Managing Emotions

Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance, and some pay as little as $0, depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters. Like insurance. Like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST. That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Most women have been there. Something feels off. You don't feel like yourself. Yet your doctor says everything looks fine. Spoiler, it's your hormones. Midi is a virtual care platform built for women by women and offers specialized hormone care from trained clinicians. Plus, it's covered by most major insurances. Getting started is easy. You can book your first visit with a clinician right away. It's not you. It's your hormones. Visit joinmidi.com to book your first visit. That's joinmidi.com. Insurance coverage varies. Check with your plan for coverage. Hello and welcome to the How Not To Screw Up Your Kids podcast. So pour yourself a cuppa, find a comfy seat and enjoy the conversation. This is episode one. And today we will be talking about all things emotions. This has to be the single biggest topic I am asked questions about. So we're going to dig deep and not only talk about how we can help our children, manage their emotions, but how do we manage our own, especially in those middle of that massive outburst. We've all been there, right? Whether it's because we've said no to something, asked them to do something they don't want to do, or call time for dinner, bed, bath, school, homework. And they've totally lost the plot. Their reaction seems so disproportionate. You'd think we'd cut off a limb. And yet to them, it's the end of their world. And to us, we're struggling to know what to say and how to keep our own emotions in check. We feel as though we've somehow failed as a parent and get caught in those unhelpful comparisons. Assuming other parents have this totally sorted. Yet this is such a common problem and happens in every single family. We just don't always bear witness to it. So. This episode, we are going to cover the reasons why children have these emotional meltdowns. How we can react in the moment to minimise that outburst. And then finally, we're going to look at particular activities that we can use to develop our children's. I talk about it in a way of developing their emotional literacy. So what then happens is we get less of these meltdowns. So we'll really help building. Our own family toolkit. And that will be my give for today. So let's get cracking. Let's start off with the three main reasons why children have an emotional meltdown. These, in my view, are the three main reasons. The most common reasons are that they are having difficulties communicating their needs or their emotions. So they're trying to explain how they feel and what they need. But they're struggling. They're struggling to do it. So instead, we get an emotional outburst. Or we have a child who's craving attention. And I think we need to remember with attention that any attention is attention. So sometimes these emotional outbursts won't get our children positive attention. But they don't mind. If they want attention, if they're feeling neglected, if they're feeling that they need our time, any attention, good or bad, is better than none. And we have to remember, when we're talking particularly about things to do with attention, it's not what we think. It is, you know, quite often I have these situations where I'll talk to families and they'll say, but I've spent the last sort of two, three hours with my child playing games. And they're still having these emotional meltdowns. And we need to sort of take a bit of a step back. And we need to check in whether the attention that our child has got is attention that they value rather than attention. We're giving. We can come back to that. And then the final reasons why children tend to have emotional meltdowns is this idea of autonomy or independence. So children are mini humans. They've got their own thoughts, desires, wishes, aspirations. And sometimes their emotional meltdown really relates to their desire, their need, their want to be able to make their own choices. Now, it often when we get these emotional meltdowns, it relates to the fact that they're struggling to communicate their needs. But these kind of, if we package them all up together, are generally the main reasons why children have their emotional meltdown. And what we've got to remember is, and I talk about this quite a lot, is we have to detach ourselves as parents from this idea of what our child's actual age is. So I talk about the difference between our children's chronological age and their developmental age. So their chronological age, posh word for basically, it's the date, it's their birthday. So we might have a child who is 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 16 by their birth date. So that's the age they're given by birth. But they also have what I call a developmental age. And we have to get our heads around this as parents, because you might have a 13 year old who in your mind is, is behaving like a five year old in a given situation. But that could be their developmental age in that moment. So our children have a developmental age across all sorts of things. Their emotional ability, their social skills, their attention, their memory, their literacy, their numeracy, their physical development. So if you imagine that our children, as they acquire, as they learn, as they grow, they develop across various different areas. So you may well have a child who is seven by their birthday, but emotionally they might act like a four or five year old. But their communication in terms of their vocabulary may be much more like an eight year old. So and their physical ability might be more like a nine year old. So what happens is when we look at our children's profiles, they can be sort of up and down, bumpy, spiky in some ways because they have their actual birthday, but then they have these various different developmental ages. So please try and take out of your mind this idea that, well, they're nine or 10 or 13 or six. They should be able to manage their emotions. They should be able to communicate with me because actually that isn't necessarily going to be the case. So we really need to be clear about responding to our child's developmental age. Not their chronological age. So if your child, if your 13 year old in a given moment is acting like a six year old, we need to respond to that six year old child in that moment using language that's best and appropriate for that 13 year old. So I'm hoping that that makes sense for you because it's a really