Think of a skill you have that you are proud of. Now think about how and when you learned that skill. If it’s a skill you’ve known most of your life, like how to write your name, you probably learned in steps. First you saw someone use a pencil to write out your name. And then you may have tried doing it yourself. Probably along the way someone familiar with the skill may have held your hand guiding you or used specific encouragement like “Nice job with that straight line!” Over time you practiced enough that the skill became second nature and now you can consider yourself a pro at writing your name. If you are someone who has a hand difference, maybe that skill of writing your name with a pencil on a piece of paper would be challenging, but you can still get your name on paper, perhaps with the aid of a computer or other device.
Crucial to learning any skill is being able to watch someone model it for you and then practicing the skill on your own. The more specific support given to you to help learn and practice the steps make the learning and using of the skill easier than if you had to figure it out all on your own. For humans in general, learning from another person you admire and want to copy can be the best way to learn and develop a skill. If that person is willing and able to think back about the steps necessary to learn and perhaps even demonstrate over and over again the steps they used to accomplish that skill, the learning can happen effectively and maybe more quickly than without the model for the learner.
Managing emotions is a skill like any other and it can be really hard to learn on your own. Those that cope best with challenging situations often learned how to notice, identify, and positively address their emotions by taking advantage of someone else’s expertise in that area. As a parent trying to teach a child to cope with emotions it can be overwhelming to realize that you are a child’s main model of coping with emotion. Of course, youth have many models in their lives, especially over time, but the ones they are closest often have the most impact. While it can be easy to be scared of your own influence it also can be important to notice and accept that fear and use it to propel you to try your best to model what you want the youth around you to learn.
If you struggle with managing your own emotions, it can be a great first step to find a role model that you can observe, learn from, and practice with who can encourage you. As adults, we can sometimes find models within books or phone apps that can help us better notice and manage emotions well. We don’t have to always be limited to learning from a person right in the room with us.
Sometimes as parents, we are learning how to better manage a particular emotion or stressful situation just like the youth in our care. It can make us great teachers because we may know firsthand how hard it is to cope with challenging situations. We can use that empathy to make connections versus lecturing, judging, or arguing. After all, being human and managing emotions is hard. We have to realize what we are feeling and figure out how to act. When emotions are high, it is hard to think! As a parent of a 5-year-old who is prone to emotional meltdowns when she wants two opposite things at once, I can recognize that she is often expressing, very loudly, feelings I have in similar situations. I might not cry about wanting to wear two shirts at the same time, but at those moments I do often think about the time I had to choose between two job offers that would send my life in very different directions. There was crying involved then as it let me express all my confusing and conflicting emotions until I was able to make a choice.
When thinking about what makes a good coping skill it can be easy make labels like “crying is weak” or “yelling is bad,” but the fact is that sometimes coping with a tough situation means letting out the energy that is being built up inside in a safe and socially appropriate way.
Keep in mind, the definition of safe and socially appropriate can change based on a person’s age and location. Sometimes as adults, if we take a moment to think about what the child is doing, we might realize the child is doing their best to manage a challenging situation. Maybe they are coping in a way we don’t like? Maybe they won’t be able to use that skill as they get older? The question to ask is “can the child just keep using the skill in this moment or is what the child is doing putting safety of self or others at risk? If the answer is that physical or emotional safety is at risk then that is the time to step in to stop or change the behavior in the moment.
If a child is using a coping skill that don’t seem to be great in the long run, that’s when we get to think about how to consistently model the skills we do want the youth to learn. Sometimes it can seem like one more thing to do as a parent, but I understand the importance of learning and trying to manage my own emotions in front of my child. I know I won’t teach her how to perfectly manage her emotions, but the more I am supportive of myself I can translate that to being supportive of her and her own emotional maturation.
Dina Gerber, MS, LCSW is a Trainer (ABC, RPC, and Trauma-Informed Care) for Duke University’s Center for Child and Family Health
