Season 3, Episode 13: Helping Kids Handle Big Feelings
Kids can experience emotions that feel overwhelming, with reactions that might seem outsized compared to what’s happening in the moment. And sometimes they need help understanding and managing these feelings. In this episode, counsellors Aja Manning and Nicole Ward share practical, everyday ways parents and caregivers can support children through tough moments. They explore how to co-regulate, model calming strategies, validate feelings, and give kids the words to express what’s going on inside. You’ll also hear creative ideas, like using games and breathing exercises, to help build emotional awareness in fun, approachable ways.
Head to our children’s counselling page to find the following free resources to help your kids:
Feelings identification poster
Rainbow breathing exercise
4 ways to help your child with their emotions
Children’s counselling FAQs
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Katherine Hurtig
Welcome to Living Fully. Each episode is a chance to talk about mental health in a way that's simple, honest, and helpful. We'll share stories, tips, and tools to help you feel supported and feel your best. I'm your host, Katherine Hurtig.
In today's episode, I talk with counsellors Jacqueline (Aja) Manning and Nicole Ward about helping kids handle big emotions. We're going to discuss simple ways parents can help their kids, like co-regulating during tough moments, modeling calming strategies, and giving children language for their feelings. After the episode, head to our website. We'll link it in the show notes. We've put together a bunch of free resources to help your kids. We've got a breathing exercise handout, tips to help your child manage their emotions, and more.
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So today we're talking all about kids they have big feelings and sometimes they don't know how to express them talk about them deal with them so i am here with a couple counsellors Nicole Ward, thank you for being here.
Nicole Ward
Thank you for having me again.
Katherine Hurtig
And Jacqueline (Aja) Manning. Thank you so much guys.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Thank you.
Katherine Hurtig
So both of you are fairly new to the podcast. Can you tell our listeners a bit about yourselves?
Nicole Ward
Yeah, I'm coming up on three years here at the centre and I've done one prior podcast, which was also actually about kids and anxiety. But before being here, I've been in the field for about 18 years. So I'm going to be a veteran now doing the similar type of work, especially with kids, actually. My history is focused around working with children.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Yeah, well, and I'm coming up to a year here at the Calgary Counselling Centre. But as Nicole mentioned, I too have been working in nonprofit and government specializing with intervention with kids. So that has been the bulk of my work as well. Yeah. So yeah, I'm coming about 20, 23 plus years now, actually.
Katherine Hurtig
Awesome. Excellent. Well, I'm excited to pick your brains. So let's start with something that a lot of parents can relate to. You know, kids have big feelings. What do we kind of mean when we say that and helping them with those quote unquote big feelings?
Nicole Ward
Yeah, I think it's not different from adults. Obviously, the approach is different. But when it comes to managing those big emotions, we're looking at, I think first, maybe looking at the connection between the brain and the body and having kids identify those connections. And then also sometimes with adults and again, and kids, they feel powerless to to manage those big emotions.
Katherine Hurtig
The kids do?
Nicole Ward
Yeah. Yeah. So really validating the feelings around that and saying, you know, this is a normalizing the feeling that this is really big and I feel overwhelmed right now.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Nicole Ward
And getting down to the kids level and and kind of being in it with them, I think is step one.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Yeah. And as Nicole's mentioning, too like it's when we talk about the brain specifically kids I mean their emotional brains are they're quite wired in a way to maximize like a sense of impact and at the same time their cognitive brains are still not fully developed.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah exactly.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Right so there's a lot of things happening there whether it's for the automatic response and the prefrontal cortex that's part still developing. And in terms of that, it becomes really hard for them to make sense of it, right?
Katherine Hurtig
For sure.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Sometimes it's around, what is this? And as Nicole was talking about, like that connection, like they may start feeling things in their body, but they're not making sense to some of the thoughts that are taking place, or what to do with some of those feelings that are happening.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
And in some cases, it can also be around the emotion itself being displaced. So for example…
Katherine Hurtig
What does that mean?
