(How adults can help children to understand their emotions)
It was the end of a typical school day. I was at the sink in the corridor, washing away the sand, paint and clay from my hands, the remnants from a play therapy session with a client. From my vantage point I observed the following interaction.
A girl aged about 8 was standing outside the hall where choir practice was due to take place. She clearly didn’t want to go in and was sobbing heavily.
I don’t know the cause of her sadness, whether she was anxious about going into the room, or whether something had happened immediately prior to this moment. Or perhaps there was no cause and maybe she was feeling tired and emotional – goodness we’ve all felt that way at some time or another.
Her teacher was standing next to her and in a kindly voice was saying;
“Come on – it’s not that bad! It will be fine when you get in there”
“Turn that frown upside down”
And then, the teacher put her face in front of the child and said “Boo!” Loudly. The child instantly pulled back. She stopped crying. Her mouth opened and she took a sharp intake of breath.
“See!” said the teacher. “That’s better. I knew that smile was in there all along!” and she took the child’s hand and lead her into the hall. The child sat down and the teacher went about her business.
Now, the teacher knows the child better than I do, and so she will have a much better understanding of what had caused the tears. This post is in no way a judgement of her. This kind of interaction is fairly typical of how many adults respond to children’s sadness. The interaction did however lead me to reflect on what types of messages we unwittingly communicate to children about their big emotions. In this brief interaction, the adult is communicating the following to the child:
Your sadness bothers me. I want you to stop being sad.
Your sadness will bother the other children. They need you to stop being sad.
It is possible to stop being sad because someone tells you to stop being sad
I am not interested in why you are feeling sad, but whatever it was, forget about it.
When I trigger a fear response in you by shouting BOO!, I will interpret this as happiness. So, don’t trust your own fear response.
You can be sad on the inside, but you should pretend to be happy on the outside.
When you show me you are ‘happy’ I can leave you.
This is a very confusing picture for a child who is still learning about their inner emotional world.
There is something about children’s powerful emotions that adults find very difficult to hold. Anger, frustration, sadness, and anxiety have a tendency to make us feel uncomfortable and we are fearful of what will happen if we allow children to express these emotions freely. Where will it end? We also worry that these emotions will affect the mood of everyone else. So we pursue ‘happiness’ as the only legitimate emotional goal. We’ve done our jobs well if we have “made the children happy”.
But, children need to learn to regulate all of their emotions and express a range of feelings in constructive ways. This is a vital factor in psychological health. Children who are able to regulate their emotions pay more attention, are able to achieve more in school, they are better able to resolve conflicts with their peers and they show lower levels of psychological stress.
Emotion regulation means being able to think constructively about how to cope with feelings. Our objective should be to allow children to experience a range emotions, and to support them so that they do not feel overwhelmed by them. We can do this by acknowledging the validity of the emotion, and sitting with the child as they experience it. Being there for that child. Supporting that child. When adults become overwhelmed by children’s emotions, then children learn that these feelings are too big to be expressed. Too big to cope with. They are not safe. They need to be kept inside. And when adults deny the emotion is real, then children learn that their own feelings are not to be trusted.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article and any practical examples of how you work to support children’s emotional wellbeing.
Jacqui xx