How To Help Children Control Their Emotions: 4 Keys
Many fathers and mothers believe in a myth that, if applied to all facets of parenting, can be very harmful to the little ones in the house. This belief consists of the idea that boys and girls should limit themselves to relating to their emotions by expressing them spontaneously, without making an effort to learn from them or the consequences of regulating them in one way or another.
Actually, Helping children learn to control their emotions is essential Below we will see why this is so and how we can do our part so that they get used to living their emotional part, making it work in their favor.
Why is it good for children to control their emotions?
It is important to keep in mind that although the way in which we experience emotions in the first person is subjective, the consequences of expressing them in one way or another are objective. So much so that a good part of the process that turns us into adults consists of master basic emotional regulation skills that allow us to achieve long-term goals and live in society.
If we assume that the only thing that matters is experiencing emotions, without further ado, we are feeding a philosophy of life that sees the emotional and affective aspect as something of which we are passive subjects and in which we only participate as recipients. The ideal is, in any case, to be clear that one must and can consciously influence psychological processes linked to feelings and affects …and that this skill must be taught during childhood.
How to teach emotional self-control to boys and girls
Therefore, below we will review several tips aimed at how to help children control their emotions according to their objectives and interests, instead of limiting themselves to being a mere recipient of emotional states.
However, it must be taken into account that very young children, 7 years old or younger, will have difficulties when thinking about certain nuances attributable to emotions. For example, they will understand what “fear” means, but they will have a hard time understanding what the fear of not being able to do something is. That is why fathers, mothers and guardians must adapt to the degree of abstraction in which the child is capable of thinking.
1. Educate in affective prediction
Affective prediction is the mental skill that allows us to establish forecasts about our emotional state in the future. Focusing on this skill makes it easier for children to learn why it is useful and good to learn to manage emotions, since it encourages the habit of Compare expectations, on the one hand, and reality, on the other
A proposed activity, for example, could be to ask the child to think about how he or she thinks he or she will feel if he or she is going to talk to a boy or girl with whom he or she would like to make friends, and ask, once he or she has gone to meet that other person, , let him think about how he feels and compare his emotional state with what he predicted. In these cases, it is very common that a degree of fear and tension much higher than that which is later experienced has been predicted.
The ability to delay gratification is one of the most important, since it allows you to pursue long-term goals that require giving up short-term goals but that provide much greater benefits.
Set challenges based on setting a time during which you have to give up a prize to access a more important goal It is very good, since it generates the habit based on constant effort that will bear fruit in the long term.
To do this, it is important to keep in mind that the younger you are, the more difficult it is to postpone gratifications; The idea is not to exceed this minimum time during which you have to endure, as this would make the task seen as unrealistic.
For example, if it is estimated that there are some math activities to do at home that will take half an hour of work, you can divide that half hour into segments of 10 or 15 minutes, at the end of which there are a few minutes of rest or rest. leisure.
3. Don’t reward his tantrums
This is very important. Some fathers and mothers, without realizing it, make me compensate for having a tantrum, since these situations cause discomfort and discomfort, and giving what you want is the simplest way to make the immediate problem go away. However, society doesn’t work like that.
On the one hand, the family is the only group of people that has the duty and responsibility to spend time with that future adult, so the rest have no reason to consider giving in to this blackmail, and on the other, riding in anger It doesn’t help you learn to solve things yourself If not the opposite.
So, one of the best ways to help young sons and daughters, or boys and girls in self-care learn to control their emotions, is to simply not give rewards for expressing their feelings of anger in a very extreme way. and anger.
4. Build together explanations for failures
Controlling emotions is always put in a certain amount of effort to be able to aim for long-term goals or that have to do with participation in social circles. Frustration can make children embrace the idea that regulating emotions to achieve long-term goals is useless, and that the sacrifices made along the way have not been worth it.
Therefore, it is good that in situations that can cause frustration, the older ones help the little ones to understand what has happened, and to see that where at first it seemed that the efforts have been in vain, what has happened is that has had greater chances of success, although it may not be evident.
For example, if after having studied a little more than normal for an exam the grade received was bad, the boy or girl may think that this result would have been exactly the same as what he or she would have obtained if he or she had given in to the feeling of fear and not I would have bothered to face this discomfort by exposing myself to the uncomfortable task of practicing exercises that one finds difficult. Making him see that behind this apparent failure there has been progress is key.
