Inside: It’s important to start young when raising emotionally intelligent kids. This post breaks down 7 different ideas that you can teach to meet the emotional needs of a child. Free printable included!
My eight-year-old is trying to build a new LEGO set, but one of the pieces won’t fit. He grabs the piece, throws it across the room, and yells, “Ahhhh! This won’t work!”
I acknowledge his frustration and ask, “Yeah, that sounds really frustrating. How can I help?”
Table of Contents
A Child’s Relationship With Emotions
Many people grow up with an unhealthy relationship with emotions.
Newsflash: We can’t escape feelings because we were created as relational and emotional beings. It’s part of our DNA despite our personality or temperament.
Emotions like anger, disappointment, and sadness are often hard for people to navigate from the outside because emotions are very contagious. As parents, our nervous system can either be hijacked by our child’s own nervous system or used as a tool to help our kids co-regulate and calm down.
However, many adults have grown up with the notion that only happy emotions are allowed.
When you experienced similar frustrations as a young child, you may have been told that it wasn’t a big deal that your toy wasn’t working. Or you were told, “Stop whining!” or “Go to your room!”
I often hear well-intentioned parents say, “You’re okay,” when the child is clearly not okay.
When this happens, unfortunately, the emotional needs of the child are not met as they are stopped as quickly and abruptly as possible. Anything else that makes it harder for the parents is extinguished, whether through punishment, isolation, or harsh communication.
Most of the time, it’s unintentional, but we now know it can be very damaging to a growing child who eventually turns into an emotionally unhealthy adult, continuing the cycle all over again with his or her children.
Read Next: How To Handle Parent-Child Conflict Without Permanent Emotional Damage
When you think about it, this doesn’t make a lot of sense because we all experience emotions.
The autonomic nervous system kind of freaks out when we try to make the emotions stop or tell our children to “stop crying” or “stop feeling that way.” It needs help!
Therefore, we can become an Emotion Coach to fill those emotional needs of a child and walk him or her through how to properly handle (not get rid of) emotions and big feelings!
Learn how to be your child’s emotion coach by downloading this free printable.
Teaching Kids About Emotions
You don’t need to make this a formal, “Okay, {insert child’s name}, now we are going to discuss your emotional needs today” kind of conversation.
Instead, interweave the basic ideas of emotions into your day-to-day interactions.
Or better yet, when you’re having one-on-one time (you can find a ton of great activities for quality time with your kids here), see if a conversation can lead to emotions.
When my kids are fully connected, calm, and willing to talk to me, I jump on the opportunity to mention a thing or two about emotions in a playful way. If not, the conversation gets shut down fairly quickly.
How to Teach Kids About Emotions
It’s important that we get the message across in a natural and fun way. Here are some ideas of how to teach kids about their emotions:
Tap Into Your Child’s Interest
Figure out what your child likes and present the ideas that way.
For example, I have one son who loves worksheets. He finds workbooks, coloring sheets, and even puzzles quite enjoyable, so I will sometimes have him work on some pulled from social-emotional learning curriculums found online. Or we absolutely love doing fillable journals together like this Question A Day journal.
Listen to The Imagine Neighborhood
One other SUPER EASY way I have found in teaching my kids about emotions is to listen to the podcast, The Imagine Neighborhood. It is filled with AMAZING content!
For one, we are often in the car, so the kids can’t walk away from me. Second, the podcast gives the parents prompting to pause the show to discuss whatever concept they are teaching.
The Imagine Neighborhood is a podcast loaded with nuggets of gold that fulfill the emotional needs of a child in a very non-teachy, preachy, kind of way. They have very well-established characters that experience different situations, and then they break down the social-emotional concepts. This makes it very easy to remember and discuss.
Read Books That Teach Emotions
One last way to teach your kids about emotions is through reading books that focus on emotions. I have curated a list of my favorite books that teach emotional literacy over on Bookshop.
We recently read “Ruby Has a Worry,” which has been very helpful in unpacking my son’s anxiety.
Affirming and Draining Emotions
In The Emotionally Healthy Child, Maureen Healy puts myriad of emotions and feelings into two buckets:
Draining and Affirming.
Since all emotions are healthy, it’s important to understand which ones drain us and which ones build us and others up.
We want to increase the affirming emotions and decrease or transform the draining ones.
Healy explains that kids need to be taught seven ideas about emotions in order to gain a healthy emotional mindset and have their emotional needs met.
When kids can understand that all emotions are welcome while not all actions or behaviors are, they will grow to have better relationships, be more resilient, courageous, and optimistic, and often become happier, amongst experiencing many other positive outcomes.
Teach These 7 Ideas to Meet the Emotional Needs of A Child
It’s not that hard to break all of this down for kids. In fact, some of us parents could use some reminders when it comes to emotions, too. I know I do!
1. Emotions are not permanent
This can be a hard concept, especially for toddlers and preschoolers. Use metaphors like ocean waves can help.
“Emotions come and go, just like waves on the shore.”
2. Emotions Are Found Inside Of You
You can start with a very concrete concept by explaining to your child that emotions are inside of him or her. This also helps meet emotional needs of a child. Then, as your kids get older, you can expand into how the brain processes them and why we have emotions in the first place.
This is a great video explaining where emotions are processed in the brain and the biochemicals that are released during certain emotional reactions.
A word often spoken of in our home is, “amygdala“. This is what my son is pointing to in the photo above.
