Let Children Experience Their Emotions

Feelings are at the root of how we participate in social experiences and develop emotional intelligence. Learning how to self-regulate feelings and emotions is an important developmental skill for children. Adults tend to want children to avoid feeling negative emotions, sometimes trying to re-focus them on more positive feelings. However, when we avoid our negative emotions, we are eliminating opportunities to teach self-regulation, emotional intelligence and problem solving.  It's important to experience all of our emotions!

Check out this Psych Central article on helping children feel their feelings.  In it, author Dr. Meghan Owenz highlights how adults can encourage children to feel their feelings and learn from them.  She also shares 5 tips from John Gottman on ways adults can help kids with their emotions, including: 

1.  Be aware of the child's emotions.

2.  See emotions as an opportunity for connection and teaching.

3.  Listen and validate the feelings.

4.  Label their emotions.

5.  Help the child problem-solve with limits.