Recognising an emotional storm from an outburst

Here at KatieB Kids we are always being asked for our advice on a number of different topics from weaning to potty training to getting children ready for school, but one of the most asked topics is how to support children’s unwanted behaviour and emotional outbursts. As a setting we use emotion coaching to support our children’s emotional literacy, the premise of which is to recognise and label children’s emotion’s and to work with them to problem solve solutions of how to deal with the situation that cause them to have emotional outburst, so they can deal with it again in the future. Find out more about understanding children’s emotions here.

If you have you ever wondered why sometimes your approach works perfectly and sometimes it just backfires and the situation escalates, then read on! Before you can support a child with understanding and appropriately managing their emotions, we need to understand what type of emotional outburst they are having.

Is it an emotional outburst or emotional storm?

An emotional outburst is:

●        a learnt response

●        involves some element of control

●        stops when desired result is achieved

●        able to be reasoned with

●        can turn into a storm

An emotional storm is:

●        when a child is overwhelmed by emotion

●        reactions can become mixed up e.g. they may laugh inappropriately

●        when they have flipped their lid

●        unable to control

●        loss of ability to reason

●        does not stop immediately when desired result is achieved

As L.R. Knost once said ‘When little people are overwhelmed by big emotions, it’s our job to share our calm, not to join their chaos’.

So how should you respond?

The way in which we respond to a child demonstrating unwanted behviour depend very much on whether they are having an emotional outburst or emotional storm.

Emotional outburst

Do

●        Validate and label emotions

●        Empathise and comfort your child

●        Set limits and boundaries

●        Problem solve ideas of alternative ways to deal with the same emotions in the future

Don’t

●        Give in

●        Call them silly- their emotion/ feeling is real

●        Distract them- it is important to treat this as a learning opportunity

●        Ask why- they probably won’t know why and asking why can be frustrating

●        Negotiate with the child, be clear with your instruction

Emotional storm

Do

●        Offer comfort

●        Empathise

●        Give time (it can take up to 90 minutes to full calm down after an emotional storm)

●        Once calm follow steps of emotion coaching

Don’t

●        Ask why, they won’t necessarily know why and asking them could cause more frustration

●        Ignore what is happening- it is important that your child is given the support they need at this emotionally distressing time

●        Distract- it is important your child knows that their feelings are valid

And remember we offer a workshop on ‘Creating calm not joining the chaos’ where we explore emotion coaching and emotional outbursts in more detail. Check out our families page for the date of our next workshop on this topic.