You may have noticed over on the Facebook page that this week being Mental Health Awareness week, I've been sharing a bit about emotions and how we talk to children about them. It often feels like children seem to have very 'big' emotions (ask any one with a two year old!!), actually they will feel the same emotions as you and I, the difference is that we have learnt how to understand and regulate them.
Recent research by psychologists shows that most children don't learn to fully 'regulate' their emotions until they are about seven years old. Emotional Regulation basically means that a person can understand an emotion and respond to it, for example; "I'm feeling angry, I need to walk away". As adults, we don't manage this perfectly all the time, but studies have shown that if we can teach children to do this, it can massively help their mental health as adults.
So how do we start to explain emotions to children?
The most important thing we can do is talk about emotions, ours and theirs and to give them ways to talk things through and find a solution. Even for a child as young as two, its is really helpful to give voice to their emotions; "I can see you're feeling sad that we can't go out now" and offer a solution "Lets do this instead". The distraction might not work (not on our two year old!!) but the conversation about emotions has begun. With older children, we can ask them what they would like to do about it. Again, at the start, the suggestions may not be manageable and you might have to chip in, but over time, it teaches that we can have control how we respond to our emotions.
Now I'm passionate about books and story telling. Books are a great way for exploring emotions from a distance and help children to think about things other people might be feeling.
Here are some of our personal favourites.
Both my children love this book being read to them and we enjoy making the faces to show how the children are feeling.
These Pip and Posy books have been so well read (and dropped into the bath on one occasion!!) that they aren't at their best anymore but they are still favourites with the girls. The best thing are the pictures because there are so many little details and things happening that you can talk through.
We have spent a long time looking at this little bunny who is walking along the path on the last page and wondering what flavour her ice cream might have been and how she was feeling and then what our favourite flavour icecreams are and how we would feel if we dropped them on the floor.
These conversations are the beginning of understanding how other people can feel, how we can feel and what we can do about it. Hopefully we are sowing the seeds for kindness and better mental health.
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