Learing to handle your childs emotions

I can tell you that as a family we have struggled with the "strong willed" emotions of our 6 year old for more than a few months now, and it has been a real challenge. It is getting better as we focus on improvement. The worst part of any child's emotional outbursts is that it really pushes our parental buttons and can lead to anger and or words that we can regret. Quite frankly it is a real threat to good parenting and I'm sure most of you can relate to this. In my recent readings - primarily "Have a New Kid By Friday" by Dr. Kevin Lehman, I have to say that there are some key points that have helped us immensely in dealing with this.



#1 Respect - If you want your child to respect you, you must respect the child and that means giving them freedom and responsibility to make errors and learn from their mistakes. We can't coddle our little ones forever and as they grow up, they need to be understood and trusted.



#2 Use encouragement rather than praise - and don't expect perfection



#3 Be calm and assertive - don't escalate the emotions as your child will reflect them back to you. Our children can become not only a mirror of ourselves, but with their own personalities we have to understand that this can be multiplied back at us !!



It is no wonder that kids from families that yell at each other communicate by "yelling" . People that communicate in a peaceable fashion will find it more likely that they will receive respectful responses from (and between) their children. We all have our moments and patience can wear thin. I can tell you that we are learning these things around here and it gets better with time if you are committed to dealing with it. The hardest part for me is to focus on what is at hand and deal with it "now" rather than just putting it aside hoping it will just go away, or thinking it's "no big deal" and letting it go on. We had to miss a family movie that we planned to see the other day due to my daughter's outburst. Luckily, we stayed calm and dealt with the situation by explaining to her that she would not be able to go and that we had to cancel that day due to her outburst. We explained how disappointed we were, and the next day we as parents went to the movie and she stayed home with Grandma. She understood (without getting upset) why she could not go. A learning experience that helped not only our daughter, but ourselves.