7 Tips To Help Your Child With Emotional Regulation
Are big feelings taking over your household? One of the most challenging parts of parenting is helping your child with emotional regulation. It is also one of the most important parts of parenting. When you help your child with their emotional regulation skills, you give them the opportunity for success later in life.
Learning how to manage feelings such as sadness, anger and disappointment is a critical part of growing up. If your child can understand and use their emotions in positive ways, it reduces their everyday stress and helps improve their relationships.
In fact, the ability to relieve stress, communicate their feelings and overcome challenges is a bigger predictor of a child’s success than their IQ.
Of course, this is easier said than done. Children are complicated, amazing and exhausting! The good news is that it’s never too late to start building strategies into your family life to help your child cope with their feelings. A small step now can lead to large rewards as your entire family learns to better support healthy emotions. Here are seven tips to help your kids with emotional regulation.
Outdoor physical activities help kids improve their mood
Think about the last time you went out for a walk on a sunny day. Did your mood improve? Chances are you felt better after getting outside and moving your body. The same is true for our kids. Our children need regular breaks from school, screens and the pressures of growing up.
Being outside in nature has been shown to improve a sense of well-being while also reducing stress hormones so it’s no surprise that simply stepping outside can have fantastic benefits for your child’s emotional system.
Exploration activities such as jumping through a leaf pile or building a fort allow children to express their feelings through movement while painting with mud or making a “potion” from nature (i.e. pebbles, grass, acorns) can also help to relax growing nervous systems. For older children, this could look like planting bulbs for spring or bird watching.
Whether your child is going for a bike ride, laying in leaves, making an outdoor fort or just looking at the stars, their ability to self-regulate will be improved by getting fresh air and moving freely in their environment.
Free play for kids promotes emotional self-regulation.
Children learn to work out their feelings best when they are given the chance to play without rules (except for safety, of course) and without expectations. Free play also allows children who struggle with controlling their emotions to learn how to notice their feelings and start to problem solve.
While many of us grown-ups process feelings by talking them through, or taking space, children process feelings through play. If your child is unusually upset and you are unsure why observing their play can give you a window into their world. You may see them “playing out” something that’s been bothering them. For example, if they have a grandparent in hospital, you might see them playing doctor.
For older children, play can look like expressive arts, writing or music, a card game or a board game. Pay attention to what kind of activities your child chooses and make some time each day for them to develop their emotion regulation skills using these open-ended, play-based strategies.
Healthy habits create emotionally healthy children.
We all know how it feels to go to bed late and wake up feeling tired and moody. So it makes sense that we can’t expect our children to do the complex cognitive work it takes to regulate their emotions if we don’t first set them up with healthy habits.
Most kids benefit from a regular schedule that involves the following:
Going to bed and getting up at roughly the same time each day
Getting restorative sleep
Eating a balanced diet
Having at least one meal a day at the table
Spending time at family meals is helpful for mood regulation because not only does it support healthy bodies but also builds social connections between family members - both of which help with emotion regulation.
If you feel yourself getting overwhelmed, remind yourself that small changes can make a big impact, so focus on little changes you can make towards a more predictable routine, healthy eating and good sleep. This in turn will support your child’s ability to balance their emotions and self-regulate during challenging moments.
Caring adults are the key to your child’s emotional development.
If we as parents model our emotional regulation strategies during stressful situations, our children will gain confidence that they too can learn how to control their emotions in positive ways.
Moods can be contagious so it is important to manage your own feelings, especially since looking after yourself helps you be well prepared to support your child’s emotional needs. Looking after your own needs can help you stay more regulated, which will help your child better regulate as well. Things you can do for yourself include:
Journaling
Meditation
Physical activity such as yoga or walking
This can put a lot of pressure on parents though, so be kind to yourself and do what you can on any given day. If you have trouble regulating yourself, you are far from alone. Many of us did not receive the kind of nurturing we hope to provide for our children.
The good news is, that as you take small steps toward better regulating your own emotions, your child benefits. Your personal growth benefits your child. If you have trouble taking time for yourself, thinking of the benefits it has for your children may give you permission to prioritize your own self-care and emotion regulation.
Support your child’s self-regulation skills through family fun.
Feeling connected to people that you love helps reduce stress and encourages family bonding, which is the ticket to protecting your child from a lot of life’s adversities. The demands of everyday life can make this feel very difficult, but celebrating small moments can have a big impact. If you can find joy in sharing things with your family, be it a new sport, playing a favourite game or a silly joke, everyone in the family will benefit.
On difficult days, using gentler techniques can help calm down a child’s nervous system and renew their sense of peace. These include:
Listening to music
Enjoying essential oils
Curling up on the couch to watch a family movie
As parents, sometimes we have a hard time letting ourselves off the hook on a hard day. Trying to push through can lead to frustration and conflict. Being able to recognize that you need to let some things go on hard days can really help. Having family fun together without any expectations allows everyone to work on their own emotional self-regulation in a safe and supportive environment.
Build an emotional support system around your child and family.
Parenting can be draining. There are so many ups and downs, so many judgement calls and so many triggers for our own emotions. Incorporating different people in your child’s life not only shows them how others manage feelings and practice self-regulation, but it also gives you the opportunity to take care of yourself and your own emotional well-being.
Parenting was not meant to be done alone. We were meant to have a village of other people there to support us. Think big and consider all the forms of support that are available to you, both close at home and in the wider community. Informal supports refer to trusted family, friends, neighbours and community groups while formal supports include (but are not limited to) medical, recreational, and mental health professionals.
There is no right or wrong way to build your own personal village; the important thing is to surround your family with individuals who understand and respect the challenges in emotion regulation. This allows your family to stay on track or access support if your child needs more help coping with their feelings.
Take the time to emotionally connect with your children.
Let’s be honest - being a parent is a lot of work. The emotional labour of parenting can overwhelm the most prepared and conscious parent. There is so much pressure on parents to teach their children how to be kind, polite, and responsible. We’re here to help our kids learn about the world and how to stay safe. We get them ready each morning and tuck them into bed each night.
If you add in all the other demands of daily life, it is easy to get caught up in rushing around. You can turn the tables on this by encouraging everyone in the family to slow down and connect to their feelings - one of the building blocks of emotional regulation.
How can you do this? Start by pausing every once and a while by taking the time to connect with your child for the sake of connecting, without any goals or pressure to accomplish anything. There’s no limit to how this can look but some examples include:
Sitting together quietly
Reading a favourite story
Giving a hug
Playing a game
These moments can give your child the sense of security they need to allow you into their emotional world. It also teaches them that simple activities with trusted and loving individuals will help them regulate their own emotions and make their lives happier and calmer.
Summary
Adding strategies to support your child’s emotional regulation into your family’s life can feel like a monumental task. Remind yourself that even one little change in your daily or weekly life can have very significant impacts on supporting your kids’ capacity to self-regulate and manage their moods and feelings.
If your child is struggling with emotion regulation or if you would like more support, feel free to contact Attuned Families. We would be pleased to help you.