3 things you can do to always attune to your child’s big emotions
Children do not know what they do not know; that is the underlying problem. Ideally, a child knows how to communicate with their parents in a way that even in the child’s moments of heightened emotions, the child knows their parents get them and understand them; children yearn for such connectivity with their parents. They want things like, the parents expressing their thoughts, asking questions, displaying their affection and understanding their emotions. Understanding a child’s emotions encompasses empathizing with the emotion or feeling, naming the emotion or feeling and assessing the severity of the emotion or feeling. I must admit, I had no idea about the aforementioned process of understanding the emotions or feelings of a child until my daughter was about 6 years old.
The catalyst for my learning how to understand a child’s emotion was one day when my six-year-old daughter was upset. I looked at her and could tell she was upset but did not give it a second thought. My default mode at the time for dealing with her emotions was “Give it time, it will be alright.” I thought, it cannot be that bad. I realized later, I was missing the mark.
At some point later, I had remembered my daughter was upset and was conscious enough to ask her what it was all about. She looked at me and burst out, “I felt like holding a gun to my head and shooting myself.” WOW! I remember thinking, I was frightened and terrified. I knew the only guns my daughter had touched were the Nerf ones (which shoot foam bullets) and water ones. How could my six-year-old daughter say such words? How upset and angry could she have been to even use those words? And how on earth did I misunderstand her when she was really that upset?
In retrospect, I realized I had missed the mark, and what a mark did I miss. I thought it was not that bad when she was upset, but really my daughter was fuming underneath the covers. What I learned from this experience was to validate her emotion, firstly and quickly. And secondly, to verify the type and temperature of the emotion as soon as possible.
When a child is upset, it is imperative the child knows that the parent see and hear her by acknowledging her hurt. This way the child understand you are taking her feelings seriously. You can let them know that you see and hear them by dropping whatever it is you are doing and getting eye-level with them. Then you could say something like, “I see you are upset right now, it must be very difficult.” Then say what it looks like to you...something like, “You look really angry, what color are you feeling?” And if she says, “Yes, I am red,” you can further validate, based on the exerted sharpness of her tone of her voice, “You must be feeling dark, dark, red.” Or, if the tone of her voice is mellow, you could inquire, “You must be feeling red and a little blue?” Of course, this method of inquiry is based on your child’s ability to intuitively relate colors to emotions and intensity of those emotions to the shades of colors. I taught my daughter to relate emotions and feelings to colors, because I knew she likes colors and it would be easier for me to gage her feelings when things turn emotional. If unlike my daughter, your child relates to numbers better, then you could identify the emotion and then use a numbers scale to determine the intensity level of the emotion; for example, 1 would be a low-intensity emotion or feeling and 10 would be a very, very, very high-intensity feeling or emotion. Thus, when my daughter says, “dark, dark, red,” I know right away she is very, very angry, because she relates red to anger and the darker the shade of red the stronger her anger. If she says that she is blue and red, I know she is angry and sad, because she relates blue to the emotion or feeling of being sad. This way I understand my daughter’s emotions and can empathize with her, because I have the emotion’s name and the intensity level.
After understanding my daughter’s emotions, I can create mental space within my mind and have time to think how to respond. Furthermore, I can get my mental state attuned to that of my daughter and that helps me connect with her genuinely and even in the most heated of moments the edge around her hyper-strong emotions is blunted, because she realizes that I understand her. In the long run, consistently using this technique is key to transforming your relationship with your child into a deeper connection.
Connection is like a long chain cultivated one link at a time. The chain grows in length with each link. It takes time and mindfulness to create each link and attach it to the existing chain of the relationship. With many links established in the chain, the chain grows deeper and so do our child’s understanding of their parents (and thankfully, the parents’ understanding of the child). The first step is to know that there is a way forward, a better way than doing nothing, or assuming time will heal the child’s hurt. The child now knows the parent has the ability to understand her and the parent knows they have the ability to understand the child; there is no unknown anymore. Once you know there is a way forward, the way through the emotion is understanding that a single link can be made with practice and discipline, and with enough rapport built with your child. She understands that you take her feelings seriously and you know how to help her understand that. She then opens up her world to you and you have opened up your world to her. She knows she can trust you, and you know you can understand her, because you are present with her and get her.
There will still be moments of upset, but they will likely not be as brash and jagged, their edges will be rounded and not razor sharp, they will not hurt so much, because you will also be able to more accurately discern the emotion. Nevertheless, still always validate the emotion, because being unassuming is the best path forward with any child. You never know what she is truly feeling unless you ask her. Even the temperature, intensity, number scale, or shade of color – ask that too to be sure. It’s a process of discipline.
Here are 3 things you can do to always attune to your child’s big emotions:
Express what you see: acknowledge her feeling – say, something like “You look upset, it must be really hard.”
Get the name of the emotions – ask “Is it red, blue, purple?”
Get the intensity of the emotion - find out if it “dark red” or “dark, dark, dark red”
My daughter, Nia, and I created the following color chart of emotions and feelings based on her understanding of them:
How does your child convey emotions to you? How do children relay the intensity of their emotions to you? How do you attune to your child’s emotions?
