By Sandy Clark and Marie Nebel-Schwalm PhD, The ABLE Center
Many people struggle to control their emotions. Yet learning emotional control is an important life skill for children — one that can be a difficult task for parents to teach. While some children are naturally more easy-going and don’t seem to struggle with tantrums or uncontrollable outbursts, for others, this is a challenge. Fortunately, there are several techniques that are very effective for teaching children ways to manage their emotions.
Last month, we discussed the importance of helping children understand how their bodies work and how their brain is involved in emotional expression. Teaching children about how their brain works helps them to understand that they can experience and feel negative emotions, but still make good choices about how to express these feelings. Once children have a better understanding of how their brain works, it is easier to teach them specific skills to reduce the intensity of emotions. These skills should be taught and practiced when they feel relatively calm so that they can master them and are better able to implement these strategies in the presence of intense emotions.
Children can be taught to spend increased time in a relaxed state through specific relaxation skills. They can learn to understand how these skills are helping their “downstairs” brain, the part involved with big negative emotions like anger, stay in contact with their “upstairs” brain, the part involved with more sophisticated thinking processes such as making decisions and considering consequences (read last month’s article for a further explanation of this concept).
There are many types of relaxation interventions and the choices can be tailored to the child’s age. For example, mindful awareness is a technique that can be adapted for all ages to increase foundational skills necessary for emotion regulation (awareness of sensations, physical cues, and emotions) as well as more advanced skills (compassion, gratitude, self-acceptance). Especially for younger children, mindful awareness may consist of playing detective games like “I-spy” or “guess that sound” which increase focused attention and awareness of their senses. “Upstairs brain” awareness of “downstairs brain” body sensations helps a child to become more balanced, aware of body cues that they are experiencing a strong emotion, and eventually to better use other strategies to reduce strong emotions. Mindfulness can be used for a variety of concerns, including ADHD, emotional dysregulation, anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, PTSD, and eating disorders.
Progressive muscle relaxation is another useful technique for all ages. It involves squeezing each muscle group in turn at maximum effort for a few seconds and then releasing the muscles. The child can start at their feet and slowly progress up major muscle groups including facial muscles. This can be as simple as telling a child to tense and relax each group of muscles, or there are creative visualizations to make these activities more fun for children (pretending to be a dinosaur, squishing feet in the mud). The result of squeezing muscles intentionally is to create an awareness of how muscles feel when they are tight and tense, and then to heighten the sense of relaxation that comes when that tension is released. Paired with mindful awareness, this can be an effective tool for increasing awareness of body cues and reducing tension. These techniques can be practiced whenever the child has some privacy and at any time of day that works for them. If a child has trouble sleeping, it can be helpful to practice these relaxation skills at bedtime.
Focused breathing, or belly breathing, is another highly effective technique, but one that can be challenging for children. Taking deep, intentional breaths sends messages to our brain that we are in a calm and relaxed state. Teaching kids to “trick their brain” in this way can make it into a game. It can sometimes help to start by having the child lay on their backs, and use a stuffed animal on their stomachs to help them see how their stomachs expand with each breath in and contract when breathing out. Breathing is typically a “downstairs brain” function, especially the rapid, shallow breathing associated with stronger emotions. Focused, intentional breathing engages the “upstairs brain” in a way that brings awareness of their body while bringing them into a calm, relaxed state.
Children benefit from regular practice and when parents reinforce them with verbal praise or physical affection. In addition, children are also highly reinforced when parents join them in their relaxation practice. This can be a special activity for both parent and child and a positive side-effect of doing it together is that parents often report benefitting from the relaxation skills themselves.
There are many challenges parents face in raising their children to be successful adults. Helping children learn appropriate ways to handle their emotions can go a long way towards making their life journey less rocky.
Behavioral Specialist, Ms. Sandy Clark, and Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Marie Nebel-Schwalm, are staff members at The ABLE Center. They provide brief problem-focused psychoeducational interventions, developmental therapy, and social skills group services for children and adolescents. The ABLE Center in Bloomington, IL uses an integrated team approach to offer comprehensive evaluations and intervention services. For more information about their neuropsychological or interventions services please visit their website at
www.TheABLECenter.com or contact them at 309-661-8046.