Your Emotional Child and Why it's Hard for Mums
An emotional child is challenging for every Mum to manage at times.
Tantrums, yelling, the spontaneous frustration- dealing with all this from your emotional child is a tall order for any parent-even coaches, early learning professionals and teachers alike.
It's NOT simple.
The hardest part is the fact that we actually need to teach them how to manage these big feelings themselves.
If you find it hard to manage your child's emotions, this post will give you some seriously helpful information on why it is just SO difficult for you-and everyone else-until you find what works for you and your family.
1: Emotions are fast-and 'transmittable'.
Emotions flow in and out of our bodies and minds quite quickly.
It's easy to remember a time when we suddenly, and somewhat unexpectedly felt anger (even though we may often build up to that full-on feeling).
It feels like it pulses through your brain, makes your heart beat faster and can really impair your decision-making skills.
When our kids get angry, we often get angry too.
Why?
Because the human brain is amazing. It has these neurons inside that are called 'mirror neurons' and they mirror what we are experiencing and seeing.
"Neuroscience research (the study of the brain) has shown that the brain is equipped with special cells called mirror neurons that directly project information about others’ behavior into the regions of our own brain that process emotions. This mechanism shows that others’ emotions are not detected only by the visual part of the brain but they also activate our own emotional responses, allowing us to understand and automatically transmit the same information to others. This is an incredibly fast and efficient way to communicate!"
'How do we feel the Emotions of Others', Rizzolatti and Caruana, Frontiers for Young Minds, 2017. https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2017.00036
In other words, in understanding and observing others, we often feel the same emotions they are feeling by observing them.
Children in a schoolyard are a simple but effective example of this. If Student A is upset or angry with another student, or feeling wronged, a friend can feel protective but end up feeling angry and annoyed at the other student for the same reason-even though this situation really has nothing to do with her. Emotions are contagious!
So by extension, it's hard to manage our emotional child when they're angry because we can find ourselves feeling angry too (if we're not careful).
And, if we are angry, our kids can get angry too, much more easily.
This is a huge part of the reason why learning how to be calm in the face of frustrating situations is SO important as a Mama.
Reason 2: We are often in a hurry.
Being in a rush to get somewhere is what creates the pressure-cooker many families find themselves in.
If we are always rushing, we are always under pressure-and our children are too.
There is no space for failure, slower (and richer) learning, or mistakes, when we are in such a hurry.
And learning a growth mindset is almost impossible without allowing ourselves to make mistakes.
Learn more about a growth mindset here!
When we are constantly hurrying our children, we are not giving them space to learn and grow as they need to.
This can also build resentment and rebellion in the child, because they don't want to have to be pushed to 'hurry' all the time.
While this is a necessity some of the time, something as simple as allowing more time to get ready is an easy fix for a lot of this.
3 Healthy Breakfast Ideas for Busy Mamas
Reason 3: It's hard to manage your emotional child, because you aren't trained in this area!
If you want to upskill in your job-you can.
If you want to learn how to be a mechanic at 40, you can. To become a psychologist, or anything you want to be.
Something I have heard time and time again is this:
Parenting is something we don't need a degree in, but if you feel like you don't know how to manage your child's emotions the way you want to?
Get some training, find things out, join a bunch of people out for the same reasons.
There are trainings available-like my program The Emotionally Equipped Child-that mean you CAN learn some tools, strategies and understandings to help your child LEARN, grow and best of all, manage their own emotions as they get older.
(This is so much better for everyone than letting it go and having a teenager who doesn't know how to calm down, or is still stuck in toddlerhood and having consistent toddler-style tantrums. Believe you me.)
Why is it so hard to manage your emotional child?
Because we can often be taken unawares by the emotions our child displays, we can unknowingly be structuring their days at a pace that is too fast for them on a developmental level.
These are both just asking for our own overwhelm, and that of our child.
Also, mamas often expect themselves to be able to deal with situations they have no experience or training in managing. You are the authority on your child, one hundred percent, of course.
But if you are groping in the dark, trying all the things and they aren't working-try upskilling in this area. Do a course, learn some things that will help you make the best decisions-big and small-for your family.
And grab some self care like this gorgeous nail system :D
Because mums who can show love to their children by helping them manage their emotions, are the ones who really, truly make the biggest impact on their lives-for a lifetime.