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Let's say, you know, a kiddo goes to school and deals with bullying, for example. And so there's all this anger and frustration built into the child. Child comes home and mom may ask, you know, can you can you put your phone away or can you go do this chore? And the child blows up and starts screaming and yelling.
Katherine Hurtig
Okay.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
So there would be an example of displaced emotion because it's like drawn from somewhere else and still hasn't been processed. Right.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
So yeah. So those are kind of two examples where big emotions take place. And, um, and what often we see with that is the behavior part, right? The behavior as in, well, that's not appropriate. Right. Or in some cases, oh, you're just trying to get yourself out of doing chores, right? You know, and so then what ends up happening there is the message gets delivered to the child as it's your big feelings don't matter.
Katherine Hurtig
Or yeah, or it's not okay to feel that way.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
It's not okay to feel that way. We're not going to validate how you feel, right? I mean, some of the things that have happened over the years, you know, raise your kid tough, right? You know, they scrape and it's like, oh, that's not a, that's not a big booboo. You'll be fine.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Just suck it up. Yeah.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
But really, as Nicole was saying, validation, right? Like that's a big deal to a three-year-old. Sure. That pain might seem like it's not a big deal to us. It's just a scrape, but that's a big deal to the three-year-old.
Katherine Hurtig
Exactly.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
And it's like, no, I want you to know this is a big feeling for me right now.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. I know. Thinking like my own experiences, it's like, you look at aa kid and they're crying about something and you're like, I've gone through so much worse. You don't need to be this upset, but they only have their limited amount of experiences. So yeah, their feeling is probably pretty, I don't know. What's the word appropriate?
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Yeah. Well, I mean, emotionally, right? That's where they're at. And cognitively, they're still developing. So that connection is not making sense at that moment. It's that moment where it's like, this hurts. I don't like this.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
And this is how the best I can do to express it.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure.
Nicole Ward
Well, and if they're dismissed, that may lead to further frustration and more emotions, more big feelings.
Katherine Hurtig
So we've, yeah, we've kind of touched on this, but like, and we are going to go at this very generally because there's going to be a million different situations or reasons why kids could be having intense feelings. So yeah, sometimes it might be difficult to kind of pinpoint specifics, but hopefully we can, we can look at this all, you know, in the big picture, but yeah. So why do, why do kids sometimes have those, those outbursts, those intense emotional reactions to what, You know, we might consider things that aren't a big deal. And what is going on for them in those moments? Like what's going on in their brains and their bodies like you were talking about?
Nicole Ward
I think when it comes to the brain, as humans we have what's called a stress response. And that's what you might more commonly hear. When your fight, flight, freeze response turns on, then you have a reaction, a big one usually. Because the function of that is to help you save your own life if something really bad is happening. The problem is sometimes that gets triggered when there's not a major disaster happening, but you're processing it as if it is. So when that goes on, you have very few tricks up your sleeve to manage. And often the result is a big feeling or a total separation from your feelings, which would look more like freeze or just kind of numbing out.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Nicole Ward
So kids can have those reactions multiple times a day.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Nicole Ward
And as we get older, we learn to hopefully learn to put things in perspective and recognize what are the triggers to that stress response for us and find ways to walk ourselves out of it. But kids really need some…
Katherine Hurtig
Some guidance on that?
Nicole Ward
Yeah. Pretty intense help with that in the beginning. Yeah, for parents or caregivers who are just starting to think about this or, you know, starting to recognize these big feelings in their kids, how can they, you know, begin teaching their kid to recognize and name their emotions, deal with these big feelings, that kind of thing?
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
There's many strategies to teach. I think what's really important is to make sure that when we are responding to excessive emotions, that it's being done in a caring and empathetic way. This really requires parents, caregivers, even professionals to be patient.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Right. There is this level of patience and understanding that. And as Nicole had mentioned, like the emotions are taking place, but that cognitive ability to understand it and manage it is still developing.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
And so many of us start to think that we just need to teach our kids with the expectation to regulate. We already set the bar, like get over it. Oh, just go cry it out. Right. Calm down. Calm down. Right. But the truth is they may not be at a place to manage that. Right. Because this is where that cognitive development piece is still growing, still developing. So what do you do with that? Especially for young kids. This first step is taking that role in helping with co-regulation.
