Common Sense Parenting with Pam

Foundational Skills #10: Emotional Regulation

• Pam Palanza • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Parenting Vault
PamelaPalanza.com

Discover why emotional regulation isn't just a buzzword but a vital skill your child needs for academic success, solid relationships, and long-term well-being. I share practical steps and modern approaches, along with my personal experiences, to help you guide your child on this crucial journey. From the launch of the Common Sense Parenting Vault—an incredible new resource packed with e-books, audiobooks, webinars, and courses—to hands-on tips for teaching emotional regulation, this episode promises to be your parenting mentor.

We'll also tackle the art of effective discipline and instilling household responsibilities, ensuring your children grow into responsible and grounded individuals. Learn how enforcing consequences like losing a device or being grounded can teach invaluable lessons in responsibility and emotional management. Navigating this journey requires patience, but the reward is one of the greatest gifts you can offer your child. Don’t miss out on these common-sense tips, and remember to connect with me on social media for more insights. Together, let's make parenting a little easier and a lot more rewarding, one tip at a time.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, before we jump into today's episode, I'm so excited to share with you and release finally, after months and months and months of work, the Common Sense Parenting Vault. This is an online community as well as a resource for you, for anybody who is managing behaviors for children aged 2 to 12 years 12 years. Every single Tuesday, there will be a new resource released for you an e-book, an audio book, an audio, a video, a webinar, a course, a tip sheet, multiple pages. There's going to be so much content in this vault and it's evergreen, meaning it stays up there forever. As long as you're paying your monthly subscription fee, you will have access to this information. A lot of it will be downloadable, meaning you can print it out and read it. You can read it from your desktop, your laptop, your iPad. It's like having a parenting mentor in your back pocket, which is really cool. I wish I'd had something like this when I was raising my children. Some of it you'll be able to access only via the community and going to your portal. That will be things like some of the videos, the webinars, the courses, but I'm so excited to share this with you. The release date is today, so if you go to my website, pamelapalanzacom. Look for the Parenting Vault at the top of the page, in the menu, at the top of the page on the menu, and the bonus is this content is only available on that community and in the vault. You will not find this content on any other platform, anywhere else. It will not be on my website, it will not be on social media, it will not be on my Facebook Live. It is strictly going to be in this vault. So I'd love to have you join us. Hit the link on my site, join, jump in, because I'm already uploading content there for you.

Speaker 1:

Now let's jump into our episode. Welcome to Common Sense Parenting with Pam, the podcast where we simplify parenting with common sense tips, real life scenarios and a little bit of humor along the way. I'm Pam and I'm here to help you build the skills and confidence you need to raise happy, resilient and responsible children. So grab your coffee, take a deep breath and let's tackle parenting, one common sense tip at a time. Everyone, welcome back to Common Sense Parenting with Pam. I'm Pam, your host, and today we are wrapping up our 10 foundational skills sessions with an incredibly important topic teaching your children emotional regulation. Now, that is, the ability to manage and respond to their emotions in a healthy and constructive way. It's a foundational skill that affects every aspect of your child's development, from their relationships with peers and family to their academic success and future resilience and you know we've talked about resilience already. If you've missed that, go back and listen to that episode.

Speaker 1:

