Why is it so important to help our children process their emotions? It’s probably because we still need to tend to the inner children that are at each stage of development that live within us. We get to model what it is like to have unconditional acceptance for who we are and WE get to be the change. Helping yourself to help your children to process emotions propels confidence for intentional life reactions and responses and connection to self. There may be moments from your own childhood that you remember where a parent failed to acknowledge your unprocessed emotions due to their own unprocessed emotions, but you never mentioned it due to the fawn response of “playing nice.” Maybe it was too dangerous to say how you really felt. Maybe it threatened others. Maybe there was never space for it. Check in with these emotions- do they create resentment? Uncovering and repairing these situations for growth is an important step to maintaining a close relationship with your self, children and loved ones. Thoughts and feelings come and go. Sometimes seemingly at random. Sometimes they flash back to painful memories of the past and other times people feel good about their experiences. Emotions are associated with memories. Feelings are connected to a structure in the brain that communicates the emotion of the memory, which could either teach us or keep us stuck. I want to touch on the fact that in order to have unconditional acceptance, you get to accept AS iS. When our children share something that sounds exaggerated or out of this world, (for a lack of better term) regardless of if it’s “made up” - what’s REAL and what gets to be SO real is the FEELiNG underneath of the story. From the root comes the need, then the feeling, then the behavior and then the story. You get to see the story AS the cover for what’s underneath (the behavior, feeling and need) and you get to trust that your child has shared their sacred truth with you because they feel safe enough to do so. How special. http://www.magicmomentsplay.com
