From birth to six years old, children create the foundation for all learning. Therefore, using this time to teach emotional development is essential. Supporting your child during this age with emotional development leads to short and long-term success. These skills include identifying, understanding, expressing, and regulating feelings. The end goal? Emotional regulation- the ability to manage big emotions and challenging times in healthy ways.
How to Help A Child with Emotional Regulation
Children are not born knowing how to manage and regulate their emotions. They will need support from their caregiver in knowing what regulation looks and sounds like. The act of a caregiver supporting their child in regulation is called co-regulation. So what does this look like?
What is Co-Regulation?
To be more specific, co-regulation is the act of the caregiver helping a child manage their emotions during a challenging time or situation.
Example of Co-Regulation
- Reframe the Situation: As the caregiver, take a moment to reframe the situation as a behavior expressing a need. Taking this moment puts you back into your logical brain, which is more adept at supporting others.
- Acknowledge the Emotion: Voice to your child, “You are hitting because you are feeling mad.”
- Investigate the Trigger: Determine the trigger of the behavior. Ask, “What are you feeling mad about?”
- Provide Alternatives: Offer alternative options. “If you are mad that your brother took your toy, you could ask for it back or take a deep breath and count to 5.” “I will not let you hit others. I will hold your hands to support you, or you can squeeze this ball if your hands need a job.”
Practicing Emotional Regulation With Activities
Identifying Feelings
The first step in the progression and starting place for beginning conversations about feelings and emotions.
Name that Emotion: Provide books, printables, or a mirror; see if your child can identify or create different emotions.
Puppet Play: Create different feeling puppets. Have your child put on a puppet show to act out each feeling. Try the same scenario—going to the grocery store—and have the different feeling puppets react in their own way.
Understanding Feelings
The next step is understanding feelings- this allows for relationship and empathy building.
Guess Why: Provide books or printables of different feelings and see if your child can think of why someone might feel this way. Start with book characters- this will provide context for your child to understand why someone might feel a certain way. Then progress to just faces and your child brainstorming reasons for the feeling.
Expressing Feelings
The next step in the progression is expressing feelings because you have to be able to identify and understand feelings plus communicate them.
Sentence Stems: Provide your child with sentence stems to support their language. “I am feeling _____ because ______.”
Regulating
The last step of the progression is regulation.
Practice and Support: Continue co-regulating by offering choices and encouragement. You will notice that there are times when your child is able to regulate during a hard time, all on their own.
Additional Resources for Emotional Regulation
| Building a Calm Down Toolkit | Creating a toolkit with your child. This can provide them with tangible resources to help manage their emotions. Include stress balls, coloring books, and calming music playlists. Explain and practice using each item together so your child knows how to use the toolkit when feeling overwhelmed. |
| Mindfulness and Breathing Exercises | Incorporate mindfulness and breathing exercises into your daily routine. Try simple activities. such as deep breathing, guided imagery, or short meditation sessions. These activities can help children develop self-awareness and calmness. Due to the high level of fun, children are likely to use these techniques on their own. |
| Positive Reinforcement and Celebrating Progress | Notice and celebrating your child’s progress in emotional regulation reinforces positive behavior. Use praise and rewards to motivate your child and help them understand the value of managing their emotions effectively. Create a reward system that aligns with their interests and celebrates all successes. |
| Check out our: All About Feelings Lesson | Our Feeling Lesson supports the first steps of the progression- identifying and understanding emotions- the perfect starting place for helping your child with emotional regulation. |
Benefits of Emotional Regulation
- Healthier attachment to caregivers
- Increase in empathy
- Development of trusting relationships
- Increase in problem-solving
- Long-term success in academics, leadership, and resiliency
Conclusion
Developing emotional regulation takes effort, but there are clear steps and methods to support your child in mastering this skill. To begin, offer co-regulation during challenging times and gradually add more layers of assistance as needed. Ultimately, emotional regulation is a crucial tool you can provide your child to unlock powerful lifelong success.
Research Cited
Housman, D. K., Denham, S. A., & Cabral, H. (2018, October 31). Building Young Children’s emotional competence and self-regulation from birth: The “begin to…ECSEL” approach. International Journal of Emotional Education. https://eric.ed.gov/?q=teaching%2Bemotional%2Bregulation&ft=on&id=EJ1197894