Gaurav Goyal
A kid’s emotions are best analyzed when they are angry. Creating a scenic conflict will give an opportunity to emotionally develop your child. In the conflict, the child will learn about decision-making skills and trigger factors which contribute to emotional instability. The child should be taught to maintain emotional balance citing examples from characters of comics, books and other cartoon shows. The child tries to have a peaceful resolution as shown in the books and practices in case of conflicts.
The child should be given a fair chance to understand the situation and give a fair decision. Children cannot be fast and accurate as adults, but they do work to understand the situation. The parents and guardians should indicate the implications of the positive and negative outcomes if a wrong decision due to emotional outbursts is taken. Help the child manage to take a tough situation, explaining the consequences.
The child learns emotional control through self-awareness and self-management skills. A child should be aware of the symptoms of anger which can be seen as physical changes in the body in the form of increased heart rate, redness in the face, clenched teeth or fists, raised voice, headache, etc. It will be difficult for the child to be aware of the physical changes which have happened due to anger. Self-awareness can help in self-management of the emotions. Let the child name the emotion to make it easy for him to understand.
Self-management helps in controlling strong emotions, be calm and focus on the root cause to give a positive outcome of the situation. Breathing can be considered as an important tool to control emotions. Help the child understand the breathing technique, but not just telling “breath”. Ask the child to concentrate on breathing when angry. This can be attained in two ways. When angry count from 1 to 5 and repeat the counting until you feel calm. The other way is to breathe-in and breath-out for every 3 seconds. Another way is focused on breathing where the child should keep a hand on the stomach and fell the up and down belly movements.
The child should be taught to differentiate between right and wrong and should be advised to be strong even if people don’t agree with the decision. A right decision will always be the winner
The social-emotional development of kids depends on the atmosphere and the behavior of parents and guardians towards a situation. Children are quick learners and try to give a positive message about self-awareness and self-control.
