Educate children to be emotionally happy!

We parents are the first ones that can be educated in ALL aspects of life to better help the little ones.

We all want our children to succeed and be happy, we all want them to achieve their potential. But for them to be successful in various areas of their lives and learn how to solve problems, it is important that they learn the skills to be emotionally happy, and this is a process that should start as early as possible.

Patricia Ellinger (our special guest), is a wife and mother of 6 children.  She worked at BYU in the College of Nursing and at Primary Children's Hospital. She is an expert on this subject and shared valuable information that can be applied immediately! I divided the interview in 2 posts, so it won't be too overwhelming.

When I first asked Patricia Ellinger, how to help children to be emotionally stable and happy, she shared that children love structure and that it is very important to teach them HOW TO EXPRESS THEIR FEELINGS! They are not born knowing how to recognize feelings, and as children grow up and have different waves of emotions, they need to learn how to handle those emotions.

She says that most of the time when children don't know how to express themselves, they will ACT OUT. For example, if they are angry...they hit, if they are jealous...they can hit or fight, etc....

As a therapist, she would teach children how to express their feelings. At first, Patricia would teach the meaning of the feelings, little by little, so they can understand what it means, because feelings are very abstract. For example, it is very hard for a child to understand what jealously means ( a good example is a child that has to share attention with a new sibling...and she or he might not know why they are feeling angry or irritated).

For a child to learn the feelings, you can use a "how do you feel?"chart. There are many kinds available online or you could create your own with drawings or pictures. This is an example of the one she used, this is found at http://catalog.a2zschoolsupply.com

So... they have to LEARN those feelings, EXPRESS them and KNOW what to do with them.

To express them, Patricia Ellinger taught the Feeling Formula that she used when treating children. This is the formula to get those feelings OUT:

She draws a gingerbread man and explain that the gingerbread is "you"( say that to the child). Then explain: "sometimes things happen to us, and they are kind of negative or they are good. And all these feelings are inside of us, but we have to get the feelings out from inside. How do we do that?" See picture above.

Then draw a mouth and a ballon for what the "gingerbread man"is saying. Somethimes children can't figure out why they are feeling that way...so you have to attach a feeling to what had happened to them. (This is a great way to learn what happened in school!)

Next step: the gingerbread man speaks up. Ask the child to say what he feels and why. Here is a couple examples: I feel proud...because I got an A on my paper. Then erase the positive feeling he had talked about, so we don't keep them inside. 

Practice "getting those feeling out", then as a parent we have to problem solve WITH THEM. Patricia says that the most important thing to a parent is to empathize and resist the urge to ask "What did you do?" when they share something with us. We can destroy a child IF we do not let them express their feelings. When they do express them, don't be negative about their feelings... be compassionate. Let them TALK, but you can say empathic statement such as "That is so difficult..." or  "it is so sad..." (if is a negative situation that they are telling you)

The child will see that someone understands and listen to him or her!

It is nice to remember that a lot of times children don't verbalize how they feel inside, and then they reveal second feelings, they can be quiet or show anger, but they feel hurt in the first place.

Teaching the proper way to channel and deal with emotions can be the most important skill of a lifetime, otherwise they can look for extreme behaviors or things such as addiction or aggressiveness.