This is the emotional center and the most primitive part of the brain, the limbic system. When our brains perceive (any kind of) threat, the amygdala is activated.
3. There Are Many Different Types of Emotions
Most kids can recognize if someone is happy or sad. However, to meet the emotional needs of a child and for that child to become emotionally healthy, it’s important that they can recognize these emotions in themselves.
Kids must realize there are so many different kinds of emotions that can fit into these categories:
- Fast or slow
- Big or small
- Challenging or easy
- Positive or negative
4. More Than One Emotion Can Be Experienced at the Same Time
A child might feel angry that their brother took their toy but also sad that they can’t play together. Recognizing multiple emotions at once helps kids process their feelings more effectively.
This concept happens at different developmental stages:
- Toddlers and Preschoolers (Ages 2-4): At this stage, children experience emotions intensely but struggle to recognize or verbalize feeling more than one emotion at a time. They may go from laughter to tears in a matter of seconds without understanding why.
- Early Childhood (Ages 5-7): Kids begin to feel two emotions at once, though they may struggle to articulate it. For example, they may say, “I’m mad at my friend, but I still like playing with them.”
- Middle Childhood (Ages 8-10): At this age, children become more sophisticated in their emotional awareness and can better understand conflicting emotions. They may recognize, “I’m excited for my school play but nervous about performing.”
- Preteens and Teens (Ages 11+): Older kids and teens can fully process complex emotions and discuss them with nuance, like feeling proud of a friend for winning a competition but disappointed they didn’t win themselves.
By helping kids at each stage recognize and label multiple emotions, we equip them with the tools they need to regulate and express their feelings in a healthy way.
5. All Emotions Have a Purpose
I have one son who is Twice-Exceptional, meaning that he is a gifted learner with another learning or mental difference. Because of his differently wired brain, self-regulation has been extremely hard for him.
Since we have worked on these concepts and taught him emotional intelligence since he was very young, he can now manage his emotions in a very healthy way. He still “loses” it and can experience sensory meltdowns, but the recovery is beautiful. He has self-awareness, will repair his relationships and works towards processing his emotions in constructive ways.
It’s not that he wants to be angry; he just has an ultra-sensitive autonomic nervous system that uses anger to overcome discomfort that his brain may perceive as a threat.
It can be challenging, to say the least.
We often talk about how emotions have the purpose of signaling what’s going on in our minds and bodies.
An illustration I heard once that was used to explain this concept is a car engine light. When an engine light (or any warning light) lights up on the dashboard of a car, it’s signaling that something needs to be tended to in order to run well.
This is the same for emotions.
When we have a draining emotion, it’s signaling that we need to make some changes so we can be productive and healthy again.
6. Everyone Can Learn How to Increase Affirming Emotions and Decrease Draining Emotions
For some kids, this is extremely hard.
With the right tools and by learning how to be self-aware, kids can acknowledge how their current emotions are making them feel.
If it feels good and rewarding, then they can continue with what they are doing to increase that emotion.
In fact, when kids are engaged in an activity they are very interested in, they will more than likely experience flow.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience is a great book to read about this concept. Also, one of our favorite kid podcasts, Wow In The World, has an episode explaining the science behind the state of flow.
When my boys are building or creating, I simply ask how it makes them feel.
One of my sons is full of joy anytime we are out in nature, and he finds new rocks, minerals, or gemstones. When he discovers a new rock, I ask how he is feeling and then ask how he can increase that emotion. By asking him these questions instead of telling him, he is able to think on his own.
This allows the skill of acknowledging how to increase or decrease emotions to be easier for children to do on their own.
Read Next: 7 Ways Kids Can Develop Self-Awareness Skills (That Also Help With Kindness & Empathy!)
7. You Are The Only One In Charge Of Your Own Emotions
This is one that I often see parents struggle with in order to meet the emotional needs of a child because they were raised to think they were in charge of their parents’ emotions, and the cycle continues.
Others can cause us to feel a certain way, but ultimately, we are in charge of our own emotions.
No one else can make the decision to increase or decrease what we are feeling. Thoughts create feelings, therefore, no one else can think for you!
It is important that parents don’t say things like, “You are driving me crazy.” Or “Stop doing that because you are making me angry.”
Yes, the action might stop, especially if it’s a poor choice or a disrespectful or rude behavior, but we should be careful not to make our kids think they are responsible for how we feel.
Instead, we could say, “I am feeling upset right now. What are some better choices you could make?”
It’s also not healthy to do what is called parentification. According to an article on Fatherly, “Emotional parentification” is when parents turn to their child for their own emotional needs. Instead of putting your emotions on your child in any way, help your child see that you are in charge of your own emotions just like they are too.
A great question to ask your kids when they are calm is, “Did you know you have a choice to be angry?” Wait and LISTEN! See what your kids say, then lead the conversation from there.
All About Emotions Printable!
If you have a worksheet-loving kiddo, I made an All About Emotions Printable that helps your child learn all of these concepts.
Help get the word out and encourage parents to accept all emotions by sharing with a friend!
Smiles,
Hello!!! I’m Adriane. I’m a mom to three loud boys, am a research-a-holic and very passionate person who writes at Raising Kids With Purpose. Parenting can feel so hard sometimes but with mindset shifts and understanding, it can be very enjoyable. My hope is to inspire parents like you to create lifelong connections with your children and enjoy the journey along the way!
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