Naming Emotions

One of the hardest parts of parenting toddlers (and older children!) is helping them to navigate the rollercoaster of emotion they can feeling in just one day, or even one hour, whilst keeping our patience. As adults, it can be hard to understand a toddler's dramatic reaction to something that we see as a minor issue. However, we have likely experienced this issue countless times and know that it is either resolvable or inconsequential to our day, resulting in a more regulated reaction than a toddler might show.

We can help our children regulate and manage their emotional reactions by naming what they're feeling, so those feelings become recognisable rather than overwhelming, and sometimes scary.

In order to help your child name the emotions they experience, it is important to acknowledge your child’s emotions. A lot of young children struggle to communicate their feelings, simply because they lack experience of them. This is why younger children often have what we would refer to as a ‘meltdown’, which is really just their reaction to being overwhelmed by foreign emotions. It is essential that when this is occurring you talk to your child about their experience and help them to put a label on what they are feeling.

For example, if you have a young toddler who is using physical actions, such as hitting, to show frustration, sympathise with them. Explain to them that you understand they are feeling angry and frustrated because of - ‘name the event'- and that it is normal to feel this way. Help them to identify the emotions they are experiencing and provide them with a helpful alternative to hitting when they feel this way. Explain to them that when they experience these feelings again, they should verbally express this emotion and take 5 deep breaths or count to 10 to calm down. This can also work for when your child is experiencing positive emotions. We all know that children often get overexcited at certain things such as visiting a friend or going on an exciting trip. Sometimes this excitement can result in outbursts of energy or children jumping on you, which although they don’t mean to, it can hurt! Gently acknowledge your child’s excitement and explain that you understand they are happy and excited but tell them that when we feel this way we still need to be calm. Again, provide them with a useful alternative for expressing this emotion such as jumping up and down on the spot or clapping their hands together.

There are also other methods that are extremely helpful in aiding our children’s understanding of their emotions. In Dr Siegel and Dr Bryson's The Whole-Brain Child, the phrase 'Name it to Tame it' is used to explain how we are parents and caregivers can use storytelling to help our child understand their emotions and how an experience impacted them. This skill can then be applied to the smallest inconveniences or biggest life changes that they may experience.

In order to use the storytelling method to its full effect, we must first understand, in a very simple way, how the left and right hemispheres of our brain function. Very, very simply put, our 'left brain' is logical and our 'right brain' is emotional. Before the age of 3 or 4, our children's 'right brain' is dominant, so logic and linear thinking are not something that they will understand or experience yet. This is the basic knowledge you need to have to understand why your toddler may be having a meltdown over the way you peeled their orange or got their shoes out for them.

Using storytelling, we can help our children to use their 'left brain' to make sense of their 'right brain'. We can do this by encouraging them to tell us the story of what happened, through any means of communication comfortable for them; speaking, signing, drawing or writing. We can then use this story to help them piece together how certain events made them feel, as well as the cause and effect relationship between the events and emotions. This simple communication tool can help your child from 12 months to their teenage years and onwards, by allowing them to acknowledge their emotions and understand why they are feeling them.

This tool also works with fear brought on by a past experience. For example, if your child fell off their scooter on the way to school, subsequently developing a fear of riding their scooter, you could encourage them to tell you, in order, the events leading up to and following their fall. This will help them realise that in the end they were okay, even if it hurt or they were injured, they will remember that you or someone else took care of them and it all turned out okay. It is much better for them to remind themselves of this, rather than upon the event itself occuring, the adult around them saying, 'oh no, you're okay, no need to cry, you'll be fine'. We have to remind ourselves that this may be their first time experiencing the kind of pain or fear that comes with whatever they are experiencing so whilst we know that the pain will not last forever, they might not, so it's our job to help their 'left and right brains' work together to realise this.