Emotion Coaching: The Strategy You Need to Connect with Your Kids

How Would You Feel?

You get home after a long day of work and you just need to vent to your spouse. You tell him/her about your annoying coworker, the impossible deadlines that are looming over your head, and on top of all of that, you had an hour long commute home through traffic.

And your spouse responds, "So, what? That's not a big deal. You're fine."

Wouldn't you just about blow up? Yeah, me too.

Now, imagine how your child feels when she's crying because she fell off her bike, and you say "you're fine. You're not even bleeding. Hurry up and come inside for dinner."

While falling off a bike might not seem like a big deal to you, but it might be for your kid. Just like you want your spouse to sympathize with you and validate your feelings, your child needs the same thing from you. 

Emotion Coaching

Emotion coaching is a strategy which, when implemented, helps children learn to recognize and manage their emotions. It's an excellent way to encourage the development of emotional intelligence. Research shows that children whose parents use emotion coaching are more emotionally stable, resilient, have more academic success, have fewer behavioral problems, and are even less prone to infectious disease.

It might sound like something you need a degree in psychology for, but trust me--this is something that you can learn to do. Consider this example from a popular animated movie: 

Although Joy has the best intentions, her efforts to cheer up Bing Bong are unsuccessful. But when Sadness enters the conversation, she gives Bing Bong space to feel what he is feeling. She empathizes with him and makes him feel like his emotions are valid. Then Bing Bong is ready to move on.

Five Steps

According to the Gottman Institute, there are five steps to emotion coaching:

1. Be aware of your child’s emotion
2. Recognize your child’s expression of emotion as a perfect moment for intimacy and teaching
3. Listen with empathy and validate your child’s feelings
4. Help your child learn to label their emotions with words
5. Set limits when you are helping your child to solve problems or deal with upsetting situations appropriately

Step 1: Be aware of your child's emotion

Accept that emotions are a natural, even valuable, part of being human. Learn to be in tune with your own emotions as well as your child's. If you were not raised with emotion-coaching parents, this may be something you need to work on yourself. Observe your child's facial expressions, body language, posture, and tone of voice to learn how he expresses emotions.

Step 2: Recognize this as a moment for intimacy and teaching

When your child is experiencing a "big" emotion, it's a perfect moment for you to connect with her on an intimate level, parent to child. Don't dismiss or avoid her, even if it feels awkward or uncomfortable. This is also a perfect opportunity for teaching! When you recognize that your child is feeling something, encourage her to talk about what she is feeling.

Step 3: Listen with empathy and validate your child's feelings

Take your child's emotions seriously, just like you (hopefully) take your own emotions and the emotions of your partner seriously. Avoid judging or criticizing your child. Remember that all feelings and wishes are acceptable, even though all behavior is not acceptable. Show your child that you understand what he is feeling by repeating back what he says and using attentive body language.

Step 4: Help your child learn to label their emotions with words

Based on what your child tells you, identify what emotions she might be feeling. Naming the emotion can help soothe the child and make the strong feelings less scary. Avoid telling your child how she should feel, and focus on what she is feeling. 

In other situations, where appropriate, model this behavior by naming and talking openly about your own feelings. This will help your child build a vocabulary that she can use to identify and express her own feelings.

Step 5: Set limits and deal with situations appropriately

Take care to only discipline your child for his behavior, not for his feelings. You can encourage emotional expression while still maintaining clear limits on behavior. Involve your child in finding possible solutions, as is age appropriate.

Focus on the good and praise your child when you "catch" him doing something right. This encourage more positive behavior. When you know that your child will encounter a difficult situation, such as a doctor's visit, first day of school, or family move, prepare to help him through it.

As you help your child understand that emotions are okay and create a safe space for them to work things out, the level of trust between you will increase and you will raise an emotionally intelligent child.

Resources:

Emotion Coaching. (n.d.). Retrieved February 13, 2021, from https://afaeducation.org/free-dt-resources/explore-our-resources/emotion-coaching/

Lisitsa, E. (2020, November 03). An introduction to emotion coaching. Retrieved February 13, 2021, from https://www.gottman.com/blog/an-introduction-to-emotion-coaching/

Inside Out: Emotion Coaching Clip [Video file]. (2015). United States: Pixar. Retrieved February 13, 2021, from https://youtu.be/Lh0EE2_Y2io.