My heart hurts with the families grieving losses in the past few weeks. While I have tried to keep it to myself, I have realized it is important to my eight year old that I find appropriate ways to explain my feelings to her. Through this she can see that feelings are normal and that she is not the cause of all of my emotions. If I hide my feelings, she does not see appropriate ways to manage her own.
One our our biggest jobs as parents is not to prevent children from feeling big feelings, but it is to help them to find healthy ways to communicate their emotions. We all feel like we need to cry sometimes. We all get angry. The best way I can teach my children social emotional competency is to show emotion myself. I try to label the feeling and explain what I am going to do with my emotions. I also try to recognize when my response is not what I wanted it to be. I explain how I did not want to yell when I felt overwhelmed and that next time I am going to try some breathing to help me calm myself instead.
As parents, we all have to tackle what is going on in the world and decide what and how we share with our children. This month I will share some resources to help you promote social emotional competence in your child, a family protective factor, as well as some resources to guide you in tough discussions that come with tragic news.
-Nicole
The Family Center Director
