“Your toddler’s brain is working twice as hard as yours.
They have a lot to process so they have a lot of big emotions!”
– Dr. Dean Burnett

It is well researched that an emotional brain responds quickly to any situation or event, the processing and consequent reactions are faster than the thinking brain. Young kids must understand and acknowledge their emotions and feelings. The ability to identify, understand, and express their emotions helps them in managing their behavior and relationships. Parents and educators play a vital role in helping children understand and cope with their emotions.

As toddlers, the rapidly maturating frontal lobes and the limbic system circuit in the brain, are responsible for the emergence of identity and recognition of self. It is during these developmental years that a toddler expresses anger or defiance, and exhibits intense struggles for autonomy and independence. The key to emotional intelligence is self-awareness. The ability to recognize self from other individuals promotes drives empathy and morals in behavior.

We often hear children are like little sponges, their mind absorbs all the information around them, soaking up massive amounts of stimuli, and then decide what they actively want to do with it. Emotions function in similar ways. Infants and toddlers are more responsive to negative signals from others, and develop emotional responses unique to them, in response to their own negative feelings. As adults, we possess the ability to regulate our emotions (healthy or unhealthy). Kids feel what their parents feel. They are sensitive to the moods of parents as they feel one with them. The idea or logic that a separate entity feels differently than another is alien to them in their early years.

Young children need to identify and accept their emotions before expressing or controlling them. The art of emotional experience and expression, followed by positive channeling of emotions is to be taught to children. With proper guidance and regular practice children can develop their ability to regulate their emotions. At first, they begin to label their emotions. Next, they learn to distinguish the primary emotion of happiness from the set of all negative emotions. They further learn to distinguish among the negative emotions including sadness, anger, and fear. The process and growth improve as children begin identifying and mimicking emotional expressions associated with the emotions.

Early learners are not born with healthy coping mechanisms, they know innately how to respond to their physiological needs. Kids have different ways to respond to their emotions. Some kids attempt to identify the problem and try to find solutions for it; while others restrict their emotions to themselves. The behavior of kids to a great extent is driven by their primary emotions. It is
gradually during middle school that children being to accept the subjective quality of emotions, what makes one child happy could make another fearful.

Sadness for instance is an emotion capable of slowing down the thoughts and motor activities of kids. It is the time when kids need support to ponder over their emotions and understand the source of their sadness. On the contrary, anger speeds up these little ones, charges them up, and mobilizes their intense energy. The anger gears them up for a fight with the thought that their rights have been violated and mobilizes them to protect against future threats. In this time, when emotions are running high, be supportive to kids, nurture them and train them to accept these emotions. Allow kids to feel their feelings and encourage them to understand that every feeling serves a purpose. Make them walk through their emotions, be an emotional coach to them and this will help them overcome their emotional struggle thus allowing them to be emotionally intelligent beings. At the same time, it’s essential that they accept that all emotions are admissible, however, all behaviors are not. Patience plays a vital role here, both for parents and kids.

Parents respond differently to the emotional needs of their kids; some feel that the emotions of kids are unimportant and attempt to eliminate them quickly, often through the use of distraction. Some parents believe that negative emotions should only be dealt with punishments. On the other hand, some parents accept all emotions of kids, however do not approve of any solutions to these emotions. The parents who believe in emotional coaching, not only value the negative emotions of their kids, they also accept their reactions to challenging emotions. Such parents find these emotional explosions as an opportunity for bonding with their little ones.

Research shows children of these emotional coaching parents are physically healthier, academically ahead, emotionally sound and successful, and get along well with their peers in school.

It is an essential part of good parenting to make children aware and understand their emotions. Develop an awareness of positive vocabulary to express these emotions and at the same time limit these expressions through appropriate behavior. Parents must give daily, undivided attention to their little ones to boost positive attachment and develop a trust bond. The open expression of positive and warm emotions generates effective emotional regulation. Whereas, frequent expressions of negative emotions heighten distressing experiences and affect the child. Remember, children copy their parents and adults in the family. Consistency allows them to understand emotions in a positive direction.

• Talk about what made them happy today,
• Talk about what made them sad today,
• Talk about what you’re looking forward to tomorrow.
• Start with yourself and ask them too.
• Keep it light & breezy, the idea is to engage them, not stress them about you
• Share your coping skills with them like “I felt sad when I got late at work today, so I took 3 happy deep breathes in and blew all the sadness out. ”
• Prepare them for emotionally heavy days. Tell them “it’s okay to feel upset or sad or mad.”
• Do not tell them “it’s not a big deal”. They are allowed to have feelings. Every individual process and feels differently. Accept and empower.

“It’s more important to question why do my child’s big emotions trigger me so much instead of questioning why does my toddler has such big emotions.”
– E. Maloku