Emotions Management

Calming Myself Down: Drinking Water

Some children may find drinking water useful in calming themselves down as water is cooling. Also, it “forces” the child to focus on drinking the water, distracting them from whatever that is causing them to feel angry/upset/worried/anxious/scared, etc.

Drink some water slowly from your water bottle or cup
As you drink, focus on how cooling the water is

Calming Myself Down: Deep Breathing

Children can be taught to keep calm by practicing some breathing techniques:

Breathe in through the nose slowly for 3–5 counts
Hold your breath for 1–2 counts
Breathe out through your mouth slowly for 3-5 counts
Repeat the above for at least 3 times

There are many videos on deep breathing for adults and children online. Here is a video to help children practice deep breathing. Parents, have fun practicing with your children!

Calming Myself Down: Walking Away From the Situation

Sometimes, children get triggered by something that is happening in their surroundings. It can be difficult for children to ignore the trigger and to focus on calming themselves down. They may need to remove themselves from the trigger and go somewhere quiet.

Here are some strategies to share with your children:

If they are in the midst of a conflict with someone, they may take a step back and tell the other person they are angry and that they would like to calm themselves down first.
If they are in school, they can ask for permission to go to the washroom.
If they are at home, they can go to their room or any quiet corner in the house. If you notice your children are getting angry, you can remind them to step back and to return to you after 10 minutes when they have calmed down.

When It Gets Overwhelming: Identifying Anger Warning Signs

Most of us do not go from being calm or okay to suddenly exploding in anger. Instead, our anger tends to build up and we only explode when we reach our tipping point. The same goes for children as well. However, children may not be aware of the rising anger in them until it is too late. As such, we need to teach our children how to recognise their anger warning signs so that they can regulate their emotions before reaching the tipping point.

To better help our children identify their Anger Warning Signs, we can break these warning signs into 4 categories:

How My Body Looks
How My Body Feels
Things I Say
Things I Do

As parents, it is important that you are aware of the anger warning signs displayed by your child. When you notice these signs, you can remind your child that he/she is getting angry and needs to start calming down. You may even want to give your child some time (10 minutes – 20 minutes) to calm down before you continue engaging them.

Here is the Feelings Metre that you can use with your children at home. Whenever they are getting angry, ask them to reflect the intensity of their anger and what they can do to calm themselves down.

Feelings Meter.pdf

Learning About Emotions

Children needs to be taught the language needed to identify and label the different emotions they may experience. Feeling different emotions is normal. The four basic emotions are: HAPPY. SAD. SCARED. MAD. As children grow older, you can increase their vocabulary by introducing more complex feelings such as frustration, nervousness, disappointment, etc. As children learn to identify their own feelings, they can learn to identify how others may be feeling as well.

As parents, you can model to your children how they can express their feelings by sharing your own feelings with them. This will show your children how to use emotive words in their daily vocabulary. Set aside time to ask your children how they are feeling. If you notice them experiencing certain emotions, take the time to talk to them about it.

A feelings chart is useful in teaching children different emotions. Here is a Feelings Chart that you can use with your child: