Big Emotions And The Behaviours That Comes With It
Children and young people need adults to help them process their emotions.
When we are dealing with a dysregulated child we can often become distressed ourselves; we may feel worried about them, hurt, angry, defensive or even fearful. If we can first check in with ourselves by taking a short pause and deep breath so we can ensure that we respond rather than react, the outcome can be far more peaceful and supportive.
The behaviour that we are seeing; whether it is screaming and hitting, or withdrawing completely, is because our young person is finding it difficult to express what is going on for them.
As caregivers we have an opportunity here to teach our children that our emotions, even angry ones, are healthy, and together we can find a healthy way to let it out. For example, we can explain or model that while it is ok to feel angry, it is not ok to hit anyone because you are feeling this emotion. Instead we can hit a big soft toy, stamp our feet or scream into a pillow.
Once this big emotion has passed, we can then reconnect to find out the underlying cause.
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