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You are here : home > Raising Children > Related Articles for Raising Children > Teaching Children to Understand and Respond to Feelings

Teaching Children to Understand and Respond to Feelings


Teaching Children to Understand and Respond to Feelings

A child needs to be taught about handling emotions so that she grows up to be an emotionally strong individual. Be a role model and guide your child to understand and respond to feelings.

Teaching significance of feelings is one of the most difficult and most important skills that you should teach to discipline your child. Children who know how to express their feelings are less likely to have behavioural problems. Read on to learn how you can teach your child about feelings and emotions.

By teaching your child to express her feelings in a good way you will be able to avoid many practical and embarrassing problems temper tantrums etc. Teach them to talk about their feelings and also help them deal with them in a healthy way.

Children face a lot of problem understanding their feelings and at the same time understanding other’s feelings also. These skills not only help in improving the child’s self, but also build relationships.

Understanding and Respond to Feelings?

Here is how you can teach your children to understand and respond to feelings and emotions.

Recognizing Feelings

The first step when teaching your child skill of understanding feelings is to identify them. You can start this coaching right from the preschool years. A great way to learn and recognize different types of feelings is through reading books and watching characters in television shows. It is good to start with simple words like happy, sad, angry, mad and scared. Keep the heavy words and complicated feelings like frustrated, depressed and nervous away in the delicate childhood years.

As soon as your child will start understanding these feelings, she will automatically have control on her behaviour and she will also understand other’s feelings. For example, if your child understands what her friend will feel if she pushes her, she will not do that again.

How to Handle Feelings?

Once your preschooler understands feelings like happy, sad, angry and fear, she will need your support to express them. You will have to intervene a lot when teaching your child to express his feelings in the right way. Dealing with the feeling is one of the most important things that you have to teach.

Reinforcing Positive Ways to Express Feelings

Anger is one such feeling that needs to be dealt with properly. This will save your child from getting hurt and at the same time teach her not to react immediately after any incidence. Teach her to calm down before she takes any action when she gets angry. You can also provide her with tools like stress ball or trampoline because these help express energy in positive ways.

You can encourage your child to talk about her feelings to you or if she is big enough, ask her to write down. You can also ask your child to repeat a particular phrase especially when she is angry, scared or sad. This will help her calm down.

Be a Role Model

When you are teaching your child about understanding other people’s feelings and how to deal and control her own feelings, you need to be the role model. Do not forget that children imitate their parents in almost everything they do. So, you need to model healthy ways to teach your child about handling different types of feelings.

For example, if you ask your child to express her feelings but when you are angry, you throw your cell phone or yell at someone, she is not going to follow your advice. So, what you need to do is say that you are angry and if possible give the reason also. Then sit down and take some deep breaths so that you not only deal with your anger in a healthy manner, but also show your child how to develop the skill.

In addition to teaching skills about handling feelings, you should also assure your child that it is quite normal to feel sad or angry at times. Just see to it that you listen to your child when she expresses her feelings and help her deal with it positively.

How to raise an emotionally balanced child? In what ways can parents help children to understand other’s feelings? How can parents help children to express anger positively? Discuss here.


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Kanchi
Kanchi.8 years ago
Helping children understand the emotions and feelings like love and empathy is very important for their overall development.
 
 
 
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Hemali
Hemali.8 years ago
Developing understanding nature in children is a must.
 
 
 
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Barkha
Barkha.8 years ago
Teaching children to understand and respects the feelings of others is extremely important.
 
 
 
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