How to Help Your Eight Year Old Understand and Manage Emotions

Emotional self-awareness involves identifying and understanding one’s emotions – including “big feelings” that can sometimes overwhelm us.

Eight-year-olds can learn to identify more complex emotions and talk about how their feelings can affect their behavior. For example, they can begin to see that feeling jealous of a friend might make them act grouchy toward that friend. They can also understand that it’s possible have “conflicting feelings” or “mixed emotions” about a situation.

Teach "I" Statements

To help children understand the cause and effect between external experience and internal emotions, show them how to form an "I" statement: "I feel _______ (insert feeling word) when _____ (share what caused this feeling)." These statements open up the door to honest communication and creative problem solving. Here are some examples of how "I" statements can be used to reframe emotions and clearly articulate feelings.

I feel mad when my little sister goes into my room without asking me first.

I feel sad when you go to work and I have a babysitter.

I feel left out when my friends have a playdate and I can't go.

I feel peaceful when we color together and I wish we did it more often.

Introduce and Normalize Complex Emotions

Continue to build children's emotional vocabulary by introducing more complex, nuanced emotions such as frustration, loneliness, grief, jealousy, anticipation, wonder, gratitude, hope and peace. When you see them experiencing one of these emotions, share your observation: "It's been two weeks since your friend moved away. Are you feeling lonely?" Model using specific words to describe your own emotions so that children see that everyone has feelings: "When I sit outside and listen to the birds, it helps me feel peaceful"; or "I felt really frustrated today when I couldn't find some papers that I needed for work."

source:https://www.pbs.org/