In today's episode, we're going to discuss why emotional regulation matters, how to teach it effectively and give you some real life scenarios to help you apply these strategies. So, whether you have a tantrum prone toddler or a preteen navigating mood swings and who hasn't all experienced that at one time or another or you will this episode is packed with practical tips for you. Now let me just say before we begin this, I'm all about common sense, right? So the way I raised my kids was with common sense. They learned emotional regulation, but I also didn't talk at them all the time. So some of this I'm going to give you, probably how you would want to do it now, but I'm going to tell you how I did it in some of these. Okay, so you're going to get kind of like both aspects here, because I know things have changed in parenting. I don't agree with all of it, so I'm going to give you what works maybe for some of you and what I would do just to be real and upfront with you on this one.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so why is it important? Well, we've already talked about how it's going to impact them for life correct and all their relationships and their work and their school and their marriage with their own children. So children who learn to regulate their emotions, they develop better relationships. When they feel like they can express their feelings appropriately, they're more likely to build strong friendships and maintain positive family dynamics. Yay, obviously, everyone wants that in their family Also. They perform better academically. Obviously, everyone wants that in their family Also. They perform better academically. Emotional regulation improves their focus, their impulse control and their ability to handle challenges all essential for success in school and everywhere else in life. It builds resilience. You know life is full of ups and downs. Children who can manage their emotions are better equipped to bounce back from setbacks and they grow up to be adults who can manage their emotions and be better equipped to bounce back from setbacks, and they experience improved mental health. Emotionally regulated children are less likely to experience anxiety, depression or behavioral problems as they grow. So think about this for a minute. Would you rather have your child yell and storm off every time they're upset, or pause, take a deep breath and express their feelings calmly?

Speaker 1:

Teaching emotional regulation is an investment in your child's long-term well-being and, quite frankly, it's part of your job as a parent. Now here's how you can teach it. It doesn't happen overnight. It's a gradual process that requires patience and consistency, as is much of parenting. But here are some practical steps you can use. Number one you need to model emotional regulation. Here we go again.

Speaker 1:

Children learn by watching you. If you remain calm during stressful situations, they'll learn to do the same. You know, we all have times when we have our children in the car, we're stuck in traffic, something happens and perhaps our first response is not the most effective, correct. We might raise our voice, we might say some things, we make it frustrated. So instead of doing that, just say you know, I'm a little frustrated because we're running late and this traffic's, you know, make things so much slower for me, but let's listen to some music to pass the time. So they see you're frustrated, but then they see how you handle it.

Speaker 1:

Labeling emotions, teaching your child to identify their emotions by naming them, really helps them. You can say to them. You know you look upset, are you feeling frustrated, are you sad? Do you want to keep playing? What's going on? This helps children understand their feelings and express them verbally. You know children don't always know the word to put to the emotion and that's part of what you need to teach them. So you can teach them things like deep breathing, counting to 10, using a calm corner For younger children, you can try the bubble breathing. It's where they blow imaginary bubbles slowly to mimic deep breaths. It helps regulate their nervous system.

Speaker 1:

You can create a feelings chart or you have feeling cards that have the faces and express what the emotion is and you go over those with your children. So it helps them identify. They can either point to the picture on the chart or they can pull out the card and you can talk about why they feel the way they feel. And then role-playing with your children really helps too. If you can practice handling those emotions through role-playing, it guides them in responding appropriately. So you can talk about, act out a scenario, act out how they might feel be angry, sad, frustrated and then guide them in ways they couldn't respond appropriately, and then always reinforce your positive behavior. I just did my Facebook Live today on this the power of positive reinforcement. It's a wonderful tool to have in your parenting toolkit Praise your children when they handle their emotions well.

Speaker 1:

You can say something like you should be so proud of how you took deep breaths and told me you were upset, instead of yelling and then set boundaries. I'm all about boundaries here. So, while it's important to validate their emotions, set limits on inappropriate behavior. You could say something like you know it's okay to feel angry, but it is not okay to hit. Now I would probably word it like it's okay to feel angry, but you need to keep your hands to yourself, because I'm trying to word that positively, okay.

Speaker 1:

So here are some common scenarios, and here's where we're going to differ a little bit. Some of this is responses I've got from my followers about how they would handle some of these situations. So I'm going to give you what they would say and then I'm going to tell you what I would do. Okay, so you're at the store, your 3-year-old starts screaming because they want candy and they start throwing a little tantrum. What some of my followers say they would do and some of you may do this, is you say to your child I see you're upset because you want candy and then you offer them a choice. You say we're not buying candy, but you can choose an apple or a banana.

