5 Steps to Deal With Your Child’s Emotional Behaviour

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes

Children of all ages can display emotional behaviour. For example, a child could be angry, sad, frustrated or anxious, just to name a few. Whatever emotion a child is feeling, if it is sufficiently overwhelming, it will impact their behaviour to some degree. The more powerful the emotion, the more noticeable the behaviour will be.

Some children have difficulty in regulating their emotions, meaning it can be very challenging for parents to respond to these types of behaviour. Even the most emotionally robust children can have moments in which their emotions take over and their behaviour changes.

The role of the parent

It is important to support these children in understanding their emotions and know how to regulate them. This is where the role of the parent comes in. Due to the complexity of the emotions and the uniqueness of how we all cope with them, parents may feel at a loss of how to respond when presented with highly emotional behaviour. However, there are some helpful steps that parents can take to support their children with their emotional behaviour.

Based on strategies taught in the Triple P Parenting Program, below you will find 5 steps to deal with your child’s emotional behaviour. These steps can be followed and applied to all types of emotional behaviour. Whether this be a child coming home upset from school, lashing out because they are angry or shouting at you in frustration. Each situations requires a unique approach. However, these steps provide parents with a structure that they can follow, to ensure they are consistent and supportive in their approach.

Step 1: Listen

When you are presented with the emotional behaviour, often the child wants an opportunity to express themselves and how they are feeling. Sometimes, this may come across as aggressive, as a child may be shouting at you. Alternatively, the child could be upset and may only want to say a few words, if any.

It is important to first of all give the child the space to express themselves. Let them say how they are feeling and get rid of that emotional load they are carrying. As adults, has there ever been a time in which you want to just vent to someone and not be interrupted in doing so? (I certainly know my wife likes to do this). Children sometimes need this same freedom.

Please note, this is a time for listening only. Try to resist any urge to interrupt, ask questions, challenge or offer solutions. This will all come at a later point. The priority for this step, is allowing the child to shift that emotional load, with the hope that they will calm down as a result.

Once you feel the child has had their chance to speak and express themselves and they are finished in doing so, it is time for Step 2.

Step 2: Acknowledge/Validate

At this point, it is time to acknowledge and validate how your child is feeling and label the emotion they are feeling. For example, let’s say you have a child who is very angry because of something that has happened in school. You have completed Step 1 and your child has expressed how they feel about what has happened. Your response as a parent could be, “I completely understand why you would be feeling angry about this, and I think I would feel angry if I were in your shoes too”.

The idea behind a statement like this, it to reassure the child that it is ok to feel the way they are feeling and help them identify what emotion they are feeling. You are not offering any solutions at this point or asking questions. We are waiting for the child to calm down sufficiently to make these conversations more productive. Entering into these discussions too early, can sometimes escalate behaviours.

The goal is to help the child calm down through validating their feelings and help them understand the emotion fuelling how they feel.  You may even choose to add a personal example of your own. For example, in the scenario above, you may wish to share a story from your own childhood that is similar and relatable, highlighting that you have felt the same in the past. However, be mindful of not making the conversation all about you, so pick and choose when to do this.

Step 3: Pause

Once you have acknowledged and validated how the child is feeling, it is time to take a pause. This may feel uncomfortable or strange at this point, as you have just validated how they feel but not asked any questions or offered any solutions.

This is all intentional, as the goal of the pause is to assess if the child is calming down or not. Whilst there is no set length of time you need to pause, I would pause for 5 seconds or so. Don’t fill the silence or feel the need to speak again, just take a moment to look at your child and assess how they are feeling.

10% off “My Baby Memories” products – Available via the banner below!

(“My Baby Memories” – Affiliate Link)

It is at this stage in which it can go one of two ways. Either your child is calming down/calmed down, or is continuing to display highly emotional behaviour.

