Co-regulating Your Child’s Emotions
Written By: Ream Moharam
Emotions, although seemingly easy to understand can be quite complicated at times. We often find ourselves confused with our own emotions, which can be a very scary feeling to experience. So, how do we as adults help our children regulate their emotions while trying to navigate our own?
Parenting is an ongoing process of learning, experimenting, and discovering. It is very easy for parents and caregivers to lose track of who they are or what they are feeling, especially first-time parents. It is important to be mindful of how you [the parent] feel before attending to your child’s emotional needs. Let’s take a moment to visualize what this means.
As an example, 3-year-old baby Lea has been going through what people call the “terrible 3’s”. She throws fits, does not listen to her parents, constantly makes a mess, fights with her siblings, etc. It is expected to hear a generic response of “She’s just a baby,” and while that might be true, it does not eliminate the fact that such behavior can be frustrating. Ignoring your feelings [the [parent], whatever they might be, and focusing on “fixing” the situation can lead to a more tricky case. However, if the parent practices being mindful of their feelings and attends to them before focusing on their child, a more positive outcome is expected.
So, back to our question above: How do we as adults help our children regulate their emotions while trying to navigate our own?
Here are a few ways we can manage our own emotions before attending to our children.
1. Practice self-soothing
Self-soothing tasks are things we can do as adults that facilitate a sense of calmness in our bodies. For example, practicing deep breathing, light stretches, listening to calming music, hugging yourself “butterfly hugs”, aromatherapy, positive self talk, and many other grounding techniques.
2. Portraying positive coping skills
It is helpful to recognize what your triggers are before implementing coping strategies in your life. In this way, you can choose the skills that best work for you. By constantly practicing healthy coping skills, you model such behavior to your child/ren which is a great way to encourage emotional regulation.
3. Emotional regulation
The steps above will ultimately help you work towards emotional regulation. When a parent is calm and regulated, they can reinforce that regulation towards their children. A great way to start practicing emotional regulation is through mindfulness and grounding yourself. Although there are other ways, I find these two ways a great way to begin.
Now that we have discussed how to self-soothe (emotionally regulate ourselves) let's discuss how we can emotionally regulate our children. Providing a secure and safe environment is key to encouraging emotional regulation in children. If a child feels safe expressing their feelings the chances are they'll feel safe regulating them.
Here are 3 ways to co-regulate a child
Label feelings
Help your child understand their feelings. Start with basic emotions such as sad, mad, happy, scared, surprised, disgusted. I love introducing a feelings wheel to children. Seeing what emotions are while learning them is very helpful for growing a child’s emotional awareness.
Soothing your child
Similar to soothing yourself, attending to a child’s emotional needs is crucial to learning emotional regulation. Soothing in the form of physical touch is very important (hugs & kisses, practicing dragon breaths [deep breathing], rubbing their hands/back, etc). Every child has their own preferences for physical touch, so feel free to accommodate based on your child's needs.
New options
Help your child learn problem-solving skills. Going back to baby Lea from the example above. If baby Lea was crying because she wanted to continue playing at bedtime, what could her mom/dad do? Solving the problem she is experiencing (playtime during bedtime) can tremendously soothe her emotions. If applicable, explaining to baby Lea that they will shift playtime to an earlier time in the day to have more time to play might be all she needs to hear. This shift might be a minor shift in the parent’s schedule (start playtime 5-10 minutes earlier) but will appear much more significant for baby Lea. The idea is to create realistic, simple solutions to teach your child how to regulate their Emotions.
Co-regulation might seem complicated at first, but once we realize the circle of security between parents and children it becomes easier to understand. It's ok to make mistakes. What might work for one family (in regards to regulating emotions) might not work for another. Be mindful of the process and surround yourself with self-compassion, it will all fall into place.
Roubicek & Thacker Counseling is Fresno’s premier provider of individual, couples, family, and group therapy. We offer in-person and online remote therapy sessions. Contact us today to change the way you feel.