Intense emotions

Emotions are messy little things, in an intense child, they are messy BIG things.

People don't generally know what to do with them. Sure, be happy, show happy, act happy - everyone loves happy but start getting into sad, angry, frustrated feelings and no one is really comfortable with the display of those emotions.

I was raised to show nothing and in fact, any display of any emotion in my childhood home was a rare event. I've seen my mother cry once. An angry outburst? perhaps once or twice as a teenager but other than that, the woman is a rock.

As a new parent I wanted a touchy feely family, lots of hugs and kisses, lots of physical contact, expressions of love and affection all around. That was a pretty easy goal to achieve and I'm happy to report that all of my children are comfortable with public displays of affection, yes, even the tough, cool, 11 year old Pie tells me he loves me in front of his friends and doesn't hesitate to give me a kiss goodbye on his way out the door with his "peeps".

I'm a proud momma for sure! But somewhere along the line I had to decide what to do with those more messy emotions.

No parent likes to hear their child cry and it seems to be programmed in to make the crying stop. To sooth and comfort, part of the mom job description isn't it? But what if by shhhhhing and rocking we are unconsciously teaching our children that the emotion behind the tears is unacceptable? That we don't want to see them showing "sad".

A temper tantrum, an emotional meltdown, circuit overload - that's a bad thing? Many parents would like to punish a tantruming child - surely throwing yourself around on the floor and screaming at the top of your lungs is NOT acceptable. But hey, aren't there times when you wish you were 2 so you could do it and get away with it?? Even my doctor suggested I send my tantruming Dervish to his room to cool off for an hour to "cure" his tantrums - Discipline he called it.

Well, Discipline is teaching and by punishing a display of emotion what are we teaching? We're teaching that there is something wrong with feeling angry or frustrated or sad. We're teaching that we don't accept our children when they are feeling those strong emotions, we're teaching that those feelings are wrong.

What we should be doing is helping our children find acceptable ways to express their emotions in ways that meet their needs as well as respecting others.

Something that has worked for me, especially before words were available was to teach them the emotions using my own facial expressions and posture then ask them to show me - it's a fun game and a good way to help them learn feelings and emotions. Taking it one step further you can add a powerful action or sound to go with the powerful feeling. For instance, The Girl likes to hiss at me when she's angry - it's hard not to laugh but I try but it's equally important to acknowledge how they are feeling showing that you accept their feelings and emotions - It all comes in the same package.

A helpful resource is the Aware Parenting Institute. I can't say that I subscribe to everything there, but it can certainly jump start a person thinking about how they personally feel about emotions and feelings.