Building Your Child's Emotional Agility

My kids have played and been involved in sports for many years. One thing I've noticed from watching them play, whether it is hockey, baseball, lacrosse, tennis or soccer, is that agility is an important part of the game and is vital to keeping their body's healthy. Agility is our bodies ability to move quickly, switch directions or the positioning of our body when our body is already in motion. This is so important in preventing injuries that agility training is a regular part of practices. You might be wondering what agility has to do with emotions. In much the same way that physical agility helps us navigate and move our bodies, emotional agility helps us recognize and manage our emotions and is linked to emotional intelligence. 

It can be hard for parents to see your child upset, sad, frustrated, etc. We often try to rescue our kids from these emotions by minimizing what they are feeling or distracting them instead of allowing them to work through these hard emotions. 

The ability to navigate through our emotions is skill that is vital to lifelong success. Young children who are taught to manage their emotions "become better problem solvers when faced with an emotional situation." (New York Times, 2016) The benefits of emotional agility reach far beyond the preschool years. Emotional intelligence in teenagers is linked "with an increased ability to cope with stressful situations and greater self-esteem." (New York Times, 2016)

Dr. Susan David, author of Emotional Agility, recommends parents help their child navigate through hard emotions by feeling it, showing it, labeling it and watching it go. 

• Feel it means allowing your child to experience all emotions even the hard ones. As I mentioned earlier, parents often try to circumvent children's emotions. Sometimes we do this simply because we don't want our child to feel sad or frustrated. Other times we do this because the emotion our child is experiencing is difficult for us. It triggers a negative response in ourselves. Circle of Security calls this our Shark Music. Our reaction to certain emotions is created by our experiences around these emotions in our own childhoods. In some families, showing certain emotions like anger or sadness might have been discouraged which means that these emotions are harder for you to handle in your child now, so you might try to stop them from feeling it. To learn more check out this great video. When we allow our child to feel it, we validate their experience and teach them that all emotions are ok, even the hard ones. 
• Show it means allowing your child to display all of their emotions. If you are feeling sad it is okay to cry. If you are feeling frustrated it is okay to stomp your foot. This doesn't mean that you allow your child to display their emotion in ways that hurt others or damage things. We can teach our kids appropriate ways to show their emotions. What we shouldn't do is tell them that certain emotions are not okay to show. 
• Label it simply means naming emotions. Young children can often identify happy, sad, mad and scared. However if I asked you to list as many emotions as you can think of you would probably have a pretty long list of words. We have to build our children's emotional vocabulary by labeling emotions. It is just as important to label positive emotions, like happy, excited, joyful, proud, as it is to label negative emotions, such as frustration, sadness, anger, disappointment and jealousy. Labeling it is as simple as saying, "I can see you are really excited. You are jumping up and down." or "I can see you are feeling frustrated." We can also help kids learn to recognize emotions by asking them how other's might be feeling. Recognizing emotions is an important part of building empathy. Ask your child how the characters in books or tv shows are feeling. Talk about what they see that tells them the character is feeling that emotion. 
• Watch it go teaches children that feelings change. Just because you are frustrated doesn't mean you will be frustrated forever. We can help kids understand that feelings pass by talking through our own emotions and what we do to help us manage them. "I am so frustrated I can't find my keys. I am going to take some deep breaths so I can calm down." Watch it go is also helps kids learn that they aren't going to feel the same emotion in similar experiences. When we taught our daughters to ride their bikes without training wheels, they were very scared and nervous. Each time we went out to practice it got a little easier until they no longer felt scared or nervous. Help your child plan what they can do when they feel a certain emotion. This can help them manage this emotion in the future. 

Building emotional agility in our children helps them become more resilient, empathetic and builds their self-esteem. Practice these four practical steps with your child and both of you will be well on your way to being emotionally agile.