Helping Kids Handle Emotions

Everybody experiences emotions, including children. It’s important to teach them how to identify, cope, and regulate their emotions. Here are the four things you can do to help:

1. Help kids build their emotional language. Teach them emotion words like happy, sad, nervous, or angry.

2. Help kids notice how emotions feel in their bodies. For example, you may get butterflies in your stomach if you are nervous. Or if your cheeks are red and hands are in fists, you must be feeling angry.

3. Normalize emotions and encourage emotional expression. Praise kids when they talk about how they are feeling and validate the emotion.

4. Teach kids how to cope with strong emotions. Validating an emotion does not mean accepting all behaviors. You can teach them how to work through intense emotions by breathing, body movement, mindfulness, distractions like music, and connecting with others.

Learn more about helping kids handle emotions: https://bit.ly/3Za5Vpn
Learn more about our movement for children’s mental health: https://bit.ly/3Za67F7
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