You Can Do This! | Helping Kids Handle Emotions (Ep. 1)

Let's admit it, being a parent is hard from having a nuclear level meltdown in the middle of the grocery store to being too afraid to fall asleep because of what's under the bed. Our children are faced with real and complex emotions and it's hard for us to know how to respond to them. In this series, we are going to help equip you to identify and respond to your kids' emotions. If we haven't met before, my name is Abby and I'm the mom to two adorable, full of spunk and occasionally difficult toddlers. I have a master's degree in counseling with a focus on kids and adolescents. I also help lead Everything Kids and Parenting for Crossroads Online Church. In this series, we're gonna take a deeper look at anger, fear, anxiety, and depression. You'll hear examples from myself and my friends, Stacey and Brian. Together, we have kids ranging from toddler through teenage years. From these learnings, you and your child will be able to come up with the best strategies based on the age, development, maturity, and ultimately, what works best for you and your child. You, the parent, are the expert and you have the most knowledge about your child, their needs, and what will work best for them and for you.

We're just here to empower you and to walk alongside of you while you help your child develop their emotional intelligence. When tools or strategies are referenced, imagine putting the tools that will work for you into a toolkit that you put together with your child or actually do it. Put together a physical toolbox of you and your child's favorite strategies, tools discussed in this series. Our family has a physical basket of our tools. It's our toolbox. In the basket are real and tangible items that we use depending on what emotion my kids are feeling and how we wanna work through it. We have a physical toolbox with our tools because I have young kids and they learn and process best when they can see and touch and experience the tool in order to best use it. Our toolbox has grown and we're constantly adding to it based on new ideas and things each of my kids are struggling with and working on. A few staple items that have always been in our toolbox are a feelings charts, some of our favorite feelings books, a handprint that serves as a reminder of a super easy and fast breathing exercise

that can be used to calm down, a pinwheel for practicing deep breaths, and even a sticker book. Maybe the physical toolbox is not for your family. Your toolbox can be an innate concept, a non-physical collection of learned and practiced skills. The tools, regardless of being physical or a collection of skills, will be accessed to assist you in coaching your child through naming emotions and responding to those emotions. If you do not need a physical toolbox, you may want to take notes or even make quick bullet points somewhere that you can access in the future as a reminder of the tools you wanna introduce later on to your kids. Let me tell you about how this has played out for me and my parenting journey. A few nights ago, I used a tool known as a feelings chart. This is a great tool for helping kids name their emotions. So back to how the toolbox works in real life. My two and a half year old, Ayla, was crying and whining a lot while I cooked dinner, while I folded clothes, while I colored with her. Every room I went to, she just followed closely behind whining and crying. There was no cause that I could pinpoint. So instead of doing what I really wanted to do,

which was slam my head into a wall and scream while pulling out my hair, why are you whining? Please stop! Leave me alone, go play! We have all these toys. Why are you following me around whining? Instead, I managed to stop myself, grabbed the toolbox, our physical toolbox, our basket, and pulled out the feelings chart. I got down on her level. I looked her in the eye and I said, Ayla, let's look at these feelings. Can you look with me? I pointed to sad. You are feeling sad, Ayla. It's okay to feel sad. Mommy feels sad sometimes. Ayla's sad, she said, pointing to the emotion using the words that I had just given her. Yes, you are sad. How can I help you when you feel sad? Don't touch me! She yelled loudly while backing away from me. My go-to when she's sad is to hug her because that's what comforts me when I'm sad. Clearly, at two and a half, she already knows that that's how I want

to try and comfort her and she already knows. That's not what she needs. While hugs are comforting to me, when I'm sad, they're not what Ayla needs. She likes time in a quiet place with her favorite blanket and some music. She wants me to be near her and not distracted on my phone or doing a task like folding laundry. She wants to know that I'm near her to hold her or read her a book or play with her. I followed her request and didn't touch her. I adapted my strategy or my idea of how to offer comfort to her need. Okay, buddy, I won't touch you. You are safe. It's okay to be sad. Mommy will sit here with you. Mommy, come Ayla's bed and get blanket, she said. She wanted me to go to her bed with her and get her blanket. And that's where her music is. She wanted me to sit with her, so that's what we did. We walked there together. I sat on the edge of her bed while she turned on her favorite song and she held her blanket and she cried. And I didn't touch her. I just sat there with her. After a few minutes of crying,

she crawled into my lap and she said, Ayla misses daddy. She cried into my shoulder while wrapping her arms around me for a hug. And I said, mommy misses daddy too. Thanks for sharing with me why you're feeling sad. It's okay to feel sad. And we can sit here until you're ready to go play again. I'm not going anywhere. That entire exchange only took about three minutes of my undevoted focus and time. She recovered pretty quickly because after all, she is only two and a half. She was able to bounce back because I helped give her words for what she was feeling. I validated her feelings. I showed her empathy and I put aside the tasks I wanted to do. And I sat with her. I didn't rush her. And I offered her the type of comfort that met her need in the way that she asked me to. It's not my go-to. It's not always easy, but it's what she needed. And by working through this together, I hope in the future, she will come to me and say, I'm sad because I miss daddy. Will you sit with me for a little bit? Instead of following me around room to room, whining and crying over and over again.

We obviously have lots more practice before that scenario will be happening. But for now, I count it as a win that my daughter named her feeling and we worked through that sadness together. Oh yeah, you know what? I also count it as a win that I didn't totally lose it on her for whining. And I let the laundry take the back burner to my daughter's needs. My promise to you is at the end of this series, you will have built some form of a toolbox that helps you and your child identify and respond to their emotions.