What’s All the Commotion About Emotion?

How to Teach Kids to Recognize, Feel and Understand their Emotions

Emotions are not something that kids typically like talking about, especially boys. 

Most of us were taught that some emotions are good and some are bad, some you want to experience and some you want to avoid.

But I’ll let you in on a little secret … emotions are simply vibrations in your body. 

❈ Tightening in your chest

❈ Knot in your stomach

❈ Tension in your muscles

❈ Pain in your head

❈ Flushed skin

❈ Cold or sweaty hands

❈ Fluttery feeling in your chest

❈ Lump in your throat. 

In and of itself, these vibrations are harmless. It’s when we attach meaning to them that we can seriously suffer.

We need to teach children that all emotions are ok, that they should expect to feel them all, and that they are merely vibrations in their bodies that are completely harmless.  Knowing this and truly understanding this will serve them throughout their life.

Recognizing Emotions are Key

Emotional cognition is the ability to accurately realize one’s own emotions and to recognize and empathize with the emotions of others.

Understanding what a certain emotion feels like in your body is immensely important as it will guide you to act or react in ways that can serve you as opposed to take you off course.  But it is not always easy to recognize what an emotion feels like in your body, especially if you have never felt that emotion before.

When I was young, I dislocated my knee. During rehab, my PT said to flex my knee muscle but I didn’t know how. I had never flexed that muscle on demand before, so I didn’t know what it felt like or how to do it. My PT then put a machine on my knee, and I learned what it feels like to flex that muscle. Now I have no problem flexing my knee muscle on demand.

The same thing can happen with emotions. Children often do not know what an emotion feels like in their body if they have never experienced it before. For example, a child might not know what it feels like to feel confident if they have never experienced anything that would produce that emotion. Children have had fewer experiences, so they may not have experienced certain emotions.

In those circumstances, we can help our child learn what confidence feels like by creating the opportunity to experience confidence. Once they know what it feels like, it will be easier for them to pull up that emotion when they need to, like before they give a speech in front of their class.

We can also help them by labeling the emotion for them. For instance, if they have just accomplished something, you can say, “I bet you are feeling confident right now. How is it feeling in your body?” Maybe they have a racing feeling in their chest. If you label that for them and let them know that that is what confidence feels like for them, then they can practice feeling that emotion in other situations when they are trying to muster up confidence. 

Let Your Emotions Lead The Way

Accurately identifying emotions is also important for helping us navigate life. Emotions are never wrong. Rather, they are flags for us. Like GPS, they tell us if we are going in the right direction or not. 

If we get a bad feeling about something, then maybe we should avoid doing that thing. On the contrary, if something makes us feel good we should explore that and find out why and do more of it. 

Emotions are the keys. They unlock the doors within us to uncover the answers about who we are, what we like, what we don’t, and what we want and don’t want. Instead of wanting to change or avoid an emotion, be curious about what it is trying to tell you. 

Looking at emotions as valuable intel is empowering and helps us learn that the answers are within us. We just need to learn how to find them.  

Calculating Your Emotional Setpoint 

Your emotional setpoint is simply where you fall on the scale of possible emotions ranging from positive emotions, such as joy and happiness, to negative emotions, like grief and desperation. 

As we have different feelings throughout the day, we move up and down the emotional scale. Knowing where you are on the emotional guidance scale can help you to reach for a better-feeling thought that will produce a better emotion that will move you up the scale.

We should encourage our children to take a minute throughout their day to recognize how they are feeling and where they are on the emotional guidance scale. If they do this often, they will figure out where their set point typically falls. 

They can also watch how they move up or down the scale based on their surroundings or company. This, again, is valuable intel that will serve them well. 

Outsourcing Emotions

Outsourcing emotions refers to the tendency of some individuals to depend on others for emotional support, validation, or regulation of their own feelings. Instead of internalizing and managing their emotions on their own, they seek external sources to fulfill these emotional needs.

For example, a child who frequently relies on their parent’s praise to make them feel worthy or loved without actively cultivating those feelings within themselves might be considered to be outsourcing their emotions. They let their parent’s actions and words determine their emotional well-being and worthiness.

Outsourcing emotions can also occur in the form of seeking constant validation from others or depending on others to regulate one's emotional state. This might involve looking to friends, family, or social media for approval or reassurance rather than developing self-confidence and emotional resilience. 

We do not want our children to need compliments to make themselves feel good. We want them to evoke good emotions on their own. 

Emotions are a construct of our thinking, so consistently examining our thoughts and thinking on purpose can generate certain emotions. 

The first step is to recognize what an emotion feels like. Then, practice feeling that emotion. We can pull up past experiences of when we felt a certain emotion to try to elicit the emotion again. We can also think thoughts that will produce that emotion.

Key takeaways:

❈ Emotions are simply vibrations in your body

❈ Knowing what a certain emotion feels like in your body is key

❈ Emotions are our internal GPS system that elicits important information to help guide us

❈ Emotions are an inside job, and we should not rely upon others to create our emotions.

❈ Emotions can be turned on or off by our thinking

Feeling emotions is being a human being. But being able to understand WHY you are feeling an emotion and being able to change that emotion is mastering your mind. That is what we strive for in the Junior Mind Masters. 

Challenge:  Help your child identify their emotions by asking them how they are feeling in their body and then ask them to try to figure out what their body is telling them.