Emotional Awareness and Regulation
Children, and really anyone, experiences disturbances in their ability to process when experiencing heightened emotion. Emotional disturbance happens to everyone, but particularly those who have experienced any kind of trauma or have PTSD are more likely to be interrupted when attempting to process language or anything in their surroundings when experiencing heightened emotions.
Emotional regulation skills are not something we are born with, which is why young children typically cannot control their emotions and react heavily to something you might consider to be small. These skills can be practiced, however, and children dealing with trauma, chronic disease, or PTSD can learn different methods of coping with their emotions in the healthiest way possible. Your child’s therapist can help implement different strategies and practices to promote learning.
Learning Emotional Regulation Skills
Meltdowns happen with every child. And while it can sometimes seem like your child is just trying to make things more difficult for you as a parent, it is just their developing brain prohibiting them from reacting to a situation with any emotional regulation. They simply don’t have the skills to do so yet.
The left side of the brain processes language and the right side processes emotions. When the two are not working together, or when the right side has gone into hyper-drive, it is difficult for a child to even process what you are saying to them when you are attempting to calm them down. The two sides of the brain have a difficult time connecting when emotions are in a heightened state. The autonomic nervous system is comprised of two sides, the Sympathetic nervous system - the one that manages that “fight or flight” response, and the Parasympathetic nervous system - the one that puts on the breaks and introduces a state of calm. Children are not born with developed Parasympathetic nervous systems, and emotional regulation is a part of this development.
Learning about emotional regulation involves recognizing the emotional state (no matter what type of emotion) and introducing methods of managing that emotion to regain a state of calm in the body. The home environment often plays a vital role in shaping how a child deals with their emotions, and practicing emotional regulation as a parent or caregiver and providing a good model for a child is a perfect place to start. Some recommended reading for parents is a book called “The Whole Brain Child” by Dr. Dan Siegel. This book explores the methods you can put in place to promote more healthy emotional growth in your child and create an environment where your child can continue to create a sense of calm for their future self-regulation.
What Can You Do at Home?
There are so many ways you can introduce practices to help your child succeed in emotional self-regulation. One easy and fun way to start is with emojis! Create a chart that you can put up in your home. Review these faces with your child and attach them to certain emotions or feelings. Take the time when your child is in a calm state to review how they are feeling and begin to help them with the practice of identifying how they are feeling. This chart can help them express when they are feeling overwhelmed or anxious without needing to use the (maybe hard to access) left side of the brain to process how they are feeling with words. It can help you as a parent or caregiver to quickly understand where they are emotionally.
The most effective way to use this emotion chart is to use it in all states of emotion, not just when a meltdown is happening. You can start by identifying happy and sad, and then add more emotions to it from there as they are able to identify them. Keep this chart visible in your home, or take it with you in the car or when you travel to stress or anxiety-inducing situations. The way they can use non-verbal communication and just point to how they feel will help you understand what they need to feel better in a difficult situation.
Another smart way of dealing with meltdowns or a child who is experiencing emotional overload is through movement. Regulation can be helped through movement like taking a walk, or practicing taking deep breaths in succession. These movements help your brain from misfiring in the right hemisphere where you are processing these emotion overloads.
Who Experiences Emotional Overload?
As mentioned earlier, children who experience trauma or have PTSD often deal with issues surrounding emotional regulation. Kids with chronic diseases like cancer will often experience heightened emotions of sadness, anger, etc. due to the stress they face day-to-day. They can have a hard time dealing with different diagnosis or treatments necessary for their condition and everyday life can be a struggle. Learning methods of emotional self-regulation can help them focus on the positive aspects of their life or their surroundings and be able to find joy.
Even short term trauma, such as a child breaking their arm can create heightened emotions and difficulty processing them. Anyone experiencing anything that causes them anxiety or stress would benefit from the practices of identifying how they feel and learning new ways to cope or calm themselves away from that state.
Coping Strategies
In conjunction with the emotional chart, you can incorporate a “next-step” for the process of achieving a state of calm. Sensory bins or sensory tool boxes are great tools to use once you have identified an emotion. For example, if you child is feeling sad, and a particular toy helps them feel better when they hug it, take note together. This helps your child learn what to do to feel better when they are feeling this way next time. As you develop new emotions to identify, you’ll introduce new coping tools and continue to build and learn as you go.
Emotional overload and the need for self-regulation sometimes happens when you least expect it and can be a frequent occurrence when combined with other mental conditions like bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, etc. It is important to identify when it happens and work toward building the skills necessary to cope in the healthiest way possible.
If you are experiencing frequent meltdowns or think your child could benefit from learning new emotional regulation skills, contact Tilton’s Therapy for Tots to learn more! Our therapists are well-versed in different difficulties you might be facing, such as Oppositional Defiance Disorder, and can help your child learn to cope and regulate so you can grow together. Read one of our other articles on Difficult Behaviors - Reframing the Negative and Challenging Behaviors for more insight. Get started with our patient registration form or contacting us directly with your questions.