Katherine Hurtig
And young kids, like what would be an age range we're talking about here?
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Well, let's start at the around the age of three. Right. I think I think textbook, most people are understand the importance of nurturing and caring right up to that age. And then once they start to become a little exercise, some of their independence, then it's like where along the lines do I start enforcing discipline, you know, redirecting those kind of things. Right. And what's important is that that is the starting point, if not early. And every kid develops differently, right? Some may be more advanced in their development cognitionly. Some may be a little bit slower, right? And that doesn't mean outcome-wise that if they're developing a little bit slower in that sense that it's going to impact them for the rest of their life. It's just they're at that stage in their development, right? And so part of that is really looking at when they are struggling to regulate and understand the emotion that's taking place in that moment, what can you as the caregiver do to help them get through that, right? For example, the difference between teaching self-regulation versus co-regulation would be self-regulation was like, okay, you need to go to your calm down bucket. And I can talk about that later.
Katherine Hurtig
Okay. Calm down bucket?
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Yeah, calm down toolbox or bucket, right? But yeah, that would be an example of teaching or prompting self-regulation, right? Okay. Or giving the child the cue to, okay, this is what you need to do, right? The co-regulation could be a little bit more around, okay, I see that you're having a really hard time with this. Let's do a breathing exercise together, right? Let's practice rainbow breathing. I can talk about that too.
Katherine Hurtig
I'm going to write these down.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Yeah, like rainbow breathing and then both the caregiver and the parent engage in the breathing exercise together, right?
Katherine Hurtig
And I guess it would really be dependent on the kid, right, on what kind of works for them.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Mm-hmm. And thanks for bringing that up because, yeah, as I mentioned even previously, just when we say three years old, a three-year-old or five-year-old, even a nine-year-old, every child can be at a different stage in their development, cognitionally, even emotionally in that sense. And trauma, I mean, we haven't really talked a lot about trauma, but how trauma can even impact that as well.
Katherine Hurtig
Of course.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
And delay the progress in being able to manage emotions, right?
Katherine Hurtig
Both of you have mentioned, like, the concept of validation. So practically, what does that look like? Like, could you give an example of validating just what it would look like for a parent?
Nicole Ward
Yeah, I think it's like what AJ said, I can see you're really this right now. Yeah. You know, on their level, eye contact, I can understand why you feel that way. It's really important to you that you get to play with that toy that you, that that other child has right now.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Nicole Ward
And then kind of offering another solution. Like, what about if you could play with this other toy that you really liked last week, and then we can wait till that toy is available. The other piece, I think, is step one, and Aja did an excellent job of explaining it. But before co-regulation can happen, we need a parent who is regulated. So really taking care of yourself and learning those strategies about how to regulate your own emotions, because there's so much attached to that for parents. parents get embarrassed when their kid is throwing themselves on the floor in the middle of you know preschool or having a big reaction in the mall so it's being able to kind of tune into yourself and see what's going on for you and seeing what's coming up for you pretty quickly and then working with your kids around doing that validation piece so.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Yeah there's no doubt you often hear in in the mix in therapy anxious children anxious parents or anxious parents children right and so what are sometimes the steps that are that the parent may be taking or the caregiver be taking thanks for bringing that up Nicole because it's true right like often a lot of people think if if you have a child who's having behavioral challenges anxiety challenges the first is like let's put them in therapy and and you know they can handle they'll they'll get better through therapy but if they do if they work with the counsellor on those things and then go home and we're dealing with a household that has a lot of anxiousness, that creates a lot of anxiousness and stuff like that, then there may not be much progress and in the counselling support for the child, right?
Katherine Hurtig
In those situations, like when we say, you know, if a parent's anxious, their kid's more likely to be anxious, is it because they're seeing those behaviors modeled? They're seeing that response to situations modeled?
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Absolutely. Modeling is a big part, right? But I mean, there is even just the semantics of someone being in a stressful situation and how they respond to that, right? Let's be honest, parenting didn't come with a textbook. We take from research, we learn as we go, right? We do the best that we can, right?
