When we reflect on our children’s emotions and talk about our child’s emotional expression or even explore strategies to help them regulate….. where should we start??
How about we start with ourselves as parents.
Children learn about emotions through us as parents, what we role model to them and the value we place on emotional expression.
So, I want you to take a few moments to consider the following:
What does my emotional expression look like and sound like?
Is this similar or dissimilar to my child’s?
What is my views and beliefs of emotional expression?
How do I respond when my child expresses their emotions (it may be a different response for different emotions).
What did I learn about emotions growing up that I bring to my adult life?
Our attitudes and beliefs about emotions were influenced by our own families of origin. How we feel about feelings – our own emotional background – is called Meta-emotion philosophy. This philosophy which we hold continues to be refined over our life, influences the beliefs and responses that we have to our own children’s emotions.
During the early years of our children’s development, children depend on us as parents to assist them to regulate their emotions. As they develop, we teach them about emotions and increasingly they begin to understand and then regulate their own emotions. Some parenting styles have been found to be optimal in this regard.
Over the next few blogs, I will talk about the following parenting styles when it comes to emotions:
Emotion Dismissing
Emotion Disapproving
Laissez-faire
Emotion Coaching
So, in the mean time I what you to think about your meta-emotion philosophy.
Chat soon
Annette
