The Parenting Hack you Need to Help Manage Negative Emotions (in yourself or your kids).
A couple weeks ago I received some parenting advice that’s created a new sense of calm in our household.
It’d been a week full of joys, but stressors too. My husband was working long hours on deadline, and I was home with the girls doing bedtime and dinner sola most nights.
With less help and more fatigue (and being 6 months pregnant), I admittingly found my fuse shorter. I noticed I was reacting to our daughters instead of patiently responding. I was even losing my temper at times.
Our routine had temporarily been changed and our girls seemed more irritable, more needy and their emotional displays were definitely more intense. How was I to best help them while staying calm and present myself?
Change in routine can be a challenge for anyone, especially children. And strong emotions can also be challenging if we don’t know how to accept and channel them.
With the coronavirus pandemic in full swing these days, change and strong emotions are something many people are dealing with. Parents are finding themselves working from home or at home with children thanks to closed schools. Parents may find themselves with many more opportunities to support their childrens’ emotions and to deal with their own personal emotions than usual.
So what’s the tip that has increased calm in the home?
The tip is simple, yet profound: put your feelings into words. As soon you observe a negative emotion in yourself, name it. Out loud.
Now, at the first sense of frustration within myself (muscles tensing, thought patterns turning negative) I stop and state what I’m feeling. It’s taken practice, but the results have been worth the effort.
For example, if I’d asked our girls twice to brush their teeth, and they were clearly choosing not to listen, I would feel myself start to get frustrated. I might even start thinking automatic negative thoughts (ex., “They never listen to me.”).
As soon as I realized how their choices were affecting me. I’d pause, and matter-of-factly say “I am feeling frustrated right now.”
That’s it. Stating those words aloud, I found, would dispel the mounting emotion and give me a feeling of control of the situation as I named what was going on. It turned me into an observer, and built space around the emotion. It stopped the negative feeling before it could turn into real anger.
With a clear mind, I could then address the situation calmly and come up with a creative solution (ex. “Let’s race to brush teeth. Or, let’s pretend to brush teeth like puppies.”). If these didn’t work, then I could state a consequence or discipline calmly.
(Do note that I’m careful not to say my daughters’ actions are causing my emotion. The goal is not ever to shame them or manipulatively change their behavior. The goal is for me to pause, label my emotion and then manage it before it turns to anger).
Teach your children this technique.
I now use this “emotion naming technique” often when one of our daughters is having a hard time. If our 2 year old is crying and yelling because her sister has a toy that she wants, I might say “You’re really mad right now. It’s okay to feel mad. You’re really mad because you want to play with that ball.”
By helping her understand what is going on and what she is feeling, she can begin to calm down and listen. Once calm, I can explain that once her sister is done with the ball, it will be her turn. She can understand this and (as long as she’s not too tired or hungry) will wait her turn.
If our 6 year old is upset because her little sister drew on her paper, the first thing I can model is stating what she is feeling. “You’re sad right now because your sister drew on your picture for Grandpa.” Oftentimes, she will now model naming her feelings back to me and will say, through tears, “I’m really sad she did that.”
Not only does this show our 6 year old that she’s being heard, it also shows her that whatever she’s feeling is okay. Stating the emotion validates it (letting her know it’s okay to feel it), creates space around the emotion to observe it, and then helps it pass.
(Note that at ages 6 and 2, lengthy discussions about emotions aren’t helpful. I’m not going to have our 6 year old try to analyze why her sister did what she did. We name the emotion and then engage in some activity that helps her work through it, like coloring, walking outside, or breathing).
So why does naming an emotion aloud help us recover control?
Research shows that naming a feeling aloud helps our brain activity transfer from the emotional part of our brain to the reasoning part. A 2007 study out of UCLA by Lieberman, et al., used fMRI to scan people’s brains while they labeled their emotions.
He found that verbally naming an emotion appears to decrease activity in the brain’s emotional centers, including the amygdala. This diminished activity in the emotional brain was coupled by increased activity in the prefrontal cortex (the reasoning and thinking center). Our emotional responses lessen and our reasoning abilities increase simply by putting our feelings into words.
I encourage you to give this technique a try this week, either with yourself or with one of your kiddos. Why not go ahead and use neuroscience to your advantage?
Label that negative emotion as soon as you recognize it and watch as you become a calmer, more present parent.