Katherine Hurtig
So in the moment when a kid is overwhelmed by big feelings, anger, sadness, frustration, what's the most helpful thing that an adult can do in that moment?
Nicole Ward
I think step one for me would be validate the feeling. Okay. Right. Tune in to the kid. Like we said, get down on their level somewhere in there. Check in with yourself. Right. Like we, we've also said.
Katherine Hurtig
How am I doing with this? Yeah.
Nicole Ward
Yeah. Even if the reaction feels incongruent, that, that makes sense from a developmental perspective. So it's something that's not big in your world. Like Aja said, can be big in the, in a kid's world. So. Yeah. So I think validation. What do you think, Aja?
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Oh yeah. The validation, but in addition to that, like making sure it's caring and empathetic, right? That's the most important. So it's that it gets validated, not just in a sense of, oh, yeah, I can see you're sad. It's like having that empathetic approach. I'm like, I can see this is really sad for you. You must feel you're feeling really sad, right? It's really important to be helping children name their emotions. And part of that is being able to help recognize and define how they are feeling in those moments. Because remember, as we talked before, the emotional is not aligned with the cognition, right? Where they may be in their development. And so you can help teach these emotions by just even saying things like, you know, you look sad right now. Or I can tell you're mad, right? Naming those emotions are really helpful for them to hear it and then make connection to what that feeling or what that experience they are having. When we do therapy, we connect. I mean, let's be concrete on one thing. Negative imaging triggers negative emotions. Positive imaging triggers positive emotions, right? So if there is in these moments feelings of, you know, something that's very negative and there's negative emotions surfacing, how they respond to it is important. Right. It's being able to read to build that emotional bank to help them gain a little more knowledge and understanding of what's happening in that moment so that the next time it becomes more of a positive experience. Right. And then it triggers more positive emotions like a growth. right and independence yeah.
Katherine Hurtig
Like the next time something comes up it's like okay i know that this i can recognize this as frustration is that kind of what you're…?
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Yeah recognize and then feel some accomplishment to it right being able to manage it so then the next time it happens there's a little more confidence built right and then that triggers good feelings yeah right which can encourage more growth.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure. And besides that, those validations, are there other kind of some everyday moments that parents can kind of bring into conversations about emotions?
Nicole Ward
Yeah, I mean, I think we call those teachable moments, and I love them. Sometimes when I have a feeling, like, say we're parked outside the school, and I see a kid that is about to run out in front of a car, And I get frightened. When my child is regulated, it's a good time for me to acknowledge that I have feelings and I get scared sometimes. And I feel anxious sometimes.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Nicole Ward
And really have that conversation. Again, key part pieces when the child is regulated. Again, too, I think if you're able to point out times when they handle the situation really well.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah?
Nicole Ward
Then they can start to connect with the how they did that. How did they manage that? What did you tell yourself when you really wanted to go get a Slurpee after school and mom said no? Wow, like you handled that really well. And what were the pieces to that? What did you do inside yourself to manage that feeling of disappointment a little better this time?
Katherine Hurtig
Kind of a selfish question here. Is there a certain point where these kind of strategies aren't as effective? I'm wondering because, I mean, all this conversation, it reminds me of really a conversation I had yesterday with my 14-year-old stepson. And, you know, I was really trying to basically do what you guys are saying is, you know, he was really frustrated about a situation. And I really tried to listen to him. Like, I know, I know this sucks. And I'm trying to like explain why we're making a certain decision. Are messages like that still getting through in later years, in teenage years?
Nicole Ward
I think probably they're getting through more so. Just like adults, I think we're on a spectrum. Some of us need time away. Like if I were to have a conversation with my husband that was a little bit difficult, he would need time to process. I would be more likely to want to process more in the moment. But I have to recognize I do that for work with people. So I have some other skills around that. So I think it's you're the expert on your child. And when we talk about what counselling looks like with children, we'll talk about it. But you're the expert. So you kind of know if your kid needs some time to chew on it. My oldest needs time to chew on it. My youngest, like the best we're going to get is in that moment, probably.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Nicole Ward
So like it depends on the kid. But also identifying that you may not understand our rationale right now. Once you get to the point where you've normalized, validated like all the pieces that someday you might. This is one of those times where we love you and we we want you to be safe. And so this is the decision we've made as parents. It's hard. It's a hard one.
