How to be a better parent by understanding emotions

This post contains affiliates. The links provide me with a small percentage of commission but do not cost you anything extra.

How to be a better parent by understanding emotions

As a Christian mental health therapist and a mom of two so I deal with emotion a lot!

Often when I’m working with parents, they describe not fully understanding their child. The result is then not feeling like very effective parents.

More often than not, when the parents have a better understanding of their child’s emotions, they can parent better. Then as parents become more curious about their child’s emotions, the child becomes more comfortable describing the emotion they are experiencing.

The conclusion becomes greater communication and that is always a positive between parents and children.

I used these emotion eggs in my office all the time. They are simplistic in design but great tools to teach children and parents alike about emotions.

Understanding emotions – Happy and Joy

The emotions happy and joy or excited are pretty straight forward. Happy occurs anytime something pleasurable happens. Excited happens when the level of pleasure in an activity or situation increases.  That makes sense, right?

Now the awesome thing about those little eggs is that they stack and that is just like our emotions. For example, when a person is pretty happy overall and then more positive situations happen, the result is joy stacking on top.  The experience of joy lasts longer when happiness is underneath it.

Here’s the thing though, joy can be on top of sad, anxious and/or shy. For example, if a child is having a difficult time with sadness and the family goes on an awesome vacation, then the child will likely have experiences of joy during that time. Unfortunately, as soon as the vacation is over the joy will disappear and sadness will present again. And sometimes sadness shows back up as soon as the family leaves the hotel.  Thus, causing parents to think the child is being ungrateful. The truth is that joy was just a distraction but not a replacement.

Understanding emotions – Sad, Anxious, and Shy

The emotions sad, anxious, and shy are our vulnerable emotions. Even note the color of the emotion eggs (I told you I love them), they are cool tones.  These vulnerable emotions are more uncomfortable to experience.  And less likely to be talked about.  As a therapist, I talk about them a lot!

Sad

Sad, depressed, down, disappointed, rejected, hurt, blue, grieving, forlorn…I could go on. Sadness is not all bad as it helps us to have empathy and compassion for others. We have all experienced situations that has led to these emotions. Some of the situations are brief and fleeting while others linger. A person’s response to these situations greatly depends on age, maturity, temperament, and skill.  For example, a two-year-old’s response to not getting some candy may be vastly different from a twelve-year-old’s response. They both likely experienced disappointment but hopefully the twelve-year-old has the maturity and skill to handle it better.

Anxious

Anxious, nervous, worried, fearful, overwhelmed, scared, frightened, concerned, uneasy, apprehensive, distressed, tense, jumpy, fretful…sorry, I’ll stop.  I know this one personally quite well.  Anxiety in small amounts is healthy and appropriate because it keeps us alive.  We use the experience of anxiety to gauge risk and then decide whether to approach the situation or avoid.  An example I experience often as a therapist is a child not wanting to try, be it sports, school, or whatever and the parents believe the child is being lazy.  The more I get to know the child, the more I realize he is paralyzed by the worry that he may fail at the activity. The result is just not trying at all so he doesn’t have to experience the negative emotion.

Shy

Shy, embarrassed, insecure, self-conscious, timid, bashful, inhibited, etc. Shyness is not the same as anxiety although both can lead to avoidance of situations.  This emotion focuses more on our perception of our self-image and self-worth. I work with this emotion frequently with my adolescent/preteen therapy clients.

The vulnerable emotions can be confusing enough by themselves and yet they often stack on top of each other, too.  A child can be shy enough that it leads to anxiety of certain situations. Or a child can be so anxious that it leads to sadness because they aren’t engaging in the activity they would really like.  There are multiple combinations and sometimes the emotions can stack three or more high.

Understanding emotions – Anger

Angry, mad, irritated, frustrated, agitated, annoyed, irate, enraged, furious, livid, cross, wrath, pissed, etc.  Of all the emotions, anger gets talked about the most. And it has the worst reputation. There are many, many books dealing with anger. Parents will come to me stating their child has anger issues or needs help managing their anger. Anger also is quite misunderstood.

Anger is not a primary emotion. As a result, anger cannot happen first in terms of emotions.  So going back to my little emotion eggs, anger cannot be on the bottom.  That means anger is always the response to one of the vulnerable emotions (sad, anxious, or shy) listed above.

Therefore, anger is actually protective and defensive. Don’t get me wrong because I’m not giving anger a free pass as it can be quite damaging. My focus is to help understand why anger happens.  So, if one of the vulnerable emotions gets too big for the person to handle or manage then anger stacks on top. This is also true if the person doesn’t understand the vulnerable emotion or doesn’t feel comfortable/safe to discuss it. Anger then leads to behaviors.

For example, think of your sweet family dog who is usually calm and gentle. But now, take away the dog’s food while he is eating and the result typically is a growling dog.  The dog became worried that his food was being taken away so he went into defense mode.

We hopefully have a better ability than a dog to express ourselves when we are in duress but that’s not always true. Again, depending upon age, maturity, temperament, and skill will play a role in how we respond.

So the key is to find the underlying emotion that the child (or person of any age) is struggling with and teach/utilize appropriate skills.  The focus then starts with helping the child and the parents better communicate and process that emotion. Again, with better understanding of emotion, parents understand their child better and ultimately can be better parents.

God Bless,

Melissa Gendreau