critical part of this idea about managing emotions, because really the key thing, if you only take one thing away from this episode of the podcast, it's that we need to meet our children at their emotional level in that moment, because that's really if we can connect with them on that basis, nine times out of 10, we can diffuse all of the issues. So how do we react in the moment? Well, this is what you should not do. Do not meet their fire with your fire. If a child, if your child is having a monumental breakdown, they're thinking from their emotional brain and we know our emotional brain is sort of at the back and the base of our head. Our logical problem solving decision making rational brain is right at the front by our forehead. So we're at completely two different areas. So when our child is having a big emotional meltdown, really struggling with their emotions, what we need to do first is be able to meet them where they're at. Acknowledge their emotion. That's the first thing we need to do so I can see little Sophie that you are really angry with me because I've said it's time to go to bed and you were having such a great time playing with your Lego and building this most incredible village and community yeah so we're acknowledging Sophie's emotions we're meeting her where she's at we're accepting that gosh it is really frustrating because emotions are valid any we can have we can feel and experience any emotion that's not an issue there is no such thing as a good emotion and a bad emotion there are emotions that we clearly would rather not experience don't children don't particularly like feeling scared or nervous or worried but all emotions are valid they're absolutely fine what we're trying to communicate when we're helping our children manage their emotions is that help them understand that they can make different choices but we don't do not try and talk about that in the heat of the moment in the heat of the moment we acknowledge the emotion we validate them we meet them where they're at and then we create an opportunity for calm so that we can defuse we can take the heat out of the situation so going back to our situation with Sophie so Sophie I can see that you're really frustrated you're so angry with me because I've said it's time to go to bed and you are having such a great time playing with your time building your lego village and your lego community and now it's time to go to bed I bet when you're older you're not going to go to bed this early and you're going to make sure you get to stay up you get to stay up as late and as long as you really want to but shouting at me or getting cross really isn't the best way of helping me understand and telling me that you're feeling frustrated that it's time to go to bed what I suggest is that we probably just need to have a little bit of space now and start making our way upstairs and in a little while we'll have a chat and we'll have a chat about what we might do differently next time so words along those lines you don't have to use them verbatim but the idea is we're really genuinely trying to demonstrate to our child that we understand where their emotions are coming from that the emotion is valid that if they had it their way they'd do it very very differently but we're making clear that the way that our child has chosen to be is the way that they're going to be and we're going to make sure that they're going to respond in that moment doesn't help communicate to us their needs so notice it's really important here we're not getting into this you know shouting is rude how dare you speak to me like that that's not very respectful we're simply saying I get your emotion however telling me that you're frustrated by shouting banging doors pushing whatever it is that your child does doesn't help me understand what the issue is let's create a bit of space a bit of calm and we'll come back to it later now I want to address a couple of things around when we have these these sort of really heated moments about how we can help our children because in the heat of the moment you can find with some children that they really do want to keep provoking pressing buttons and trying to get a reaction from you and this is where it's so important when we talk about managing our emotions it's about understanding in that moment we may well be triggered then you may well have that dialogue in your mind that says how dare you speak to me like that or I've been doing this all day that's very rude or whatever that narrative might be so it's really important that we make sure that we remove ourselves from the situation rather than removing the child let me explain the logic behind that because it might not make intuitive sense to you but when a child is experiencing a really huge emotion they are trying to communicate to us in some way not ideally the best when they're shouting and screaming but they're trying to communicate to us what they need and how they need us when we send them to their room we are pushing them away so it's that real push away which only amplifies magnifies their feeling of isolation so what we need to do instead in those moments is as we've said before acknowledge their emotion try and create a space for calm and then remove ourselves it's much better to use language if I need to remove I can see that I'm getting very angry and frustrated because of the way that you've responded to me or the way that you've um the way that you've responded to me or the way that you've responded to me you're talking to me I'm going to take myself away to create some have some calm for myself and I'll come back to you when I'm ready to talk and what's really important about doing that is that it has two distinct advantages the first is it stops you from going into your own tirade and coming up with a whole load of consequences for the behavior which is not appropriate and then you having to backtrack but the second part and actually I think this is probably the most important part is that you are modeling for your child how to manage a big emotion in a moment you've explained that the way that they've spoken to you or the way that they're behaving has made you really angry and rather than react you're going to take yourself off so you have time to reflect so that's great modeling without it coming across as lecturing so therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough it shows up in the smallest moments you bite your tongue instead of escalating you put your phone down instead of firing off that text you say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life that's what growing feels like and that's exactly what