Katherine Hurtig
It's really hard because it's like it is. It's one of those situations where it's like, hey, we know what's best. We know that in a few like years down the road, you're going to look back and understand and appreciate. But in this moment, for him, it feels like the worst thing in the world. And it's so hard to like, can't I just convince you that this is OK? Yeah.
Nicole Ward
Sometimes you can externalize it to them. Like, say, what if your friend Jake told you the same thing about and their mom was saying that? They may be able to remove a bit of the emotional reaction and responsiveness to it and recognize that for Jake, that might be OK.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Well, and I think it brings forward to like a moment to kind of identify because 14 is teen.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Right. So when we're talking about children and we're talking about teens, there is a whole different stage of development. Right. And so their voice, it's very important for their voice to be heard. So I think a good reflective question on the caregiver side is, am I doing everything to make sure this kiddo is being heard? yeah right does he feel that he's being heard have i asked his opinion and thoughts to the situation being able to include them more is really valuable yeah as well as empowering them with information because they're in a place right now where they're learning there's so much going on things are moving so quickly i always encourage every parent to watch Inside Out 2 because that that explains…
Katherine Hurtig
I just saw that.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
That the emerging teenager right there at 14 right the emotions are going things are all happening right we even know even research has shown that between the ages of 14 and 16 because so many changes are happening in the body their natural melatonin isn't even being released until one in the morning so then what ends up happening is this is why they're staying up so late yeah right and then they're having to get up to go to school in the morning i bring this up because we all know what it's like to deal with sleep deprivation too, right? And then how that makes us irritable. So when we are having teens who are struggling to understand the rationale to consequences, boundaries, things like that, it's really good to try to empower them with as much information to what is happening, why the decision's being made, as well as sking their input. What do you feel would be fair in this situation.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, yeah. I know because that's the thing, right? It's like you're in the at that age, you want a bit more independence, you want more control, but all these decisions are still being made for you.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Well, and I think one of the most common issues I hear about is the impact of screen time. And, and how do you manage that, right? With teens, I love how the Teaching Family Model is a great model that's used in a lot of significant intervention for kids. Some of their philosophy is really helpful in terms of understanding around the difference between basic skills and advanced skills. And basic skills are things like following instructions, right? If you were to break up following instructions, what would those steps be? It's looking at the person, saying, okay, completing the task, checking back. But in order for someone to be able to take initiative, they have to have the knowledge and understanding of how to follow instructions. So that's a really good question when you're dealing with teenagers. Are they able to follow instructions and are they ready to take initiative? And a good way of practicing taking initiative is, all right, if the screen time cutoff is nine o'clock, if you set it up that if your child takes initiative, turning off the social media at 8.30 and provide an incentive for doing that and the child or the teen does it, then that's a major progress, right?
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
It's starting to exercise the skill of taking initiative, which is what you want to be teaching your teens as they transition to adulthood.
Katherine Hurtig
So you talked about helping kids name emotions, understand when they're feeling certain emotions. Are there any, you know, tools or activities that you recommend that either parents use or that you use in counselling to kind of help kids build their emotional vocabulary?
