Why Coping Skills Aren’t Helping Your Child’s Emotions
Most parents who come to me for coaching or therapy ask me what coping skills they can help their child learn to manage their emotions.
Helping your child learn coping skills is important and it’s a great skill for them to learn; however, when most parents come to me, they’re talking about big emotional reactions resulting in yelling, screaming, and aggressive behavior.
Oftentimes, coping skills aren’t going to be the most effective strategy to try to use at this point. Here’s why:
Your child is using only the emotional part of their brain.
At this point, trying to get your child to use a coping skill may backfire because their emotions are heightened to the point that they can’t process their emotions logically or tap into the coping skills that they have used. Additionally, they may become frustrated by you instructing them to use a coping skill in the moment.
The reason behind their emotional regulation difficulty is defiance.
One of the first things I teach my coaching clients is how to understand why their child is emotionally dysregulated. Because once you know the reason behind the emotion regulation, then you will know what skills to use.
If your child is feeling dysregulated because you set a limit with them, told them to do something, or told them no, likely the only thing that will help them feel better in that moment is to give into the limit that you set.
Even if that’s the only thing that would ease their emotions, you shouldn’t actually do that. If you want to learn what would work instead, you can learn in the second session of my group parenting program coming up on 5/2 at 5pm.
Children learn to regulate their emotions through their parents.
Learning coping skills is a practice that happens; however, when children are younger, they often learn how to regulate their emotions through their parents. This could be from how their parents respond to their emotions, or things the parent will do to encourage calm emotions. Because of this, coping skills likely won’t be a cure-all for their emotions.
Kids with ADHD develop emotion regulation later than other kids.
Emotional awareness and regulation is considered an executive functioning skill. And kids with ADHD are about 30% behind other kids with their executive functioning skills. This means that the coping skills that may work for your kids without ADHD won’t necessarily have the same effect on a child with ADHD given their emotional regulation difficulties.
Just because kids with ADHD have more difficulties with emotion regulation doesn’t mean they won’t ever be able to manage their emotions. It just takes specialized skills as well as patience to learn how to manage it. Here are some alternatives to coping skills you can use to promote emotion regulation:
Modeling calm responses to frustrations you experience as a parent. When you experience a frustration, you can also tie it to a coping skill you are using.
Praising calm reactions in response to situations that are typically difficult for your child
Setting up routines in order to minimize the effect transitions can have on kids with ADHD
Focusing on using positive rewards (e.g., praise or rewards) instead of going to consequences at first
Using consequences reliably and consistently for the same behaviors (e.g., aggressive behavior)
If this blog was helpful, let me know by sending me a DM!