiences and may not know how to talk about these feelings with the child, how to “be” with him in these feelings.

Meanwhile, a significant part of the events and situations around your child will cause these experiences in him. Only that such a child will not know what to do with them, or he will learn that it is impossible to feel such feelings, “bad”, “ashamed”.

I often cite the metaphor for parents that trying to be too sterile around a child is not always a good thing. You dust off every day and vacuum twice a day, trying to create a safe environment around your baby. But this is often the reason that the child's body is not ready for a collision with real life, life in which there is dust, microbes, etc. The child's body must learn to recognize them and resist them. This is not possible in an artificially sterile environment.

It's the same with emotional health

It's okay to get upset and sad, feel confused, angry, ask for and provide support. Just like rejoicing, feeling tenderness, awe, admiration.

Of course, your child will face frustration, pain, doubt, and fear. But you cannot protect him from this, you can only be with him in these experiences, teach him to understand them and cope with them, gaining experience.

Feeling and expressing a feeling are not the same thing. Expressing your emotions - you also demonstrate to your child “what to do if I am angry, hurt, upset”.

If you yourself restrain your anger and irritation, and, exploding, break dishes or physically punish your child - you give him a lesson in how he should act if he is furious, and someone else does not do what he wants.

Often these parents complain that their child is fighting

Although a constructive way of expressing your anger would be, “I’m angry, I don’t like it when you do this. Let's agree.."

If you hide your tears, you may be letting your child know that crying is not good, or even embarrassing. Or, in this way, you convey to him the idea that "no one should be upset with your difficulties and worries."

By expressing your own feelings, you teach your child how to deal with the feelings within him.

Some of my colleagues told me a story (I don't remember a fictional one or a case from practice), when parents, fearing to upset their son, quietly bought him a new similar hamster every time the hamster died.

If it seems to you that hiding the divorce from the child, you save his feelings, know that this is not so. Children are so sensitive to changes around them, the younger they are, the more. And the lack of clarity, the inability to talk about their experiences, gives rise to a feeling of anxiety and tension, to which children often react somatically.

My friend's one-and-a-half-year-old daughter came up and hugged her mother, felt sorry for her when she cried. After all, she could not find out from anywhere. She saw it, she experienced it. Therefore, she remembered that when someone cries, you should not be afraid, you should not pretend that you do not notice the tears, but you need to express support, regret, hug. Is it possible to explain this to a one and a half year old child? Of course not, you can only show an example.

Do not be afraid to express and demonstrate your feelings, call your feelings in words, explain to your child what is happening to you: "I am crying because I am sad." Also tell your child what happens to his feelings: “You were upset, of course it is unpleasant when ……. I would also be upset if I were you."

There are situations that will definitely be traumatic for the child, cause strong feelings in him, such as divorce. And nothing can be done so that he does not feel sad, does not get upset at first and does not miss one of the parents. There is no such way. Moreover, he even needs to be sad, upset, cry, probably even get angry, feel despair in order to survive this loss and accept it. It is important for the child to understand what exactly will change in the relationship between the parents and in his own relationship with each of them. And of course it's good if you let him feel all this, express, find the opportunity to support him in this.

You do not need to specifically teach your child to speak, basically, he will learn to speak by imitating you. But if in early childhood you did not show your child what the language of emotions is, then he will have to learn this at a more mature age, as a previously unknown foreign language. And learning a language, if you want to speak it like your own, is still better from early childhood.