It is a common misconception that correct personal and sometimes professional decisions are the result of cold logical deduction. Quite the contrary. When it comes to one’s own life, emotions are invaluable to the personal interests and preferences.
Therefore, in order to master the psychological problems of growing up and later on - in life, a child must learn to utilise both their rational and emotional capabilities. Schools already nourish children’s rational capabilities. However, a School of Emotion is yet to be found.
What are emotions?
There are six basic emotions innate to every child - happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger, disgust. This is the only manual that parents are provided with by nature. This, and the ear-piercing cries. At first it is fairly easy to distinguish the emotional state of the infant: relaxed body, open eyes, and attempts at “speaking” usually means that the baby feels good, and we can only suppose that he/she is happy and/or content. Crying is a signal that something is not right, and the baby could be - we suppose - either sad, scared, angry or disgusted. However, at that point in time those four emotions are nothing else but a concoction of unpleasant experiences for the child. This is where words come into play.
It is words that give meaning to feelings and differentiate emotions. Words from us – the parents and the caregivers. Naming emotions and putting them into words is giving emotions meaning and ordering them in the psyche of the child. The indirect long-term effects of this are that the child learns to:
- Recognise their emotions and feelings.
- Recognition brings forth: the opportunity to regulate emotions and feelings and react adequately to them.
- Emotional regulation means that: the child is more in control of their behaviour and the frontal cortex is kept uninhibited (Note: the ability to stay in control in the presence of strong emotions is fully formed after adolescence. Until then, when children are affected by strong emotions, they can struggle with thinking about the causal link between behaviours – i.e. thinking rationally.)
Being able to think about our emotions means that the rational mind is still in control of our behaviour. ‘In control’ does not mean that the mind disregards emotions, but rather it observes and considers emotions. ‘In control' means that the mind can recollect previous experiences and advice from adults and can apply them in new situations until emotion regulation becomes natural.
What is the benefit of emotion and impulse regulation?
In a world where instant gratification is more and more accessible, patience is a virtue. But how do we learn to be patient? Through regulation of our emotions and practising control over our impulses.
The Stanford ‘Marshmallow experiment’ is a famous study on delayed gratification in children. Each child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward, or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time. The researcher would then leave the room for some time. This study explored whether the child would give in to their impulse to eat the candy, or they would be able to delay their instant gratification, in order to receive a bigger reward in the future.
The results were interesting, but the astonishing discovery revealed itself years later, when in a follow-up study the children who were able to wait, instead of eating the marshmallow right away, had higher grades in school, more social connections, and overall had better life outcomes.
Emotion and impulse control prevent emotions from taking over. The benefits, to name a few, are:
- Stress & anxiety management (especially, during exams and interviews),
- Refocusing while learning and learning attainability,
- Maintaining relationships of all kinds,
- Increased self-esteem and confidence
How can we teach our children to regulate their emotions?
- Allow children to stumble upon obstacles in their lives. Allow them to fail and even struggle for a little bit. Small obstacles they can handle on their own, and they can learn a lot from failures.
- Help them make sense of the middle-size obstacles in their paths. Encourage them to look for solutions or suggest 1-2 if they cannot think of any.
- Suppose how they might be feeling in different situations. Put the feelings and experiences into words.
- If they are upset, first calm them down. Be rational and problem-solving when they are calm (it is when the frontal cortex can operate and think rationally).
We all want the best for our children, and with our best intentions we often strive to take out every negative, and even neutral, experience from their lives. However, as Bruno Bettelheim stated in his magnificent work “The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales” children need to see both the good and the bad side of the world:
“The prevalent societal belief is that a child must be diverted from what troubles him most. Many parents believe that only conscious reality or pleasant and wish-fulfilling images should be presented to the child – that he should be exposed only to the sunny side of things. But such one-sided fare nourishes the mind only in a one-sided way, and real life is not all sunny.
There is a widespread refusal to let children know that the source of much that goes wrong in life is due to our very own natures – the propensity of all men for acting aggressively, asocially, selfishly, out of anger and anxiety. Instead, we want our children to believe that, inherently, all men are good. But children know that they are not always good; and often, even when they are, they would prefer not to be. This contradicts what they are told by their parents, and therefore makes the child a monster in his own eyes… The goal is to accept the problematic nature of life without being defeated by it or giving in to escapism.
This is why children love fairy tales so much. Fairy tales tell children that “a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoidable, is an intrinsic part of human existence – but that if one does not shy away, but steadfastly meets unexpected and often unjust hardships, one masters all obstacles and at the end emerges victorious.”