The 5 Things Every Kid Needs for Emotional Health

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One of my life missions is to heal the next generation in advance. So today, I’m sharing the 5 things every kid needs for emotional health.

I want to give a whole generation of moms the tools that they need in order to raise emotionally healthy kids. 

I imagine a generation of kids who grow up and already know what to do with their feelings. A generation of young adults who feel like their parents get them and who find support in their family instead of finding pain. And eventually a generation of adults who know how to communicate and be in healthy relationships.

We’re starting this process today.

This episode is an invitation to gently open your mind and think about where your family is, where you want to be and which gaps you want to work on this year.

What is emotional health?

Simply put, emotional health means that I feel good inside, I feel good in my relationships and I feel good in the world.

Of course, we can’t feel good or happy all the time, but an emotionally healthy person can feel their way and move through the hard things that come up in life.

An emotionally healthy person doesn’t need to DO things to feel better, like overeat, overdrink, overwork, overshop, etc.

It means that we know what to do with our feelings.

5 Things Every Kid Needs for Emotional Health

Raising a healthy adult starts with creating an environment where your child can grow and learn the tools they need to cope with their emotions.

Here are five things they need.

A parent who is committed to their own emotional health. This is why my program begins with CALM. It’s about how we, as the adults, regulate and process our negative emotions.

Because the truth is that most of us didn't grow up learning how to feel our feelings. 

Learning tools and strategies that help you cope with your emotions in a healthy way then allows you to be compassionate, patient and present toward your kids (and others in your life). 

Emotional literacy. The four pieces of emotional literacy are:

I know what I am feeling.
I know how to talk about or communicate that feeling.
I know what to do with that feeling.
I can do that for someone else. I can recognize feelings in someone else and help them cope (aka empathy).

A set of skills and tools to cope with their emotions in healthy ways. This is all about teaching your kid what to do with their feelings. How to process it, move through the feeling and and feel a new feeling.

This one involves a little trial and error. There are a ton of ways people can move through a feeling, and you can problem solve for which ones work best for your particular kid.

Limits and boundaries that are clearly communicated to your child and held. It is common for parents to threaten consequences to change a kid’s behavior (I’m even guilty of it myself sometimes).

Limits flip it so that you tell your kid what they can do, or what you’re willing to do, and under what conditions. 

When you communicate and follow through on these limits, your child learns what behaviors work in a community (like your family) and what behaviors don’t. 

A shame-free environment where it’s okay to make mistakes and learn from them. In order for your kids to learn, grow and become healthy, they have to act out. They have to make mistakes and show up in ways that don’t work. 

Yes, you will enforce your limits. There will be consequences for misbehavior. 

Shame-free simply means that your kid isn’t made to feel that they are a bad person for making those mistakes. Shame says there’s something inherently wrong with you or bad about you.

We don't need to attack their character or their personality. Instead, we can validate the emotion that drove their behavior, and then say, “Well, that behavior has impacts and here are the impacts. You made a mistake. How do you think you can fix it?”

The most important thing I hope you take away from this episode is that you get to focus on your emotional health. 

Because every time I watch a mom heal or grow in her own emotional well being, it has a huge impact on her kids and the whole dynamic of her family. 

You’ll Learn:

• Why emotional health is such a valuable goal for your kids, your family and yourself
• My journey to emotional health
• What emotional literacy looks like in everyday life
• Examples of healthy and unhealthy coping strategies
• The difference between a threat and a limit
• How to enforce limits without shame

Connect With Darlynn: 

• Learn more about working with Darlynn
• Book a call with Darlynn
• Sign up for love notes and learn about The Calm Mama Club at www.calmmamacoaching.com
• Follow me on Instagram @darlynnchildress for daily tips 
• Rate and review the podcast on Amazon

This episode is about building awareness of where you and your family are in this process (not an invitation for you to criticize or compare yourself). 

And if you notice a gap that you want to work on, I want to invite you into my program, Raise Emotionally Healthy Kids Without Losing Your Shit. 

I teach ALL of these things in that program, starting with how you can become more emotionally healthy yourself so you can teach your kids to do the same.

There’s still time to join us before we officially kick off on January 12th. It’s 3 months of weekly teaching and coaching, live with me and a small group of other moms.

I created this just for moms who really believe that they want to raise adults who know how to handle their emotions, have good relationships, set goals and overcome obstacles to reach those goals.

Ready to join us? Click here to learn more and get started.