{Sneak peek: Fostering emotional self-regulation in children can be one of our most important parenting responsibilities. It’s not always easy, but the outcome can have a big impact.}
I was listening to a therapist who works with parents talk the other day on a video about why we should focus on emotional self-regulation in children. She made some really good points but I got to the end and I felt like something was missing–that there was another piece to the story that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Related reading: Social-Emotional Development: A Parent’s Guide
I mulled it over for a few days and I went for a walk. At around the same time, I was also watching and reading things about Martin Luther King, Jr. since it was near the holiday celebrating his legacy. All those ideas came together in my mind.
She was talking about kids and emotions. One of the principles of positive parenting is that we should allow our kids to feel the emotions and express their emotions. They often need help figuring out ways to work through the emotions. However, in positive parenting, we try not to punish kids for their emotions.
Positive Parenting and Self-Regulation in Children
The example she gave was something like this: your young child (4-5 years old) asks for a piece of candy right before dinner. Of course, being the reasonable parent that you are, you say, “no you can’t have a piece of candy right before dinner.” Then, as is typical of young children, he or she starts to protest (probably loudly) because he or she really wants that candy.
What we learn through positive parenting is that we should try not to punish emotions. Saying, “go to your room for throwing a fit” or “you’re getting screentime taken away for a week because you threw a fit” doesn’t really teach our kids anything.
We could say something like, “I know you’re really upset about not getting the piece of candy. Maybe you could go outside and run around or if you need a hug, I’m here.”
We can allow for the emotion but the boundaries are firm. Positive parenting is not permissive parenting. We can allow kids to express their emotions; they’re not punished for just being mad.
The therapist’s point was, (and I think this is a really good point) is the reason that we do this with kids is not only to promote emotional self-regulation in children but it’s so they learn to trust their emotions. Later in life, when our kids are teens or adults, they need to know how to trust their feelings. When your child is 15 or 18, and they’re at a party feeling uncomfortable because something sketchy is happening, you need for them to trust those feelings. The kid who’s been raised to trust their feelings and deal with their emotions can trust that what they’re feeling is accurate.
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What Fostering Emotional Self-Regulation in Children Really Means
In the back of my mind, I could hear parents saying things like, “but are they going to continue to just express their emotions freely as they get older because they could also cause problems.” For example, if you freely express your emotions to your boss (without any filter) this could get you fired. I think that’s the worry that parents have with teaching kids to express emotions.
The missing piece was this: don’t we have to teach kids how to control the expression of that emotion at some point?
This is why parents often take the other path of dealing with big emotions. It seems easier to just punish emotions so we don’t have to deal with the difficult consequences. For the answer to this dilemma, I turn to the awesome work of Susan David and her book Emotional Agility. I was reviewing some of her writings recently and this is the quote that stuck out to me.
“Emotional agility means having any number of troubling thoughts or emotions and still managing to act in a way that aligns with your values.”
This again takes us back to positive parenting. With positive parenting, we distinguish between emotion and behavior. I think the key step here as we progress in fostering emotional self-regulation in children, as they mature, is helping them distinguish between feeling a big emotion and acting on this big emotion. We can explain that feeling frustrated and angry is normal, but you can’t always act on those feelings. We can’t go off and hit anybody that makes us mad.
The key step here is helping kids learn to cope with those powerful emotions, and yet not let their behavior get carried away by the emotion. This is what I love about Susan David’s work. She writes so much about not letting our emotions overwhelm us. We don’t have to label our emotions as good or bad. We don’t have to try to make ourselves feel positive emotions all the time. Uncomfortable emotions happen and we don’t have to just push those under the rug and not deal with them. On the other hand, we also don’t have to let them hijack us so that we’re so overcome by them that we do something we regret. As our kids mature, I think these are the skills on which we need to start focusing.
Self-Regulation and Behavior
The question is, how do we do this? How do we not let these big emotions just hijack our behavior, hijack our kids’ behavior, and take us down a path that is maybe not where we want to go?
Susan David gives a lot of really valuable cognitive strategies in her book that talk about this. To me, what it comes down to is that you have some sort of core beliefs or truths that ultimately guide your behavior.
For different people, these core values might be based on different things. For some people are their core values come from their religion, but for others, it might be something else–a core set of truths that you believe about the world and believe about yourself. Whatever you want to call it, there is something at the core, that defines who you are and what you believe. This is what we have to come back to when emotions run high. When our emotions start to take us down a different path, we have to return and remind ourselves (and our kids) of what these core values are that guide our behavior.
MLK’s Legacy
One of the most perfect examples I’ve seen of this is Martin Luther King Jr.
I was reminded of this the other day as we watched some information on MLK Day. It gave a timeline of the different events that happened in his life. One particular event stuck out to me. In January of 1956, his home was bombed with his wife and daughter inside (fortunately they were unharmed). This was in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott that he had helped lead.
This is what struck me about the event: after the bombing, he stood in front of his home and pled with his followers to remain nonviolent.
It struck me because I thought, “how many of us, in that situation, would have the strength to continue to support and encourage nonviolence.” Just after the fact that your home had been bombed by people who disagreed with what we were supporting. This is a really poignant example of someone who didn’t let their emotions hijack them and alter their behavior.
In that situation, I’m sure Martin Luther King Jr. felt all the emotions that any of us would feel if our house had just been bombed with our family inside. I’m sure he was angry and anxious and fearful and all the emotions that you could imagine in that situation. I’m sure there was some way that he used to cope with those emotions. Of course, we don’t know what that was.
But at the end of the day, he didn’t let those emotions hijack his behavior. He could have chosen to retaliate in some way. But he didn’t. That same night he spoke from his house and said, “We must remain nonviolent.” I think the reason he was able to do that was that he always returned to this core set of values that were central to who he was. He managed to act in a way that aligned with his values.
For him, that was based on Christian faith and firm belief in nonviolence. That was the core of who he was. For someone else, it might be something different. I think the reason that we hold him in such high esteem, besides of course, for all the work that he did in the civil rights movement, was for qualities like this. His ability to be consistent in his actions, regardless of what other people (or emotions) tried to do to get him to veer away from those.
The Emotional Labor of Parenting
The point of this whole discussion is to say that fostering emotional self-regulation in children is a huge part of our task in parenting. To complete the full picture we have to understand the larger goal; the endpoint. One point is to help our kids be able to trust their emotions and not be punished for their feelings. That’s huge.
That the other part that often gets overlooked is where do we go from there? If all our emotions are okay, then, what do we do with those difficult emotions.? How do we help kids manage those? I think what someone like Martin Luther King Jr. teaches us is that we can feel the emotion and still remain rooted in our values. Our emotions don’t have to overtake us; we can deal with them and help our kids cope with them in healthy ways.
The work that we do as parents in helping our kids deal with emotions is one of the most important jobs we do as parents. As we have seen, it can really change the course of how they direct their lives. So the next time your child is having a tantrum and you feel frustrated and at your wit’s end, I hope this idea of emotional self-regulation will come to mind. Guiding them through these challenging emotions is more than just a parenting strategy, it’s a life skill. What we teach them really matters.
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