Abstract
Adults frequently struggle with how best to respond to children’s displays of emotions, particularly when they seem extreme or when the adult does not view them as reasonable or appropriate in the situation. Children with autism and developmental language disorders or children who have experienced trauma frequently misinterpret situations and thus respond in ways that to adults appear inappropriate. Gottman and Declaire (1997) describe ways in which adults frequently respond to children’s emotional displays—three of which they consider inappropriate or not helpful to the children and one that is supportive of the child and assists the child to develop better emotional regulation and problem solving. The following three caregiver strategies are problematic:
Dismissing: The dismissing adult discounts children’s emotional expression or attempts to distract the child. They may disengage from the child or even ridicule the child’s emotional behavior. They may feel that expression of emotions is toxic or unhealthy. They are likely to uses the passage of time as a cure-all replacement for problem solving. Dismissing adults show low empathy and low guidance.
When adults dismiss children’s emotions they learn that there is something wrong with them, that they cannot regulate their emotions, and that what they are feeling is not appropriate, not right, and abnormal.
Disapproving: This strategy is similar to dismissing, but more negative, judgmental and critical, controlling, manipulative, and authoritative. The adult is overly concerned with disciplining the child and unconcerned with the meaning of a child’s emotional expression. Disapproving adults show low empathy and high guidance.
The effects on the child are similar to the dismissing adult’s techniques.
Laissez-Faire: The laissez-faire adult is endlessly permissive. The adult may accept any and all emotional responses but offer little to no guidance about problem solving or dealing with the emotions. They do not set any limits on behavior and may encourage the child to “ride out” the emotions until they are out of the way and out of sight. Laissez-faire adults show high empathy but low guidance. Sometimes adults take the laissez-faire approach when working with children who have experienced trauma because they do not want to further stress the child or they believe the child has a legitimate reason to be frightened or angry. The problem with the laissez-faire approach even in this situation is that the children do not learn to understand their emotional response and modify it for the present situation.
Children who experience this strategy for emotional management have difficulty getting along with others or forming friendships because they can’t regulate their emotions in a healthy way.
Emotion coaching is the recommended method for responding to children’s emotional behaviors. Emotion coaching represents a very different approach. Adults who adopt an emotion coaching philosophy view children’s bad moods as opportunities to empathize, connect, and teach. They take time to see things from the child’s perspective and make the child feel understood and respected. They talk with kids about emotions and help children put their own feelings into words. They also help children come up with strategies for dealing with negative emotions and the situations that trigger such emotions. Adults who use emotion coaching show high empathy and high guidance. There are five components to emotion coaching:
Be aware of children’s emotions and your own. Understand that emotions are a natural and valuable part of life. Observe, listen, and learn how the child expresses different emotions—watch for changes in facial expressions, body language, posture, and tone of voice.
View children’s display of emotions as a time for connecting and teaching.
Help children to verbally label the emotions being experienced. Set a good example by naming your own emotions and talking about them. Help the child to build a vocabulary for different feelings.
Empathize and validate children’s emotions.
Help children to solve problems (and set limits where appropriate). Brainstorm ways to solve the problem or prevent it from occurring again. Redirect misbehaving children for what they do, not what they feel. When children misbehave, explain why their behavior was inappropriate.
The movie Inside Out shows a good example of dismissing and emotion coaching (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh0EE2_Y2io). The character Bing Bong has just lost his favorite toy. The character Joy tries to distract him by tickling him, making faces, and talking about going to the train station. In contrast, the character Sadness labels and validates Bing Bong’s emotion, “I’m sorry they took your rocket. They took something you loved. It’s gone, forever. I bet you and Riley had great adventures . . . it’s sad.”
Anoushka Houseman presents a brief 10-min webinar on YouTube on how to do emotion coaching (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0bLZJ7dWPE).
Research shows that emotion-coached children (Duncombe et al., 2016; Hurrell et al., 2017; Short et al., 2010)
are more emotionally stable,
are more resilient,
achieve more academically,
are more popular,
have fewer behavioral problems, and
have fewer infectious diseases.
Speech-language pathologists are in an excellent position to employ emotion coaching as well as to train caregivers and other educators in the use of emotion coaching.