Small People, Big feelings

When I decided I was going to prioritize blogging, not only as a creative outlet for myself, but also as a resource to my readers, I asked everyone to give me their ideas, topics or questions. You may be reading this right now and nodding your head in agreement because I asked friends, family members, colleagues, my former restaurant manager–you name it, I asked ‘em. I did this because I wanted a variety of perspectives and ideas to write about. And let me just say: the people delivered. 

Today I want to talk about skills development, how that relates to feelings and emotions, and how being able to feel and manage our emotions is a really important skill. Maybe, like, the most important skill.

How do skills develop? How do we learn? Behaviorism says that we learn through reinforcement. Actions that receive positive reinforcement are likely to remain, while those that receive negative reinforcement are likely to cease. Cognitivism suggests that learning moves through sequential steps of trial and error, resulting in insight gained and the formulation of a solution. The next trial results in task completion with less hesitation. Constructivism and socio-constructivism maintains that the learner constructs their own knowledge through modifying what they know and constructing new meaning from new and different experiences and environments (Bélanger, 2011). I believe all three theories have value when it comes to understanding why or how people do what they do. 

One thing that the above theories have in common is repetition whether it’s through frequent reinforcement, trial and error to perfect a task, or modifying your knowledge to construct new ideas (learning) about your environment. It is all practice. We learn by doing and experiencing. How do you learn to ride a bike? Practice. How do you learn to read? Practice. How do you learn to cook? Practice.

So what is the answer to the question of how we feel and manage our feelings? Should be practice. If you’re in therapy, you know that it takes practice to rewire your brain when it is feeling triggered. But this practice is not often afforded to young children. So what about the little ones? (Think about little you, and how things may have been different if space was held for your feelings.) When we tell them it’s time to leave the park or no you can’t have that lollipop, and they proceed to experience feelings that are big to them, oftentimes the response is to cut those feelings off. We don’t have time. This isn’t the place. You can’t scream here. I don’t understand why you’re so upset. Any number of these things might be going through your adult mind. A mind that has had practice and years of experience with big feelings and applicable logic at this point, for better or worse. That doesn’t mean adults even feel or manage feelings well, but that is another conversation. I want to talk about not being able to practice feeling and managing your emotions affects the developing child.

I’m not a parent, so I cannot pretend to know how difficult it is to have a screaming child in the grocery store or a child fighting tooth and nail over getting in their car seat. However, I have had my fair share of tantruming clients from your standard crying and screaming tantrum all the way to the kind where the child is so dysregulated that they are running around the room, into you, throwing things, etc. It is very overwhelming. And man, I wonder what the parents in the waiting room think. Or the other therapists in the room next door. The-I-must-be-terrible-at-this alarm blaring in my brain. As adults, we have to remember that we are the ones who have control over our feelings and the situation. We have the experience and the know-how to center ourselves and not become personally victimized or triggered by a screaming three year old, who does NOT have the ability to regulate as quickly as we do. And they aren’t supposed to. Read that sentence again. They aren’t supposed to! They’ve been on this earth for roughly 1000 days if they’re three, and only 730-ish of those days did they begin not fully and completely relying on their parents or caregiver. As an adult, I have been alive 10x longer for perspective.

Emotional regulation takes time to develop. It won’t happen overnight. Tantrums will still happen. And they will still happen in the most inopportune places sometimes. But, it is our job as adults, parents, caregivers, therapists, and the like to hold space for our little people to give them the practice they need to feel their big feelings and navigate through them. If every time a child became outrageously mad (no matter the reason) and were forced to tuck it away because “this isn’t the place” (or whatever the reason), then the worse the child will be at riding the emotional bike. We want to be their training wheels so they are ready for the bike with good balance and fewer scraped knees. Not to mention, the more practice they are given with feeling and working through their emotions, the better they will get at doing exactly that the next time (and the next time) they are upset.

But why do we even care about emotional regulation? Mostly because it is the building block for everything else. Think about the last time you had your heart broken. The last time someone close to you lied to you. The last time you didn’t know it was the last time you’d see your grandmother. When I think back to such experiences, I instantly remember how awful my work day was, or how I didn’t even go to work because I couldn’t function well enough to do my job well. Fortunately, as an adult I had the skills to know that my body and brain were dysregulated and that walking into work and taking that out on others would be a poor decision. If I had gone to work, my emotions would have wreaked havoc. Our little people aren’t born with the skill to make choices rooted in emotional stability. If their cup is full and overflowing, whatever is inside (i.e. joy, anger, sadness) is going to pour out. It takes time to develop and they need actual practice working through their feelings to develop healthy responses to big emotions. Which means we have to hold space for them. Emotional regulation supports learning. It allows their brain and body to be in a place where learning, understanding, and truly experiencing their world can occur. It allows what you are teaching them to stick.  Precisely why I think it is, like, the most important skill. 

So, let’s recap. Humans learn by doing. Practice makes perfect, if you will. This extends to bike riding, cooking, reading, AND managing emotions and big feelings. All of the things. Our job is to hold space for them. Name their feelings. Validate their feelings. Give them the space to be seen and heard. Help them process their emotions and work through their feelings instead of pushing them to the side for whatever practical, logical reason with which our adult brain is concerned. Teach them ways to ground themselves with coping strategies that support them. Little people are feelings first, logic second (or just later when their brain is more developed entirely). An emotionally regulated little person = the capacity to learn and experience new and even hard things because they know their feelings will be handled with care. Being gentle in this way is not “giving in” or “letting your child walk all over you”, it’s teaching them valuable life skills that support their overall development and ability to connect with themselves and others, AND really learn what you are teaching them.

Reference:

Bélanger, P. (2011). Three Main Learning Theories. In Theories in Adult Learning and Education (1st ed., pp. 17–34). Verlag Barbara Budrich. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvbkjx77.6

P.S. I know this research is centered around adult learning, but little people become adults. If this is how adults learn, I’d argue that applying similar ideas to children (I’m referencing the idea of practice and repetition, here) is worth a shot.