Helping My Son Manage His Emotions

My son used to have emotional meltdowns when he was younger. I realized that there were three things causing this:

1. Inability to recognize his feelings and emotions.

2. Inability to express his feelings and emotions.

3. Inability to manage or cope with his feelings and emotions.

Once I realized this, I began teaching him to identify, express, and manage his emotions. I taught him four emotions to begin with - happy, sad, angry and scared. I explained these emotions to him using words, pictures, and actions. I told him the name of the emotion, showed him pictures of faces expressing the emotion, and acted out the emotion in person. Once he learned the emotions, I showed him pictures of people's faces expressing different emotions and asked him to guess the emotion. We did this until he was able to identify the emotions on people's faces easily.

I, then, taught him various reasons for feeling various emotions. I gave him different scenarios in which different emotions were evoked, to make him understand the circumstances under which a person might feel happy, sad, angry or scared. I also gave him examples from his own experiences so that he would be able to relate better. 

Once he had learned the basic emotions and the reasons for feeling them, I helped him identify what he was feeling at the moment - you're feeling happy/sad/angry/scared right now - and gave him possible reasons why he might be feeling that way.

Once he started identifying what he was feeling, I began to ask him, rather than tell him, what he was feeling - are you feeling happy/sad/angry/scared right now? - and asked him to analyze what had made him feel this way.

Finally, I taught him different ways to cope with his feelings. Initially, he needed to be prompted to do one of the things I had taught him. For eg: take deep breaths, sit in the swing, play with playdough, read a book, etc. Now, he does it on his own and doesn't have emotional outbursts. He has even added subtler emotions like disappointed, annoyed, bored, frustrated, to his repertoire.

Zones of Regulation

I used Zones of Regulation to help my son manage his emotions. Zones of Regulation contain four primary color-coded zones - blue, green, yellow and red. They are easy for a child to understand once he or she is familiar with the traffic signal system of green for go, yellow for slow down and red for stop. Now we add one more color to it, that is blue. Here are some representative images for the Zones of Regulation to give you an idea about them and how they work. You can visit the Zones of Regulation website for more information.

Love,

Preeti

DISCLAIMER: Please note that I am neither a doctor, a therapist, or a special educator. I am the mother of a young man with special needs. Everything I write is based on my personal experiences with my son and should not be taken as or in place of professional advice.