Speaker 1:

Now I do agree that you need to stay calm and consistent, but I would not feed a tantrum. So if a child is screaming and throwing a fit, throwing a tantrum because they want something, I would not respond to that at all. I wouldn't look at them, I wouldn't touch them, I'd turn my back to them, but I'd still be able to see them and reach them and I wouldn't ignore it. Now, if they're screaming so loud they're disrupting everybody. I would pick them up and take them out of the store, put them in the car and take them home. I'd give them the chance to quiet down when we went outside, sit on a bench or put them in the car, but if they didn't, they would go home. They would quickly learn they need to regulate their emotions, that that is not going to work and get them anything. That's just my two cents worth.

Speaker 1:

Okay, you have siblings fighting, say they're like five and seven. They're arguing over toy. You could separate them briefly, tell them you need to go cool down. Then you can guide them through conflict resolution. So you can sit down and talk to them like let's take turns, tell me how you feel, then you come up with a solution together. That is teaching problem solving. That is teaching conflict resolution. There's a whole podcast episode on that as well and on problem solving. So teach them to use I statements like I feel upset when you took my toy. Because they're putting names to the emotion instead of just going you're such a poopy head, you took my toy, I hate you, which is what a lot of kids resort to. When they can't name emotions, they resort to name calling. Say you have preteen. Say 11, he slams the door after a disagreement.

Speaker 1:

Okay, here we go on this one. Give them space to calm down and calmly later say I noticed you were upset earlier. Do you want to talk about it? You can discuss healthy ways that they can express that frustration, like journaling or talking it out. Now here's what I would do If my child slammed the door. I'd give them one chance, we would talk. We'd say here's you know, sorry, you're upset, let's talk about it. What's going on? And I would say to them at that moment if you ever slam your door again, it will be taken off the hinges. You will lose it for a week and then I would take it off the hinges if they ever slam the door again, because they need to understand you have boundaries. Slamming a door in your face or slamming a door is totally disrespectful and should not be tolerated. Yes, give them one chance. They might be upset about something, talk them through it, let them know the consequences and then follow through with it every single time.

Speaker 1:

You have a child who's not really following instructions. Well, so say, your eight-year-old gets frustrated when they're asked to clean up their room and they refuse to do it. Hmm, they're eight and they're refusing to clean their room. Here we go. Okay, you could break it into smaller tasks. You can say put your toys away in the bin, you know. Then put your clothes away in the closet. Offer them encouragement and praise their effort. You know you're doing a great job organizing your toys. But by eight years old, when you say, go clean your room, they need to go clean their room and maybe you do need to break it down in steps for them. But I would say go clean your room. And let me just tell you when I grew up now I grew up in a whole different generation than most of you. Listening when my parents said go clean your room, I went and cleaned my room. We didn't discuss it, we didn't analyze it, we didn't make charts. I went and cleaned my room because I was told to go clean my room and I respected my parents and I did what I was told.

Speaker 1:

I think sometimes nowadays and a lot of you are going to disagree with me on this people talk at their children too much. They discuss everything, they break it down, they analyze it, give them direction. Children want guidance, they want direction, they want someone to be in charge. So you say you need to go clean your room and if you choose not to clean your room, then this will be the consequence, because that's what happens in real life. When your boss tells you to go do something, you don't go. Could you break it down into steps for me? Could I do it in little bits and pieces? They go, get this done and you say okay, and you get it done. Do you always like it? No, do you need to do it? Sure, if you want to keep your job. So the same thing at home Go clean your room.

Speaker 1:

If you choose not to clean your room, oh well, you have a consequence. It might be you lose your device. It might be you're grounded for a week. Whatever it is you decide to do, enforce it. Tell them, go clean your room period. It's part of a household responsibility. So teaching emotional regulation is one of the greatest gifts you can give your child. It's not about eliminating their emotions, but navigating them in a healthy way. Be patient though. This is a journey, it's not a sprint. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of Common Sense Parenting with Pam. I hope you enjoyed the episode and, if you did, please leave a review. That helps other parents find us, and if you have friends who also have children and could use some parenting tips, feel free to share this. I would really appreciate it and you know'd love to hear from you so you can always find me on my socials. And until then, remember, hug and love your babies.