Anyone who's been around children for any length of time knows that their access to feelings is vast and immediate. Children cry, scream, and laugh readily. They express their emotions easily and authentically in the moment.

As parents, we have rich opportunities to assist children in their exploration of feelings. We can teach our kids that feelings are worth listening to, that everyone has them, and that emotions are a vital part of the human experience. In sharing these lessons, we provide children's first schooling in emotional literacy.

Everyone, both parents and children, have feelings all of the time.

List 10 emotions:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.


Feelings are not right or wrong. How feelings are managed can be right or wrong.

Every child has a unique personality. Some children have characteristics that make them easy to live with. Other children may be more challenging for parents. They may have characteristics such as being more demanding, impatient, emotionally explosive, energetic, or needing more care due to a physical or mental disability that can bring out a parent's anger.

Mary Sheedy Kurcinka in her book, Raising Your Spirited Child, talks about how some children are challenges for parents and how understanding what is different and wonderful about "spirited" children can help parents change the way they see and react to these children. She makes the point that the irritating elements of "spirit" are in fact special characteristics that parents need to learn how to respond to and work with. Through this understanding, a parent's anger about a child's behavior is diminished.

The key is to view each child's uniqueness in a positive way through understanding and accepting who he or she is.

For many of us, figuring out how to support out children's emotional health is not clear or straightforward. When faced with a screaming baby, an angry toddler, or a frightened child, few of us know what to do. Becoming aware of our relationship to our own feelings enables us to think carefully about the emotional legacy we want to pass on to our children.

As children, many of us got the message that adults were uncomfortable, critical, or scared of our feelings as well as their own. In many families, anger, frustration, and sadness were considered "negative" feelings. They weren't viewed as a healthy part of one's experience. Families may have responded to those feelings with punishment, or belittling name-calling ("Go in your room until you're ready to behave." "Don't be a crybaby." "Scaredy-cat!")

Some of us grew up in families where we absorbed the message that it was best to suppress our feelings because they were too big to deal with and there wouldn't be any resolution for them.

Additionally, many of us learned that certain feelings were acceptable or unacceptable because of gender -- girls were expected to feel hurt, sadness, and compassion, while anger was the predominant feeling boys were allowed to have ("Shouting is not ladylike." "Big boys don't cry.")

As a result, many of us have several layers of response when we're confronted with the unadulterated expression of a child's feelings whether it is a newborn's colic, a toddler's tantrum, or a teenager's angry outbursts. We may feel scared that something is inherently wrong with our child, jealous that our children can open up and express their feelings so freely, or inadequate because we have failed to produce a "happy" child.

Many of us have been taught to ignore our child's "negative" feelings. We've been told: "If you give them attention, you will just make things worse." We try to get kids to stop crying or screaming, partly because of discomfort and embarrassment, but also because we've been taught that crying or yelling is the feeling itself and that if we succeed at making the expression go away, the feeling will also be gone.

Our attempts to quiet children take many forms. We bribe or threaten children (sometimes "successfully") to stop their crying: "C'mon, I'll get you some ice cream." We withdraw our attention: "Don't come back in here until you're done crying." We use distraction to make kids feel "better." We say, "C'mon, let's go to the park." Or we pat them and say, "Shh, there, there, don't cry." But when we respond in these ways, we inadvertently teach children not to trust their own responses and to stop sharing their difficult but important feelings.

As parents, our first task is to come to terms with our own feelings. Learning to understand, accept, and honestly express our emotions lays the groundwork for teaching children that all feelings are valuable. We then have the opportunity to share our children's joy, love, excitement, and delight, and the responsibility to show them that they don't have to bear their despair, anger, and pain alone.

• What feelings did I see expressed in my family when I was growing up?
• Were there feelings that were acceptable or unacceptable?
• Were different feelings permissible for boys and girls? For adults and for children?
• How do I feel when my children express feelings of frustration, anger, sadness, or jealously? Are there emotions that are particularly hard for me to deal with?

The following strategies can help children acknowledge, identify, and appropriately express their feelings:

1. Respect children's feelings. Begin with a premise that children's feelings are important and that all feelings are healthy.
   
   
2. Talk about feelings. Children are full of feelings they don't have names for. When you acknowledge their feelings and suggest names for them, children learn to recognize them and talk about them, too: "I wonder if you're feeling frustrated." Or "It looks like you are really pleased."
   
   
3. Share your own feelings. When we acknowledge and name our own feelings, children's understanding of feelings broadens.
   
   
4. Define and model acceptable forms of expression. Children take their cues from the way we express our feelings.
   
   
5. Be a witness to your child's feelings. Stay physically close as your child shares his happy or difficult feelings, offering touch or holding as appropriate.
   
