How to Reframe a Child's Big Emotions

Sharon Frederick is featured in the new documentary, The Overly Emotional Child

This new documentary helps parents gain a deeper understanding of why children may have BIG Emotions.

Learn how you can help your child:

• Eliminate tantrums
• Stop shutting down
• prevent overreacting

Like a complete course to help parents and children gain emotional intelligence together.

Get more info on the documentary at

www.learningsuccesssystem.com/documentary/emotional

How to Reframe a Child's Big Emotions

Samantha (00:00):

In today's video, we have Sharron Frederick. Sharron Frederick LCSW joined clarity health solutions in Jupiter, Florida as a seasoned psychotherapist in April, 2020. She works with teenagers and adults through the use of several integrated approaches, including CBT, DBT, and other modalities to empower clients, to overcome their mental health struggles. She previously treated children, teens, adults, seniors, and families in individual and group therapy sessions at various community centers, hospitals, and geriatric and hospice facilities throughout South Florida. Her solution focused approach helps clients work through their anxiety, stress, mood disorders, trauma, depression, low self esteem, intimacy and trust issues, communication, anger, bereavement, crises, medical diagnoses, and much more. Let's see what Sharon has to say about helping children manage emotions.

Sharron Frederick (00:48):

And we tend to think of an overly emotional child. We tend to think of them in negative views. We could explain to people, you know, I have a child that's really sensitive, so emotional, or we could say when that child is really angry, we could say things such as you know, you always get so angry or you just need to calm down, just relax. It's not that big of a deal. So really what we're doing as parents is we're kind of dismissing minimalizing or ignoring our children's feelings. So what would be a good way to kind of change that around is to reframe the way that you look at your child. So instead of saying that our child is overly emotional, too sensitive, we can use the words such as my child experiences, big emotions or strong feelings. Think about these. Everything has a positive and a negative.

Sharron Frederick (01:52):

And when you have a child that has big feelings and you know, they're really excited or they're surprised, or they're just really happy. You love watching them run around and squeal and jump and laugh. But then when you see that that same child starts to experience kind of some uncomfortable feelings such as sadness, or maybe they're experiencing anger, then we tend to kind of minimalize their feelings. So we need to help our children to regulate those emotions. There is a great quote by Al R Knaust that says when little people have big emotions, we need to share with them, our calm, not have us step into their chaos. So would that be instead, there are a many strategies that we can use to help our children to regulate their feelings. And one of the strategies is, is to help them to deep breathe. And I will suggest that all of these strategies you need to kind of work on before the child even gets to that stage of having those big feelings.

Sharron Frederick (03:08):

So one of them is deep breathing and there are two ways that you can help your child to do this. One of them is to buy them, get them some bubbles and have them kind of blow, breathe in. And then as that breathing out, help them to see how big that they can do the bubble. Another really great way is to have them to breathe in different colors and breathe out colors. So for example, you could have your child breathe in a blow and breathe out a yellow. Yeah. Another thing that I think is really helpful for children is to have a calming down box and calming down box can have inside it such as a coloring book and crowns a book that they really enjoy. It could have a cuddly toy, it could have soft music and it could have smells in it such as citrus or lavender.

Sharron Frederick (04:12):

Another way that you can help your child to kind of calm down, okay. To have them count backwards or count tiles or tried to help to distract them in some way, if you're tired of has a strong emotions, such as sadness, you could also have a book also have a box, which is a mood booster. So in the mood boost of books, you could have funny jokes or pictures. You could also have things such as music that they love dancing to, or stories that make them laugh. Alternatively, you can have them go outside where you could play some ball with them. Also another important thing is to problem solve with your child. And this is where we help them to identify the emotion that they're having. And then to sit down and kind of problem solve with them a way that we can help children on a daily basis to identify their emotion is to teach them about emotions.

Sharron Frederick (05:21):

And you can print off of the internet, or you can actually order one online. And this is actually where you have faces or, and help your child to really start to understand their different emotions, have them act out. What do you feel like when you feel sad? What kind of things make you sad? What things make you happy? And then as your child is experiencing that emotion, say to them, how do you feel? What are you kind of feeling, help them to identify so they can put a name to it. You do also, parents have to be very careful when you don't want to over kind of over give them attention, especially when they're having some you know, uncomfortable feelings. So what do you want to try and do is to help them to identify the feeling or you could say to them, I see that you're feeling angry.

Sharron Frederick (06:20):

It's not okay to hit the wall when you're feeling angry, but I understand that you are feeling that way. Why don't you do X, Y, Z. If you find that the child isn't responding, then you need to kind of make sure they're in a safe place, walk away and say, you know what? I can see that everything that we normally do, isn't help him. I'm going to stay over here and you come to me when I can help you. I know that children re sorry, I know that parents really have a difficult time kind of, you know, worrying about their child and whether there's something deeper going on, some children are generally born with big emotions, but if you kind of have noticed a change in your child's behavior, for example, there could be something deeper going on, such as they're struggling in school, or they are being bullied.

Sharron Frederick (07:18):

So if you notice symptoms such as they started to socially withdraw, or maybe they are not as interested in the activities that they used to do if you see that they start to become sad or angrier on a more regular basis if you start to see children suffering from low self-esteem where you see them kind of having negative, self-talk such as, I'm really dumb, I'm really stupid. I also identify as could be things such as, you know, they're overeating under eating, having a difficult time, going to sleep, having nightmares on a constant basis, or you just can't get them up in the morning. These can all be symptoms that maybe your child is suffering more than just big emotions, something else is going on. So I think it's really important to always have ongoing conversations with your children. There are several times during the day when they're at school, you could, when you're driving to school, when you're picking them up, that you can have conversations.

Sharron Frederick (08:30):

I also think another great way of having conversations is that the dinner table, if you find that you're having difficulty with conversations, half the family writes out kind of cards that say, you know what was something you're really proud of today that you did, or what was something that you struggled with today? Where would you love to go on vacation? You can have so much fun with these kinds of things. Another thing that you can do is to really observe your child you know, and find out their behaviors. And if you have notice to change, try and work out what had occurred around that time, talk to teachers get involved in school volunteer with your child. Then also have no have them create a different group of friends outside of school. So they have their school friends, and then they have friends that they have outside of school, because that really helps. And you can also observe your child down. So there are many ways that you can have these conversations with your children. All I can say is just have fun with these children that have really big emotions because the, the journey will be really fun.