Raising resilient kids through emotional empowerment
Kids don’t always have the words to express how they’re feeling. Instead, they may act out how they feel through their behavior. This could look like showing anger or withdrawing and staying to themselves. When kids start to act in these ways, it is important that we as adults recognize that behavior is a language.
As caregivers, we need to look beyond our child’s behavior to figure out what they are trying to express. We can help kids better express how they’re feeling by normalizing the way we talk about feelings at home. This makes it easier for kids to:
■ Express their thoughts and feelings in a safe way
■ Build connections and relationships
■ Show empathy toward others
■ Cultivate positive self-confidence and feel more competent
Defining emotional empowerment and why it matters for wellness: Emotional empowerment is the ability to recognize emotions, and name or verbalize them in a variety of situations. It is also the ability to recognize the emotions another person is showing outwardly.
Emotional empowerment is a learned skill and something we can always improve on, even as adults! Even though we can’t always know for sure how a person is feeling or why, emotional empowerment helps us to recognize the signs and clues of someone experiencing more extreme emotions and learn strategies to engage with them.
The power of emotional guidance: How to help your child grow and thrive: Guiding emotional growth and working on emotional empowerment with your child may sound like a hard thing to do. Try these four techniques to guide your child’s emotional growth and learn about emotional empowerment yourself.
1. Listen when your child is sharing a problem with you and try to identify the feeling word they are describing. For example, you could say, “It sounds like you are sad because your friend wanted to play with someone else at recess.” Allow your child to tell you if you are right or wrong.
2. Model sharing your feelings to your child. If you are experiencing some emotions, try saying to them, “I am feeling frustrated right now because I messed up this dinner recipe!”
3. Talk while watching movies or reading books about the feelings the characters might be showing. Take a pause when an emotion comes up to discuss the emotions. It is helpful to make the connection between the circumstances the character is facing and the feeling associated with it.
4. Play charades to teach empathy. You can start with the feelings “sad,” “mad” or “happy” and have your child think about someone who is experiencing those emotions. Then encourage them to act out the emotion. This encourages them to analyze body language and think about what another person is trying to portray when feeling these emotions. Start with feeling words and then add other emotions or situations to act out.