Problem solving

If your child is calming down or has completely calmed down. This is when you enter into more of a dialogue with your child. Base this conversation around problem solving. However, encourage your child to come up with the solutions, rather than you giving them all the answers. Problem solving skills are a really good skill for a child to have and would result in a child independently resolving issues for themselves in the future.

Some children who are used to parents solving all their issues, may be quite resistant to these types of conversations. Comments like “I don’t know” can be repeated over and over by children when prompted to think of their own solutions. What they are really saying is, “you tell me what to do”. Promote problem solving as long as you can, however, if they do need some more guidance, perhaps offer prompts to the answer rather than the full answer.

Once you have agreed a path of how to resolve the issue, you may choose to revalidate their feelings or confirm the agreement with the child and thank them for calming down and speaking about how they are feeling. Even if the behaviour was trigged because of the child misbehaving in the first place, this conversation can be used to help them understand why what they did was wrong and how they can avoid it in future.

Realistically, not all children will have calmed down by this point. More so, it is more likely they are still displaying the same emotional behaviour. If that is the case, move on to Step 4.

Step 4: Repeat acknowledgement/Validation statement

If the behaviour is continuing, the next step is to go back over the acknowledgement and validation statements. It may be the case that you repeat the exact same statement you made before, which is absolutely fine. However, remember not to enter problem solving mode or ask questions at this point.

Your child may be expecting you to question them, challenge them or offer solutions. Therefore, repeating your previous statements is showing them that this is not happening at this point.

Once this step has been completed, you can again allow time for a pause to assess your child’s reaction. Similar to Step 3, if your child calms down, this is an opportunity to discuss problem solving. However, if the behaviours continue, it is time to move to Step 5.

Step 5: Time and Space

At this point, it is time to consider whether some time and space apart is required to allow the child to sufficiently calm down. If emotional behaviour is continuing and there is no sign of your child calming down, it can be unhelpful to persist in speaking with them at such a high emotional state. The goal always is to support your child to calm down. Therefore, some time and space away to themselves can sometimes be the answer.

It is important not to phrase this as a punishment, more so, you “think it would be helpful for both of you to have some time to calm down, before we come back and speak again.” Put a timeframe on this period, for example, “in 15minutes I will come back to speak to you again and we will talk about what is happening”.

Once this time has elapsed, you are then re-entering the process at Stage 3. You re-engage with them, determine if they have calmed down, if they have, great. If not, they may need some more time. You can repeat this cycle as much as needed. Children cannot hold these high levels of emotional behaviour forever, so eventually they will calm down and you can start to problem solve.

One typical issue you may find at this point, is that the child refuses to go and have time and space away. If this is the case, try and create this time and space yourself. Can you go to the shops? Start doing a household chore? Go to the bathroom? Find a way of creating some time and space to help your child calm down, before starting the process again.

Summary

The benefits of this process is that it gives parents a very clear structure to follow, that is repeatable, can apply to multiple types of emotional behaviour and always gives a parent a “next step” to take if behaviour persists.

Furthermore, it helps the children understand their emotions, gives them feelings of validations and develops their own problem solving skills. These are all helpful skills for a child to have so that in future, they can regulate their own emotions, solve their own problems and become more independent.

It will take practice as a parent to implement this consistently from memory. It will almost certainly feel strange to do. However, if you ever feel unsure of how to manage emotional behaviour, this can give you a clear and repeatable structure you can follow.

Please feel free to share your thoughts, experiences or stories in the comments below!

(This post contains links from affiliates of this blog. If you make a purchase via the links, you will get a discount and I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to yourself. So everybody wins! All affiliate links will be labelled as such).

Useful links:

• 3 Key Steps to Using Effective Consequences with Children
• 5 Points to Consider when Establishing Sleeping Routines with Children
• 5 Ways of Improving Relationships With Your Children
• Why it is Important to Find the Root Cause of Your Child’s Behaviour
• 3 Key Steps to Using Effective Consequences With Children
• Why is it Important to Use Praise and Reward With Children