Encourage Child To Express Emotions

Children are the most sensitive when it comes to expressing their emotions. They could rebel or obey depending on the situation. It is important to give them their space and freedom to express their emotions and feelings. It is also important to create a right channel to keep them away from disappointments, frustrations, and conflicts with others.

However, we can't constantly keep them under our protective wing. We can only help them understand and cope with their feelings involving unpleasant experiences. By using reflective listening, we can encourage our children to express and share feelings with us.

Here are a few ways how you can encourage your child to express his/her emotions-

1. Accept and respect all of your child's feelings. Do this by listening quietly and attentively and being non-judgemental.

2. Show that you are listening to what he/she says. Your close attention rewards them for expressing their ideas and feelings to you. Stop what you are doing, turn toward him/her, maintain eye contact, and listen carefully.

3. Occasionally summarise, restate, or rephrase the core of what he/she tells you- both her feelings and the situation. It is important to reflect back with words.

4. Labelling feelings is the first step to understand and manage them. Look over the two lists of feelings, 'Pleasant Feelings' and 'Unpleasant Feelings.' These two lists give labels for common positive and negative feelings experienced by both children and adults. If your child is young, be sure to use simple words to help label her
feelings.

5. Do not argue or dismiss their feelings although they might sound silly or trivial. When you dismiss their feelings it infuses a sense of insecurity in them which might lead to aggressive and violent upheaval of emotions. This could have a major impact on their attitude and behaviour.

6. Comparing your children with others is the biggest mistake parents tend to do. Your child is unique in his/her own ways, when you compare them to other children they would feel a sharp decline in self-confidence which prevents them from being expressive. Avoid this to the maximum extent possible.

7. Reason with them in a calm and composed manner. If you try to impose things on them authoritatively then they would rebel. So, make sure you reason with them logically.

8. Let them make mistakes and ensure they learn from it. This will enable them to understand themselves and the situation around them and mould individuality.

Putting it all together, understanding emotions is a critical part of children's overall development. It is up to adults to teach children to understand and deal with their emotions in appropriate ways.