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Well, one of my favorites for at home, anybody can do it, is going, like you can go to purchase the Candyland game. And then what you can do is you can do a legend of colors that align with the Candyland game. So yellow, purple, blue, orange. I don't remember the green, I guess. And then you can put beside each of those colors, like happy, sad, angry. I would avoid using anxious. I would encourage using worried, and being able to identify an emotion. And so when you're playing the game with your kiddo, when you land, you have to share a time that you felt happy or a time you felt sad. That is a really good game to have a conversation going, talking about finding out what's happening at school when they're feeling angry or sad. Because now it's on the board, right? And then one of the things to think about is that if they're not feeling comfortable yet to share, then that's a great opportunity for the modeling, right? So here comes the caregiver saying, you know what? I remember a time when I went to school, I felt really sad because none of the girls wanted to play with me or they didn't want to invite me for lunch, right? And so when you use some examples like that, then there may be a hook that the child connects with like, whoa, yeah, that happened to me too, mom, right? I'm like, really? Tell me, what did you do? Or how, like, what did that make you feel like? Right? So the Candyland game is great. Another one that I really, I like to do is I really encourage families. Like it's kind of like you can put like little Hershey kisses in a, in a tissue and then wrap it up and just put a ribbon around it. And then on there, you can use the same thing. Tell me of a time that you were feeling really happy when, you know, we were camping or like, or a time that just even general, if that was the case. And then you take another tissue and you wrap it again with another tag and can do it about seven, ten times, right? So then what ends up happening is as you guys are like a family's together, they pass it to each other. And so then they have to unwrap it, pass it, and they have to share, and they pass it. And then in the end, the reward is everybody gets a little Hershey kisses to share, right?
Katherine Hurtig
I love those.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
So because a little fun, positive reinforcement for everyone during a family time. So those are two of my favorites for in the family.
Nicole Ward
I've haven’t heard of either of those. So that's amazing. Tell us about rainbow breathing.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Oh, rainbow breathing. Yeah. Rainbow breathing is like a DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy) tool, just like with box breathing. And so when you picture around every color of the rainbow, you're thinking about breathing in and breathing out from the start to the end of the rainbow.
Katherine Hurtig
So does it help to have a picture of a rainbow in front of you when you're doing this?
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
It's more around using your hands. Okay. Right. So that's what makes it more fun for kids. Because breathing is something that we've even done with adults yeah right and it's giving them the visual of the color of each color that they're breathing in and out but for kids it's like taking their hands on their side and then breathing in and raising their hands up and then holding it for four and then breathing out so that's one of their favorite things in because it's interactive right And now it's even being able to engage and give them something to like movement.
Katherine Hurtig
Right.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Right. While they're focusing on the breathing.
Nicole Ward
Yeah. I think those are great suggestions that Aja had when it comes to understanding the stress response, like we talked about earlier, a lot of purpose of having those tools is to turn back on the right part of your brain, the part of your brain where you can have a feeling and a thought and kind of put them together.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Nicole Ward
And so when we do simple things like breathing exercises, like rainbow breathing, box breathing, things like that.
Katherine Hurtig
That kind of regulates you?
Nicole Ward
It's a complex enough cognitive process going on that it turns back on the prefrontal cortex, which is where you can have some type of logic. Now with little kids, there's not a lot going on there yet. But understanding that that's the highest functioning part of the brain is important in really taking the time to regulate, ground, do all the mindfulness kinds of fancy things that we do that we sometimes want to dismiss and move on to the higher level stuff. But that is fundamental in having success with the other stuff.
Katherine Hurtig
We've talked about modeling adults, modeling healthy emotional expression, that kind of thing. What are some other ways that that looks like? You had a great example of being scared when, you know, like talking about how you were scared. You, you talked about the, you know, the Candyland game. Do you have any other examples of how we can kind of model emotions and feelings?
Nicole Ward
I think it's important here to recognize that sometimes it won't go well and you'll have a dysregulated moment that your kid will witness.
Katherine Hurtig
Yeah.
Nicole Ward
And having your own self-compassion about that is really important. When you direct the emotion at the kid, the negative emotion at the kid, then going back to that child and saying, hey, I didn't handle this well. This is what was going on for me. Here's what I'm going to try to do next time. I'm sorry. Then that's called a repair. And that's a beautiful thing. Research actually says that when you do a repair, it changes the memory for the kid.
Katherine Hurtig
Really?
Nicole Ward
Yeah. So you're recreating or changing the way that they conceptualize that moment from something that was really negative to something that's really positive.
