If you’re a parent, you know that raising children arouses a lot of emotions. Those emotions range from joy to sorrow to anger to guilt and more. They occur when we witness our children doing wonderful things and when our children snap back in anger at a limit we set. We experience emotions when we believe our children are being mistreated and when we think our children may have mistreated someone else (including us). Those emotions may lead to a parent feeling overwhelmed or out of control. At other times parents may push emotions away in an effort to avoid pain.

Remember, though, that children watch how we, their parents, manage our emotions. Without even knowing it, they learn how to manage their emotions by watching us manage our emotions. So if we become overwhelmed by emotions and strike out, they learn to do the same. If we shut down in response to overwhelming emotions, avoiding them and leaving them unaddressed, they will learn to do the same. Ideally, we want our children to learn how to manage their emotions in a healthy, productive way, a way that will help them move toward their goals in a healthy manner.

So how can you effectively manage your emotions as a parent and so teach your children to manage their emotions in a healthy way? Good question.

• First, be aware of your emotions and how you experience those emotions in your body. We experience our emotions in our bodies. The more aware we can become of how we experience various emotions in our bodies, the more quickly we can recognize them and the more effectively we can manage them. Learn the difference between the bodily experience of anger, sadness, joy, and excitement. Pay attention to the first signs of these emotions in your body.
• Learn the thoughts that accompany and perpetuate your emotions. Don’t just stop at knowing the obvious thoughts, the thoughts that scream in your head during the height of your emotions. Listen to the more subtle thoughts in the background, the first whispers of “this is so irritating” or “I wish they’d stop already.” Sometimes these thoughts arise before we even become aware of the bodily sensations of the emotion. Listen closely to the emotional scripts in your head, even the “first whispers.”
• When you become aware of the bodily sensation of an emotion or the thoughts that accompany and perpetuate an emotion, address it. Engage in activities that can soothe you physically—activities like deep breathing, physical exercise, changing scenery, grounding…whatever is appropriate and helpful for the moment. Consider the thought and decide if it is reasonable or not. What might be a better, more accurate thought to replace it with? Can you take action while you are still calm to address a genuine concern?
• Recognize the value that undergirds your emotion. We only experience emotion over those things that are meaningful to us, things we find valuable. So take the time to consider: what value drives your emotion? What makes this situation so meaningful that it arouses emotion in you? What is the message of your emotion? How can you respond to the situation while upholding your value?
• Respond to the situation arousing the emotion. Know you know the physical sensations of the emotion and the thoughts that accompany and perpetuate the emotion. Respond early, when you first recognize the emotion arising, before you become overwhelmed by the emotion. You know the values undergirding your emotion, the meaning behind the emotion. Respond while upholding your values.

These five principles will help you respond to your children in a healthy manner, no matter what emotion arises. If you’d like more details on how to manage your emotions, check out How to Deal with Difficult Emotions, Emotional Rules…What?, You & Your Child’s Big Emotions-Part 2 (follow the link in the blog to Part 1), and Are You Manipulated or Accepting of Your Child’s Emotions for starters.