grow therapy is here for grow is therapy that works covered by insurance sessions average 21 with insurance and some pay as little as zero depending on their plan there are no subscriptions no long-term commitments you just pay per session grow connects you with thousands of high quality licensed therapists across the u.s offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends you can search by what matters like insurance specialty identity or availability and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days not the national 48 day average see if you could pay as little as zero dollars for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash a cast that's growtherapy.com slash a cast growtherapy.com slash a cast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan 75 of women who seek menopause care don't receive it the lying awake at 3 a.m wondering what's happening to your body ends now midi is virtual care built for women in perimenopause and menopause with clinicians who specialize in women's health plus it's covered by women's health care by most major insurances getting started is easy you can book your first visit with a clinician right away midlife needs midi visit join midi.com to book your first visit today that's join midi.com insurance coverage varies check with your plan for coverage let's summarize what happens when our child has an emotional meltdown we don't meet their fire with our fire we acknowledge that the emotion we communicate that the choice is yours and we're going to make sure that the choice is yours and we're going to make sure that the choice they've made in that behavior in that moment isn't the best or most appropriate way to communicate their needs we create space and an opportunity for calm and then we tell them we're going to revisit later so what happens when we revisit it and how long should we leave there is no hard and fast rule i think it's just a case of knowing your family and knowing your child and knowing your family and knowing your child and knowing your child and and creating enough time so that there is some calm but not so long that your child feels that you're opening up a can of worms so for example if a child has had a really monumental meltdown and it's time to go to bed it's quite nice to make sure that these sorts of things are resolved before they go to bed so it may well be when you hug and you have that cuddle or that read before you go to bed that you raise it then and mine is when you hug and you have that cuddle or that read go to phrase which i'm happy to share and please use away when you have the conversation later on when things are calmer it's best to introduce it in a sort of non-accusatory way and the term the phrase that i use that works really well is i've noticed that so i've noticed that when we came up to come to bed sophie that you got really angry when i asked you to come up and you had to come away from your lego i've noticed that in the morning when i call you down to have your breakfast you're not always there when i ask you to be there and that usually means i end up having to ask you a few times you get angry i get frustrated and we usually have this situation where everybody's upset before school these are sort of examples of how you can come back to a situation afterwards so you start with i've noticed that and you really want to say when these situations happen i know that i'm not always doing the best things to help support you and i know that you often find it difficult to explain to me in that moment what you need so i thought it'd be really good for us to have a chat about how can we find a solution so we're both able to find a way of you being able to communicate what you need in that moment and I know how I can help because what we're really trying to do is reflect back on what's happened understand that the emotions are legitimate and problem solve for what you might do differently next time and really communicating it on that basis of I can see that you're hurting I can see that you're in pain I can see that it's difficult for you and I don't always know how to react to help you how can we make this situation better so that's really what we would do how do we manage those situations how do we react in the moment what I want to cover now more specifically is how can we begin to build our family toolkit because what we would then add so the example I've given you around Sophie and going to bed is how do we deal with it in the moment the reflective stuff that we do afterwards as well as the time we actually set aside to help build our children's emotional toolkit then allows us in a moment once we've got children with an emotional toolkit together and they've problem solved then in the heat of the moment we can then make a suggestion that they go to their toolkit maybe we can prompt them to use their toolkit but we can't do that until they've started to build their toolkit so my give for this podcast is helping you begin to create and build your child's toolkit and if you would like our free guide to get you started on building your own family toolkit then check out the show notes for the web link so let me talk you through some of these now so that you know what these are and then you can refer back to the show notes if you want to get our free guide so glitter jars some of you may have come across these before but they are incredible at explaining to children about emotions and all things emotions and they're really great at showing children the impact of pausing so for those of you who don't know about glitter jars or maybe you want my slant on how to use them let me explain so I like to use glitter jars as a way to show children how to use them so I like to use particularly for children because they're hand size things like old jam jars you can use water bottles too but the idea is that you would have a water bottle or a jam jar with water and then depending on the size I do quite like at least two good pots full of glitter to go in it so if you're making your own jar for the first time what I would say is glitter seems to be different so if you're making your own jar for the first time than it used to be in the old days so you'll probably find that you'll need to keep shaking the glitter quite a few times before it then begins to rise and fall what usually happens when you first make a glitter jar it seems that the glitter seems to sort of collect all at the top but just persevere just keep shaking and eventually it will behave in the way that I'm going to explain so the glitter jar is phenomenal at explaining emotions to children so this is how it goes so