Katherine Hurtig
That's comforting for me. I definitely had moments where it's like I lost my temper, raised my voice, whatever. But I did go back and be like, listen, Harrison, I didn't handle that the way I wanted to. Sorry, dude. I mean, I probably didn't hit all the boxes that you said there. But I mean, it's good to know that that was doing some benefit.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Yeah. And I think in addition to that, I think it's a good reminder is like telling children they're allowed to feel any emotion they want. Right. Like they are allowed to feel this, but it's how they choose to respond to those uncomfortable feelings. That's what's extremely important. And so when we are modeling these, like the examples that we're giving where it's like, we're not questioning, we're not limiting, we're not suppressing the emotion itself. We are recognizing that we are allowed to have these emotions. It's okay. It's how we respond to them.
Katherine Hurtig
For sure. And I think that's a message that I think adults need to hear more often too. We have feelings, you know, fear, anxiety, anger, whatever. And they kind of, they feel negative, but they aren't, right? Like they're, what I've learned from you guys, it's like emotions are information, right? And so it's not having any judgment or shame around that. It's true. It's like, it's okay to feel it. It's how we choose to respond.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
Well, and sometimes it's even when working with kids, like I will take a little face figurine with two bubbles, for example, right? With one bubble being I think and the one bubble I feel and giving these scenarios. So, for example, someone doesn't want to play with me. What is the first thing I think? That's not fair. That's so unfair. What am I feeling? I'm feeling sad about this. And so then it's a question of when I feel sad, what are my options, right? Or when I'm feeling angry. What are my options? So that part is where, okay, I have my tools like rainbow breathing, right? Or I may have, I may choose to go take a cold pack and put it on the top of my head to deal with temperature imbalance that's taking place. I'm hot because I'm angry, right? That's the key thing, right? When we are teaching to identify emotions, that's why it's the first step, then making connection to their body, the cues that it's telling us what we're emotion we're feeling, how this is a thought separated to the feelings and now the behavior. So if in that moment, this thought and this feeling, and it results into pinching and hitting as the behavior, then it's a reflection of what can I do differently? Can I take a pause? Can I take a break? Can I do a rainbow breathing? Can I put a cold pack on my head? Can I actually take a super sour candy and suck on that?
Katherine Hurtig
Oh, that's helpful?
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
And don't tell any dentist I said that, but, but it's true, right? Even anything with senses, right? Like we're engaging all the senses again. So it can be even like, you know, a scratch sniffy sticker.
Katherine Hurtig
Okay. Yeah.
Jacqueline (Aja) Manning
In that sense. Right. So those, those things can help create the regulation and the response as an alternative to what was negative, which is yelling, screaming, pinching, punching, pushing, things like that.
Katherine Hurtig
Thank you so much, Aja and Nicole. This is excellent.
You've been listening to Living Fully, a Calgary Counselling Centre podcast. Thank you for tuning in.
This episode was produced by Pamela Rogers, Luiza Campos, Manuel Montano, Jenna Forbes, and by me, Katherine Hurtig. A special thanks to Aja Manning and Nicole Ward.
Don't forget to check out the free resources we put together to support your kids. Head to the link in the show notes. Tune in on September 2nd when we continue our conversation with Nicole and Aja. We'll talk about when to know when your child might benefit from counselling and what counselling for children looks like.
Nicole Ward
There is a lot of pressure, expectations, exposure to media and things that impact our view of how we should be doing it or the right way. So I think when people come here, it's really, for parents or caregivers, it's really important to validate how hard it is for parents and to recognize that, you know, there's no one right way.
Katherine Hurtig
To stay up to date on our latest episodes, be sure to subscribe. We're available in your favorite podcast app. Living Fully is a production of Calgary Counselling Centre and recorded in Calgary on Treaty 7 territory. Living Fully podcast is not a substitute or alternative for professional care or treatment. Calgary Counselling Centre and Counselling Alberta provide effective counselling to anyone in Alberta with no waitlist and no financial barriers. Find us online at calgarycounselling.com and counsellingalberta.com. For help across Canada and the United States, call 211. If you are outside of Canada and the U.S., seek help from your general medical practitioner.