The Skill of Emotional Balance

"It is our responsibility to learn to become emotionally intelligent. These are skills, they’re not easy, nature didn’t give them to us—we have to learn them." -Paul Ekman

Earlier today, I was sharing with Alice and Mike, two parents, that when their daughter, Franny, behaves badly, she is really communicating: I am having an emotion or experience that I don’t yet have the skills to handle. Franny doesn’t yet have the skills to handle her challenging emotion of anger and her reactions are loud, disruptive, and fast. So, a key piece of the puzzle in helping Franny—and the whole household, is to teach Franny coping skills and teach her how to constructively express her anger.

Made and Not Born

Emotionally healthy children aren’t simply born—they are made. They’re nurtured and taught skills that help them identify their emotions and constructively express them so they can connect with others in emotionally intelligent ways. But before children begin learning about their emotions in earnest, they are typically emotionally reactive, like Franny, which creates a ripple effect of problems for parents, teachers, and anyone in their vicinity, even the quiet-seeking neighbors.

Once children learn how to slow down and make smarter choices (good for you, good for others) with their big feelings, a change occurs. They learn how to display self-control and gain awareness of their varied emotions. On this path, four skills of emotional balance that will help your children become emotionally healthier are the ability to:

1. Pay attention
2. Stop (pause)
3. Calm themselves
4. Make a smart choice

Although these steps may sound simple, they’re not necessarily easy. They take practice and patience from adults as well as children, but they’re possible for most people.

Paying Attention

Children like Franny run “hot” with anger, and like her mom mentioned, experience the “rage monster” quickly. One key to helping Franny turn the corner is to help her pay attention to her feelings when they’re small, so when she begins to feel irritated or annoyed, she can catch the emotion and redirect (or constructively express) it. In other words, we’re helping Franny pay better attention to her feelings and that begins with noticing them in her body.

In The Happiness Workbook for Kids, I have an activity (pages 19-22) where children like Franny can identify where in the body they feel certain emotions. For example, many kids I have worked with say they feel anger in the face, or notice they make fists or start stomping their feet. Every child is different, but you are beginning to see how the activity helps children begin to pay closer attention to where they feel an emotion (in this case, anger) and start to identify their signals, so ultimately they can move to the other three steps: stop (pause), calm, and make a smart choice.

Changing Franny’s behavior begins with helping her slow down, pay attention, and stop before making not-so smart choices (like screaming, slamming doors, throwing things) so that Franny can see she has more options in that “rage monster” moment. She can walk away, take a deep breath, jump on a trampoline, and learn to do something different for her to feel better and the house calmer. Moment by moment.