once you've got the glitter in your jar and everything is calm and still what you're trying to do is explain to your child that the water in the jar or in the bottle represents their mind first thing in the morning it's clear, it's calm, it's still they can see through it and they can make good choices but from the moment they wake up they begin thinking and the thoughts are represented by the glitter so they may be thinking oh is it a school day? can I have five more minutes? I don't want to wake up yet what am I doing today? what's for breakfast? they might then be thinking who am I going to play with? what lessons have I got? what am I doing after school? what are my activities? how do I feel about my friendships? you name it they're thinking we think all of the time and the glitter represents those thoughts so they're floating around constantly in the water but the water still stands the water still stays calm enough for us to be able to see through it and make good choices however when we experience a big emotion so when we're frustrated or we're angry or we're annoyed or we're frightened instead of the glitter floating around gently we experience a huge rush of emotion and a huge rush of thoughts and that is represented when we shake the bottle so what you'll find is when you shake the bottle the glitter will swirl around and it's going to be a huge rush of thoughts and it's important at that moment to explain to your child that that is how we feel when we get a big emotion and then ask these very specific questions when the glitter is swirling around can you see through the water? the answer should be no is it clear? the answer is no am I likely to make good choices? and the answer is no because we have all these choices and we have all of this swirling it's really difficult to think clearly and make a good choice so while you're talking to your child about this glitter swirling and swirling around as you talk and hold the jar or the bottle steady you'll begin to notice that the water begins to calm the glitter begins to separate away and begin to settle towards the bottom so it's really important that you are having a conversation with your child as it then begins to settle and then you can say to them well look what's happened in the time that we've been talking what's happened to the glitter? the idea is the glitter has settled the water is beginning to be calm and what's a really key concept here to explain to your children is that the glitter which has settled at the bottom represents whatever it was that they were frustrated about and what's important is the frustration hasn't gone but what we've done is we've created a pause it's like we've pressed a pause button and allowed it to have that space so that it can create calm and now we can think more clearly so that's the important thing about the glitter jar is actually really helping children understand how these huge emotions impact their ability to think in the moment and how it's really important to be able to create these opportunities to have calm so that when you then start talking about some of the breathing techniques that you're then able to help them understand how they relate to the glitter jar so then you can start saying to your child well how we know using different strategies to help pressing pause so should we try this and see what happens should we try that and see what happens so it allows our children to see the connection what's great about the glitter jar is it gives you this shared vocabulary which allows you and your child to communicate effortlessly in those moments you can talk about is our glitter racing around do we need to press pause and these are much less inflammatory in the heat of the moment than they are when we say you're getting really angry now you need to calm down go off to your room it's a very different approach and so that explains the emotions and that's really helpful let me talk you through one strategy which I really like that helps our children find calm and what I will say is I'm going to give it to you with a bit of a health warning and the health warning is if we want our children to use their toolkit in the heat of the moment we have to help and encourage and promote the use of the toolkit the learning of the tools in moments of calm a child's never going to use a breathing technique in the heat of the moment if they haven't found the benefit of using it at other times so we need to find and create opportunities for our children to practice so let me talk you through a really really simple breathing technique so this is the way I would describe it to a child they would get their pointy finger which is usually the finger that they would naturally point to on their dominant hand and then they would get their non-dominant hand spread out in front of them almost as if they were putting their hand up to do a high five but they were spreading their fingers and what you're literally going to do with your dominant pointy finger is you're going to trace around your hand but as you trace around and as you trace from your wrist up to the side of your thumb you're breathing in and as you trace over the top of your thumb and come down you're breathing out as you trace up your finger it's a breathe in as you trace down your finger it's an out breath the middle finger you're tracing you go up the middle finger you go down you breathe out you breathe in with the next finger out then in with your little finger and then out and then you can go back the other way these are really great tools just helping and because it's quite tactile it helps with that creating that element of calm and space and so that's a really great way of helping our children just understand how their emotions show up with a glitter jar help them begin to build their toolkit and have another tool in their toolkit in terms of finding calm and you'll find more of this in our free guide to get you started on building your own family toolkit so check out the show notes for the web link i hope you feel so much more comfortable now to help your child manage those big emotions so that everyone feels calm and confident if your child's emotional outbursts are likely to be linked to maybe their confidence maybe they're lacking confidence or they worry about things then do tune in to episodes two and three as i'm going to tackle those specific topics individually with yet more tools for your toolkit so if you've enjoyed this episode i'd love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast so that others can find us and we can see each other again in the next episode and spread the love so until next time