using coping skills to manage big emotions

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Highly sensitive children and big emotions go hand-in-hand. If you are a parent or caregiver of a highly sensitive child (HSC) then I’d be willing to bet that you are very familiar with intense emotional reactions from them. It is consistently the top challenge my readers share that they are struggling with. Quite honestly it has also been one of my biggest parenting challenges. In this article, I will be discussing an online self-paced course that is successfully helping me teach my children how to manage big emotions with coping skills and emotional regulation strategies.

How do I help my child with emotional regulation?

Life isn’t always going to be sunshine and rainbows for children. They are human beings with feelings just like adults. Highly sensitive children are very in tune with the emotions and feelings of others around them and therefore feel things deeply. This typically results in very strong emotional reactions, which can be hard for the child and adults in their life to handle. It is normal for children to release their intense emotions with those they feel safest with, but it’s hard for even the most patient parent to manage when it is occurring daily.

I knew my audience needed a solution to managing big emotions in their children, but truthfully I was still struggling with this myself. I did not feel knowledgeable enough in this area to help them. I had some basic strategies that were working well, but I still felt that I had a lot more to learn.

Both of my sons have strong negative big emotions coping skills kids emotions when they are frustrated, disappointed, overwhelmed and/or overstimulated. My youngest tends to go into meltdown mode when things go differently than expected, while my oldest tends to become angry. These intense emotional outbursts are hard to deal with and are quite overwhelming for my husband and I. We figured out pretty quickly that trying to help them in the middle of a meltdown was useless. While we had some basic strategies in place to limit overstimulation and other triggers, they did not help during the times when their emotions took over. We needed to be proactive about teaching them to manage their emotions before they led to massive meltdowns , but I wasn’t clear on the best way to go about it.

Coping Skills Program

This past fall I heard a therapist named Janine Halloran speak about coping skills for kids on a podcast and it really resonated with me. Janine is a therapist with over 15 years of experience, and also a mother of 2 kids who have needed some support learning healthy coping skills along the way. She mentioned that she had an online course called Create Coping Skills Champions at Home that was designed to help parents, family members and other caregivers learn how to teach their children how to proactively handle their big emotions.

I was immediately interested and checked out her site to get more details. It was exactly what I was looking for, but would it work for my family? Would it work for my readers? I contacted Janine to ask a few questions and decided to enroll in the course to find out.

I set aside a small chunk of time each day for one week to work through her program. The first time around I went through the whole course on my own to get a solid understanding of everything. Then I went back to the beginning and began working through the process with my children over the next month.

The self-paced course includes eight modules that help take your family from struggling with big emotions to gaining control over them. There is a Family Activities e-book (PDF) included as well. This consists of several fun games and activities to work on feelings identification, taking deep breaths and expressing emotions. These activities add a playful element to teaching coping skills to kids and are perfect for elementary school aged children!

The goal of the program is to empower your child to identify and manage their strong emotions, so it is essential to involve your child in this process. There are numerous resources and printables within the course to help them develop the necessary coping and self-regulation skills needed to do this.

What I love about the course

It’s completely customizable for your child.

Janine acknowledges that what works for one child may backfire for another. Coping skills will vary by the environment that a child is in, as well as the emotion they are feeling.

The first thing I had my kids do was to coping skills for kids big emotions regulation complete the coping skills checklist. In the course, coping skills are broken down into four main categories- physical coping skills, processing coping skills, calming coping skills and distraction coping skills. This checklist empowered them to identify coping skills that they were already using, choose new ones that they were interested in trying and ones that they didn’t feel were a good fit.

My older son can identify his feelings, but he needs help knowing what coping skill to use. My younger son, on the other hand, often needs help identifying the emotion he is feeling in the moment and figuring out how best to handle this. There are several resources included to help parents and children of varying ages recognize and label feelings so that they can begin to take control of their emotions.

It begins by focusing on your child’s strengths and well-being

I loved that the program works to highlight a child’s strengths as a starting point. It is essential to keep things positive and fun when working on something that is challenging for a child. It also discusses how to keep children safe when they are spiraling emotionally and how to set up your home as a calming and safe space for them.

Step by step guidance in simple terms

This course is designed for busy parents who want to help their child manage their emotions so that every day activities can be enjoyable. It gives families a clear blueprint for what to do and breaks everything down into manageable steps with detailed instruction. There is an in-depth look at each category of coping skills with easy to understand activities that parents can use.

Module for helping parents manage their own emotions

As parents we often forget that in order to help our children manage big emotions, we have to model good coping skills ourselves. There is a module specifically focused on helping parents figure out a proactive plan for themselves as well.

Ready to get off the emotional roller coaster?

Are you ready to help your child effectively manage their big emotions so that they no longer take the joy out of your family’s day-to-day lives? If your child is having trouble having trouble controlling their emotions and is easily frustrated, angered, worried and/or overwhelmed, I highly recommend checking out the Create Coping Skills Champions at Home self-paced course for parents. The strategies and coping skills I have learned in this program have been tremendously effective in creating a more peaceful, happy home for our family. I know it will be beneficial to so many other families struggling with their sensitive child’s big emotions as well.