Children’s Emotions: How They Work and Behavior Strategies to Try
Child-rearing and educating can mean helping a child overcome challenging developmental behaviors, so they can be a super friend and sibling!
This is why it’s important to educate and teach children how to identify and understand the strong emotions that might lead to challenging behaviors. Once they can identify their own feelings, you can work together to develop healthy ways to process and cope with those emotions. This helps them understand how to respond to others’ feelings as well as develop empathy.
I am Lauren Spigelmyer, Executive Director of The Behavior Hub, and I coach parents and educators on disarming communication and social-emotional regulation to support growing children. Read on to learn more about behavior, the brain, holistic strategies to use, and more!
The Emotional Brain: Wise Owl and Barking Dog
Knowing how the emotional brain works can help adults understand why aggressive behaviors occur. The Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development has an insightful way to think about the emotional brain, which we will describe below.
First, the emotional brain has three parts:
Prefrontal cortex: Logical reasoning and thinking part of the brain
Limbic system: The “alarm system” and home of the amygdala (emotional control center)
Brainstem: Part of the brain that responds to the limbic system alert signals with fight, flight, or freeze
Now, picture an open hand (think high five). The four fingers on top represent the prefrontal cortex or “the wise owl"(Sampson Jackson, 2014). Again, it’s the area responsible for logic and problem-solving. The thumb represents the limbic system or “the barking dog.” The limbic system and amygdala are responsible for emotional processing.
When children are emotionally triggered, the barking dog is activated, barks, and scares away the wise owl - the logical part of the brain. This can result in those challenging behaviors (like hitting or biting) because logic isn’t there to prevent an impulsive reaction. Essentially, the limbic system and brainstem have taken over, stress chemicals are being released into the body, and the child is gearing up for danger. The problem? Danger doesn’t exist, but their bodies are still perceiving it.
Children need the wise owl in order to exhibit appropriate behaviors. To bring the wise owl back, you will need to teach them how to calm down. If you correct or redirect too soon, they may become even more elevated because the emotional part of the brain is still activated and in control. Pause and wait for them to calm down and take a deep breath yourself. Later, once you are both calm, you can have a conversation about what to do better next time and which coping strategies might help.
For more information, along with a visual representation of the wise owl and barking dog, check out this video from Georgetown University.
Teaching Your Child to Categorize Emotions
Understanding emotions is an important first step before learning coping mechanisms.
We teach preschoolers that emotions fall into four categories:
Low energy (blue): Tired, sick, or sad
Optimal (green): Happy, focused, calm
Escalated (yellow): Frustration, worry, wiggly
Out of control (red): Aggression, anger, extreme fear or excitement (Kuypers and Winner, 2017)
For toddlers, categorizing emotions may be difficult. Instead, take a step back and help them identify the emotions they are feeling. Visual aids or demonstrations can be helpful.
For example, if you are happy, demonstrate what happiness looks like. Point to your face and smile. Toddlers need to learn the emotional vocabulary before they can begin to categorize the emotions. Books or flash cards can also help as a visual during these stages of development.
Holistic Strategies to Reduce Challenging Behaviors
As your children begin to learn how to categorize or understand their emotions, you can work with them to develop coping strategies. These strategies can help calm the barking dog and strengthen the wise owl.
These strategies are easy to implement on the spot, but keep in mind that it takes time to learn these techniques. We know for each year that the behavior has been occurring, it takes about that many months of daily repetition for the skills to stick, so don’t give up. That means if the behavior has been happening for two years, get ready for nearly 60 days of intervention and support.
That said, some behavior techniques may work better for your children than others. Be open to trying different ones until you find one that is most effective. Below are some of the strategies we use with children, parents, and teachers. It’s important to practice and model them when your kiddos are in the optimal zone so they can access those skills during times of escalation when their thinking brain is inaccessible.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Practice tensing and loosening muscles in the body – this releases calming endorphins. Hold tight a part of the body like the toes for 10 seconds, and then slowly release. Parents can use the analogy of having toes in the mud or sand (“How to Teach Children Progressive Muscle Relaxation,” n.d.). We talk in greater detail about this practice in this blog post.
Breathing
Try “bear breaths.” Have children breathe in for three to four seconds, hold the breath for four to five seconds, and then breathe out for as long as they can. The key is to have a big “out” breath. To make it more engaging, they can make a growling sound when they breathe out (“10 Breathing Practices for Kids,” 2016). Blowing on things can also be helpful for young children, especially if they are hyperactive or inattentive. Try blowing tissues up into the air or breathing out through a straw. More breathing exercises described here.
Sensory-related break or activity
Do a sensory-related activity to help improve neural connectors that can be damaged from trauma or stress (Klok, 2015).
Try “heavy work,” which is anything that children can push, pull, lift, or carry that is of appropriate weight for their size. Another way to help reduce stress is to suck, blow, or chew on appropriate items. This could be blowing bubbles, sucking on a straw, or chewing a crunchy snack (Weiss, Danneman & Collins, 2014).
Look for other emotional techniques to help children pause and refocus before an aggressive behavior occurs.
Rather than dismissing emotions, help children work through what they are feeling. It’s okay to feel strong emotions – validate them! We want them to know that whatever they are feeling is acceptable. It’s how we respond that is or is not okay. One of the best ways for children to learn is through modeling. Adults should talk about their emotions and demonstrate different strategies they use to calm down.
For more tips to encourage healthy social-emotional development, visit U-GRO’s blog for tips to manage children’s behaviors.
About The Behavior Hub: We are an organization whose programming provides children and adults with tools based on trauma and neuroscience research that build and strengthen relationships, foster respect and responsibility, help children solve big problems, and teach everyone to recognize and neutralize their emotional states.
By Lauren Spigelmyer and U-GRO Learning Centres
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