Giving our children a kick start to an emotionally healthy and grounded future means helping them to better understand and manage their emotions.

If you have a child with BIG emotions, you know exactly how hard it can be to calm kids down once the path of emotional trajectory is in motion.

Anger is a very normal human emotion. We all feel it, from time to time and in varying degrees. Our kids are no different. The issue with anger is learning to recognise it, how to use it in a productive way, and manage it effectively.

Understanding Emotion Regulation

James Gross (2013; Gross & Thompson, 2007), in his process model of emotion regulation, outlines five points at which people can alter their emotional responses:

1. Situation Selection involves seeking out or avoiding situations that are likely to trigger emotions.
2. Situation Modification involves doing things to alter a situation to change its emotional impact.
3. Attentional Deployment means using distraction or concentrating on something to lessen or heighten emotional responses.
4. Cognitive Change means adjusting interpretations of an emotion-triggering event or judgments about an individual’s capacity to cope with it.
5. Response Modulation involves doing things to alter the physiological, experiential, or behavioural aspects of an emotional reaction, after it has been generated. Some response modulation strategies may alter the situation, cycling back through earlier steps.

How to help your child with their emotions

Parents can help children with every step of the emotion regulation process.

Safety first. When children get angry, they may lash out. As a parent, you can help children step away from the situation to calm down. This can also prevent further escalation.

Communication. Once your child has calmed down enough to think clearly, let your child communicate with you about what happened. Explaining slows them down and engages the thinking part of their brain.

As a parent or carer, you should express empathy, so your child feels heard and supported. Responding with gentleness and compassion makes it easier for children to deal with strong feelings and think things through. Angry responses can add to their stress when they’re already feeling overwhelmed.

Lead by example. Everyone feels angry sometimes. As parents and carers, we want to teach our children that it’s possible to feel angry and still treat others respectfully.

Accepting emotions

If you can show you accept your child’s emotions and even empathise with them, it can help teach them that emotions are ok and it’s safe to feel them, without necessarily acting on them. Accepting their emotions, while remaining calm, can open a dialogue and present an opportunity for expressing that emotion without being destructive.

Children need to learn to understand it and cope with it in ways that make their lives better.

Teaching children new ways to deal with anger isn’t easy. As parent or carer, know that this may take this time, a lot of repetition and a lot of healthy modelling.

Our advice is to stick with it, maybe pick one thing to work on at a time. Try to be patient and if things still aren’t improving get in touch with the Tiny Terrors team to see how we can help.

About the team at Tiny Terrors

Not only do we train parents, but Tiny Terrors also engage in therapy sessions with children. This will be in the comfort of your own home. Skills such as impulse control, self-regulation, anxiety management and anger management can be exercised through activities which we carefully prepare.

We believe that growing healthy and happy kids helps them to reach their mental, emotional, and physical potential.

Tiny Terrors can help with:

• Emotional regulation
• Executive functioning
• Healthy eating
• Sensory integration

After hours services are also available. Please contact the team at Tiny Terrors for a full list of fees and services.