Do you expect your children to show negative emotions? For example, crying, tantrums, frustration, fear, jealousy, withdrawal, etc., see this problem, you must be surprised, who would expect such a thing? What we expect is that the child is emotionally stable, does not cry casually and loses his temper, is brave and strong, generous and modest.
Whenever the child shows negative emotions, everyone's subconscious reaction must be to stop the child, "no crying, no tantrums, no fear", hoping that through such discipline to let the child gain the ability to control emotions.
In fact, if you want to improve your child's emotional ability, you should let your child have enough opportunities to show negative emotions.
In other words, negative emotions have a positive effect on a child's development.
Negative emotions have a positive effect on the development of children's emotional abilities
The child's negative emotions will always be regarded as a negative thing by the parents, and when the emotions occur, some of the behaviors of the child crying and making noise will make the parents angry.
But if we look at negative emotions from a different perspective, we can see their positive significance:
1. When negative emotions occur, it is a good time for children's emotional cognition
Negative emotions, like positive emotions, are instinctive emotions that cannot be completely avoided, no one will always be happy and carefree, and since it is unavoidable, it is necessary to face up to its existence and learn to deal with negative emotions.
The first link in the development of emotional ability is cognitive emotions, our guidance of children's positive emotions is almost self-taught, but the guidance of negative emotions, mostly by stopping and suppressing, which makes children in their own anger, sad, the heart is chaotic.
With the development of children's self-awareness, various negative emotions will often mix, such as when angry, not simply angry, but also sad, afraid mixed together.
Therefore, we need to let children recognize every negative emotion, mainly including the following points:
Children need to know in which situations they will have negative emotions such as sadness, fear, anger or shyness, and how they feel when these emotions appear? For example, there will be tears, sullen chests, and want to shout
If the child has such a cognitive foundation, he can gain the ability to examine his emotions and behaviors, that is, he can read his feelings, understand why he is so angry, and then express them in words.
So when negative emotions appear, we should not rush to press down on the child, block it back, get a surface of calm, change the way of thinking, and tell ourselves: This is a good time to train children to recognize negative emotions, don't miss it.
2. The emergence of negative emotions provides children with practical opportunities for emotional expression
Many parents complain that their children cry endlessly, often crying, losing their temper and hitting people and falling things, etc., and the solution is inseparable from two ways: one is to practice scenes such as anger and sadness with children, and the other is to use the correct method to solve when the real behavior of anger and sadness occurs.
Either way, it is essentially to let the child face negative emotions repeatedly and accumulate "combat experience".
If we do not allow our children to cry and lose their temper, it will be difficult for them to gain real and effective practical experience.
For example, when a child loses his temper, he likes to drop things, if we only tell him when he is not tantrum, can not fall things, most of them are ineffective, because for the child's brain development, there are thousands of mountains and rivers between "know" and "execution", so the next time he is angry, he will still drop things.
So what to do? As mentioned earlier, design several games related to anger, guide the child to make the correct expression of anger in the game, such as stomping feet, holding hands and arms, do these actions skillfully, and then wait for the opportunity to really lose your temper to test whether the child has mastered this set of actions.
If there is no real scene of negative emotions, it is not known whether the theoretical education results and game exercises are effective.
In summary, we should have a positive attitude towards the child's negative emotions, and as far as possible, let the child fully display the negative emotions that should appear at his age, so that we can have enough training opportunities.
When a child goes to kindergarten and elementary school, even if we don't see the child for most of the day, we can predict the child's emotional behavior.
How to use negative emotions to improve your child's emotional ability
1. Discuss emotions with your child more
The premise of discussing this method is that we believe that negative emotions are normal and acceptable, and only by adhering to this premise will the child be willing to discuss with us, otherwise the child will think that we have to "criticize, educate, and blame ourselves again."
How do you discuss negative emotions with your child normally? Take, for example, a recent conversation between my son and me.
A few days ago I proposed to my son to buy a bicycle, and then unload the auxiliary wheel, let my son learn to ride a bicycle, I just said this idea, he didn't think about it and refused, said I don't want a bicycle, and then I lost my temper and cried, I pondered a bit, I understood that he should be afraid of unloading the auxiliary wheel, afraid of falling, afraid of riding badly, so there was fear, worry, but did not want to say it directly, so it was shown in the form of tantrums and crying.
My current approach is to accept and express the child's emotions: you are very angry and a little sad now, I guess you are afraid to unload the auxiliary wheel right? Worried that I will wrestle, I understand how you feel, well, let's not buy it first, and when you're ready, we'll buy it.
In the evening, I deliberately selected a picture book related to removing the auxiliary wheel, "Tom Bunny Series: Tom Learns to Ride", and after reading it, I discussed with him the emotional events that happened today, including the following points:
Let him recall the reason for today's tantrums and crying, and determine that when he was angry and crying related to removing the auxiliary wheel, what behaviors he had (he had the act of pushing me) These emotions are normal, and adults will also have such emotions
The next day, the son suddenly asked to buy a bicycle, unloaded the auxiliary wheel, and said that he was not so scared.
When children can face their own negative emotions and figure out the causes and consequences of negative emotions, their ability to self-regulate will be improved.
In addition to the child's own emotional events can be used as the object of discussion, parents can often share with their children the unhappy things they encounter, how they feel these emotions, and finally how to deal with them.
In the discussion, the child subtly understood a truth: negative emotions are normal and have the skills to deal with.
2. Parents become qualified emotional reference standards
If you look closely, you will find that when the child loses his temper, he says and does the same thing as us, such as shouting and threatening words.
This is not difficult to understand, because the child learns how we treat them when they lose their temper and cry, and what it is like for the child to imitate anger and sadness from our behavior.
Therefore, in the training of children to cope with negative emotions, there is no particularly advanced skills and quick methods, the most effective way is: parents do a good job of emotional reference standards.
When we are angry, to say: this behavior of yours makes me very angry, or I am very angry now, I feel like I am going to explode (the right way of emotional cognition), I need to calm down, sit on the couch and take a deep breath (the right way to express emotions) When we are sad, to say: I am sad now, because of something, can you come to comfort and comfort me? That way I'm less scared.
The child hears, sees the way we express and process our emotions, and participates in it, which is a very real and effective learning, and over time, this method will be internalized into the child's behavior, and he will begin to copy your approach.
Whether it is the child's negative emotions or the parents' own negative emotions, it can become a whetstone to improve the child's emotional ability.