   
6. Respect nonverbal forms of communication. When children are crying, we often say to them, "Tell me how you feel," or "What's wrong?"
   
   
7. While it is important that we express a willingness to listen, sometimes we demand that children explain their feelings in words before they're ready.
   
   
8. Give it time. Don't rush into fixing things. Full expression of feelings takes time. Although we may feel "done" with children's feelings before they do, children need time to find their own resolution.
   
   
9. Maintain safety, setting limits when necessary. Sometimes children need your help in keeping themselves and others safe. Excited, happy children may need redirection for their bouncy play. Upset children may need gentle but firm physical holding or moving to a safer environment. These kinds of physical limits provide children with a sense of emotional as well as physical safety.
   
   
10. Difference between feelings and behavior. It's possible to stop a behavior such as kicking or hitting while still respecting the feelings that are being expressed. It is often appropriate to suggest alternative outlets to our children: "If you really feel like throwing something, you can throw this pair of socks at the wall."
    
    
11. Distinguish your feelings from your children's. Sometimes listening to children's feelings brings up feelings for us. It is important to differentiate your own emotional responses from your child's so you can continue to give clear attention to your child.
    
    
12. Get support for your own feelings. Listening to children's feelings is challenging for many parents. Many of us didn't have anyone who listened to our feelings as children nor do we have anyone who does it for us now. Being adults, we sometimes think we shouldn't need to express sad, frustrated, or angry feelings.
    
    
13. Be realistic about what you can do. There will be times, despite our best intentions, when we will not be available to fully listen to our children's feelings. At those times when it's hard to listen, there are ways to take breaks from children that don't make them feel wrong for having their feelings. We can say, "It seems like you still need to cry. I'm going to give my ears a break. I'll be back to see how you're doing in a few minutes." In this way, we leave children to continue to express their feelings without abandoning them, telling them that their feelings are wrong, or giving them the message that they've driven us away.

Dealing With a Child's Anger

We all get angry. Parents and children both have a right to be angry at times. Things happen that cause us to react emotionally, and anger is one of our emotions.

Anger occurs on a number of levels:

Disappointment: Something fails to meet your expectations.

Irritation: You feel annoyed, peeved, or exasperated.

Frustration: You feel insecure or dissatisfied because of some unresolved problem.

Anger: You have a strong feeling of displeasure and antagonism.

Rage: You lose control of your emotions.

• Stop! Pause for a moment and cool off. When something occurs that makes you really angry, step back, go into another room, be silent, take control of your feelings. This is not the time to discipline a child.
• Look and listen. Read the situation quickly. Try to determine what is really happening. How are you reacting to the misbehavior? What is really causing the child to misbehave?
• Think. Form a plan. Evaluate the problem. Does a problem exist? Whose problem is it -- yours, the child's, or both of yours? Have a purpose. What do you want your child to learn from how you react? Set goals. What do you want to get done right now? Consider alternatives. How many ways could you respond to this problem?
• Act. Carry out your decision.
  

• Count to ten very slowly. Concentrate on the counting, regardless of what your child is doing.
• Put your hands in your pockets. This will help you resist the urge to use them to threaten or hit your child. Most parents spank their children when they are angry, not when they have cooled off.
• Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Pretend you are releasing steam from your body.
• Get away from the situation. Go into another room or take a walk. This gives both you and your child some time to cool off.
• Talk about the situation with your partner, a close friend, or a relative. Talking it through will help you develop creative ideas for dealing with the situation.
• Take time to think about how you're reacting to the situation. Why are you angry with your child? Is it because you think your child is trying to make you mad by deliberately doing something bad? Is the child misbehaving because he wants attention, is angry himself, feels discouraged, or is looking for revenge?

• Use "I," not "you" statements: "I am very upset about this!" Not, "You terrible child, how could you have done this!"
• Keep in the present; talk about the current issue, not past mistakes or possible future problems: "I want your room picked up now!" Not, "You slob! This room is proof that you will never amount to anything!"
• Focus on the behavior instead of what you think might be the reasons for the misbehavior: "I want you to stop making that noise now!" Not, "I know you're just making that noise to get me angry!"
• Keep it short and to the point. There is no doubt that your child needs a reason, but don't get bogged down in long explanations or too much reasoning.
• Be specific: "Pick up all the bath toys and put them in the container on the counter." Not, "Okay, it's time to clean up the tub."

Children learn the power of words at an early age. They also learn what things they can say to hit your "hot" buttons. Keep in mind young children have less skill than you in dealing with anger and frustration. Your best strategy is not to react when your child calls you a name or tells you you're a lousy parent. Let the words and negative comments slide off. Your child may mean it in the present, but won't feel the same way in five minutes if you don't react.

Remember, your words are powerful, too. When a child says something hurtful, let her know how you feel and give her another way to say it.