My Bloom psychologist said that one of the goals for my child will be to improve emotional regulation skills. Does this mean not accepting my child as they are and trying to make them “more normal” in situations that overwhelm them?
Absolutely not! Emotional regulation is the capacity to recognize what we are feeling in the moment and what we need in order to cope and feel safe. It is about having a toolkit of skills available at any moment to “ride the wave” of an emotion while still feeling in control.
Good emotional regulation skills are about knowing when to take a break—or when to not even enter into certain situations at all. Developing these skills is a process of coming to know our individual selves deeply, with acceptance and maybe a bit of humor! We can then use this knowledge of our own reaction patterns, strengths, and challenges to develop our unique coping style and toolkit for managing situations.
In therapeutic sessions, your child’s psychologist will help them to identify situations that make them feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed—for example, loud and unpredictable situations such as school assembly. Together, they will come up with a plan to manage these situations—maybe using noise-canceling headphones or sitting in a location that is less noisy. Your child’s psychologist will also help your child feel more comfortable approaching supportive adults and asking for what they need—maybe a buddy to sit with, a moment of the teacher’s attention, or a different activity to do.
Learning better emotional regulation skills is a process that takes time, and your psychologist will work with you and your child to help them strengthen this skill. Steps along the way include learning to identify:
- Emotional vocabulary – names of different emotions
- What situations trigger each emotion
- Sensations within their bodies during an emotion
- Thoughts that come with the emotions
- A range of calming/coping tools for riding the waves of emotions
As your child learns skills during sessions, it will be important for practice to continue at home between sessions. Some ideas of things you can do to support your child’s progress include:
- Reading books specifically about emotions and how they feel in the body
- When reading any books or watching shows together, wonder out loud what the characters might be feeling and why
- Model the process of noticing that you’re feeling an emotion and using a tool to calm down (e.g., “I’m feeling really overwhelmed with all this work, I might take a break and have a cup of tea.”)
- Support your child to notice their feelings and use an emotional coping tool (e.g., “I think we are both very angry right now, let’s have some time apart and then come back and talk about this later.”)
- Make sharing about emotional experiences a daily part of your family life, such as at dinnertime when everyone shares something that made them happy/frustrated/disappointed during the day and how they managed the situation.
