Understanding and Responding to Feelings and Behaviours

UR FaB

Program in Schools

Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services

Hello from the UR FaB Team,

In order for children to learn to manage strong emotions they first need to develop the ability to name and understand their emotions.  The ability to identify and understand your own emotions and then to use your emotional awareness to guide your problem solving is known as emotional intelligence.  The UR FaB program is based on the research that having good emotional intelligence is associated with greater life satisfaction, better relationships, and lower rates of psychological difficulty.

Emotional intelligence is fostered by emotion coaching (drawn primarily from the work of John Gottman); and is a style of parenting which research has shown supports the development of children’s emotional intelligence.

Emotion coaching is helping children understand the different emotions they experience, why they occur, and how to handle them.  In the simplest terms, you can coach your child about emotions by comforting them; listening and understanding their thoughts and feelings, and helping them understand themselves.  As you do this, your child will feel loved, supported, respected, and valued.  With this emotionally supportive foundation, you will be much more successful at setting limits and problem solving.

Here are some questions and statements that will help you get started:

Are you feeling.......? (Then give 2 choices, sad or mad? Afraid or sad?)

What is making you.......mad? sad? happy?

What kind of day are you having? A happy day? A sad day?

Did somebody hurt your feelings? What happened?

Emotion coaching teaches children that we respect how they feel and while all emotions are okay, not all behaviours are okay!

Next time we’ll look at setting limits and teaching children to problem solve.

The UR FaB Team

For more information on emotion coaching:

Gottman, J.M., & DeClair,J. (1997). The Heart of Parenting: Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Tuning in to Kids’ – Authors Sophie Havinghurst & Ann Harley, University of Melbourne