How to Use Emotion Coaching with Children?
Welcome to the second part of “What Are Your Child’s Behaviors Telling You?”…. “How to Use Emotion Coaching?” In summary, “What Are Your Child’s Behaviors Telling You?” discussed how we need to discover the underlying need behind a child’s behavior and teach the child to effectively communicate to have this need met. Easier said than done, as we as adults are still trying to master this life skill! Which brings us to part 2, teaching this skill to children by using emotion coaching.
What is emotion coaching? It helps children to focus on understanding, identifying, and labeling their emotions. It helps to teach them the connection between an emotion and the behaviors they are exhibiting. So, it helps them to understand why they may have that emotion, and how to communicate their emotions in a functional and effective manner.
To be able to teach all of this to our children, it is important to follow the below steps:
Be empathetic. Pause on reacting to the child’s behavior, validate the emotion, and focus on the emotion that is being displayed. Then attempt to have the child identify the emotion.
Guide them through the process. Basically, providing explanations as to why the emotion/behavior may be occurring and discuss why the caregiver may be responding in the manner that they are. It is important to still set behavioral limits and boundaries for children and in doing so teach them about their emotions at the same time. Another option is to discuss all of this after the situation has calmed down instead of trying to teach our children while they are upset.
Be aware of all the child’s emotions and how they may show these emotions by engaging in problem behaviors (i.e. tantrums, yelling, cursing, crying, etc.).
Use all these teaching opportunities to develop a deeper relationship with your child.
Model and provide the words and labels to emotions so our children can learn how to effectively communicate their emotions.
When addressing problem behavior, know when to set limits or come back to the situation to teach the emotion.
Rose, Mcguire-Snieckus & Gilbert, 2015 reported that engaging with our children in this manner will teach them to understand their emotions while being able to connect their behaviors with those emotions. It also helps them to regulate their emotions in a positive way. For more information on Emotion Coaching or general Coaching, visit https://positivepsychology.com/coaching-kids/.
