“Is it OK to feel angry?”
When we talk about feelings in mindfulness class, I ask the kids this question, and there are always a few who emphatically respond, “No!”
Chances are, they’re thinking along the lines of: when I’m angry, I say or do “bad” things that get me in trouble, and therefore I am a “bad” person.
As grown-ups, it’s our responsibility to assure them that any feeling they have is OK, and to teach them how to respond mindfully.
In class, we discuss the importance of noticing and labeling a feeling. Once we label it, we create a little space between the emotion and our reaction to it. In that space, we can use mindfulness to calm down our brains and respond in a more appropriate manner.
When we practice mindfulness, we get better at noticing what’s going on around us as well as inside of us. When we teach ourselves to notice an emotion or feeling as it’s forming, we can address it immediately: label it, accept it (without judgment), and work through it.
If we fail to notice the feeling, it will grow – if we don’t validate it, or push it away and pretend it’s not there, it doesn’t just disappear. It becomes more complex and less easy to understand, and later we express it in a way that we may regret. When we finally let it out, it looks a lot different than how it began.
How do we teach kids to notice, label, and work through their big emotions?
Model how you deal with your own feelings: “I was so frustrated when I was stuck in traffic today, so I took some deep breaths and slowly counted backwards from ten. It helped me feel much calmer.”
Validate your child’s feelings. “I see you’re angry because you didn’t get a turn. I would be angry too if that happened to me!”
Check in with your child throughout the day, simply asking how they feel to get them used to noticing. Talk about where they physically feel their emotions in their bodies (stomach ache when nervous, faster heartbeat when excited, etc.).
Review coping strategies (when they’re calm), that they can use when upset. A poster on the wall with visuals of the strategies is helpful. Bonus: make the poster together!
Practice mindfulness* with your child so it becomes a regular part of their day and life.
For a great visual lesson in what happens when we don’t let our feelings out, try the Soda Bottle Experiment. (Warning: wear protective gear if you try this at home!)
Materials needed: two small bottles of soda
Here’s how it goes (feel free to personalize the script with scenarios that are meaningful to your child):
Hold up one soda bottle and say, “Imagine that you are this bottle of soda. Let’s say you’re going about your school day, feeling fine, and you drop your backpack, spilling everything onto the floor (shake the bottle once) but you ignore how you’re feeling, quickly pick everything up and move on. A little while later, you trip and your classmates see it happen and you’re embarrassed (shake the bottle two times, vigorously) but you blow it off like you don’t care. Then you get your test back and it’s a much lower grade than you thought you’d get (shake the bottle three times), but you push your feelings aside and move on. At recess, you drop the ball and lose the game for your team (give the bottle four really good shakes). When you get home, your little brother breaks your toy (shake-shake-shake-shake-shake) and… (open the bottle) PSSSSSHHHHHH!!!!” Soda explosion!
Why did that just happen?!? Discuss.
Holding in our emotions doesn’t make them go away, and they have to come out sometime!
Then, pick up the second bottle of soda and restart the story, “Let’s say you’re going about your school day, feeling fine, and you drop your backpack, spilling everything onto the floor (shake the bottle once). You notice that you’re frustrated, and also notice where you’re feeling it in your body: your face gets hot and your jaw feels tight. You label your feeling by saying to yourself, ‘I’m frustrated!’ Then you take a few mindful breaths (twist the cap a little bit to let out what just built up in the bottle – pssshhh) and count slowly to 10, noticing that the feeling is starting to calm down.”
The story continues, but each time you feel a big emotion, you let it out instead of pushing it deeper inside. Eventually, when you open the soda bottle, there’s no big explosion (and no big mess to deal with!).
We warn kids to “hold it together” when we see them getting upset, but we need to make sure that we’re not invalidating very real feelings that they’re experiencing. There’s no holding together an angry soda bottle when it gets to a certain point. Let’s give them the tools they need to let out a feeling when it first shows up.
*For more tips on practicing mindfulness with your child, contact me at sarah@createamindfulspace.com
