Does your child love to cry and lose his temper? Are you worried to death? Here\’s the key to cracking it

Many mothers have asked me similar questions: How can I stop my child from throwing tantrums and crying? So worried. I deeply understand the \”pain\” of these mothers. Xiaochuan also had a past where he was \”explosive and sentimental\”. Once, because we didn\’t agree to buy him an Ultraman hand puppet, he stayed in the toy store and cried violently for half an hour. Another time, because his friend broke the Lego he had worked so hard to build, he became furious and punched him with his raised hand. I have tried many ways to deal with these negative emotional reactions of his. I have tried to ignore him on purpose and wait until he is angry and crying enough before paying attention to him; I have also had no choice but to compromise in order to make him quiet down as soon as possible in public places; and there have been several times when I really couldn\’t suppress the anger in my heart and yelled After passing him, he was so frightened that he immediately stopped crying. Four Types of Parental Meta-Emotion Philosophy Later, I learned about a new concept in developmental psychology – Parental Meta-Emotion Philosophy, and began to realize that we are often eager to know what to do, but forget to look inside ourselves. How do we deal with children’s negative emotions? Parental meta-emotional concepts refer to a set of emotions, attitudes and concepts that parents have regarding their children\’s emotional expressions. It affects and even determines the specific actions we take when dealing with our children’s negative emotions. Through long-term research, psychologists have summarized four main types of parents’ meta-emotional concepts: 1. Emotional non-interference type. This type of parent doesn\’t care at all about their children\’s emotional reactions and indulges their children\’s various emotional expressions. They don’t care about why their children are experiencing negative emotions, and they don’t want to help their children deal with their emotional distress. For example, if a child cries and refuses to eat, an emotionally hands-off parent will not investigate the reason for his crying. Instead, he will turn away and let him cry until he stops crying. How could they be so \”indifferent\” to their children? It’s not that they don’t love their children, it’s that they believe that letting nature take its course is the best way to teach children to deal with their emotions. As time goes by, children will naturally return to normal. Sooner or later, they will understand that \”it is wrong to be angry and cry.\” Adults do not need to worry or be nervous. 2. Emotional rejection type. Such parents are sensitive but critical in their reactions to their children\’s negative emotions. They believe that all negativity is harmful. Therefore, once it is discovered that a child is in a bad mood or has emotional distress problems, he will be very authoritative and stubborn in asking the child to get rid of them as soon as possible, otherwise he will impose necessary restrictions or punishments. The beloved lollipop fell to the ground, and the child cried distressedly. Emotional rejection-type parents can quickly detect that their children are emotionally wrong, but they often do not comfort their children. Instead, they authoritatively order their children to stop expressing negative emotions immediately: \”Stop crying, there is nothing worth crying about! If you cry again, I will ignore it.\” You!\” Such parents are prone to showing irritability and anger; and children who suppress their emotional expression for a long time are more likely to suffer from depression. 3. Emotionally out-of-control type. Such parents are too sensitive when facing their children\’s negative emotions, which often triggers their own neurotic reactions and even causes them to behave out of control. The extreme situation is that when the child is angry, he will also get angry.If you are angry, if the child cries, he will cry too. I have seen such cases before. A 2-year-old child accidentally broke his knee while playing in the park. The child cried in pain. The mother looked at the red wound and the child crying sadly, and actually hugged the child and started crying in distress. These types of parents seem to be \”deeply connected\” with their children, but in fact they do not discuss or communicate with their children the causes of negative emotions, nor do they know how to teach their children to deal with these negative emotions. Children cannot learn any skills in regulating their emotions from parents who suffer from emotional control. When they grow up, they may also develop similar emotional control problems. 4. Emotional coaching type. These parents are very aware of their own and their children\’s subtle emotional reactions, especially negative emotions. They do not think that negative emotions are harmful, but see negative emotions as opportunities to build close relationships between mother and child, father and child, and teach children how to deal with emotions. They will affirm the rationality of children\’s various emotional reactions, encourage and help children to use correct words to describe emotional feelings, discuss and solve problems that cause negative emotions with children, and teach children strategies on how to deal with these emotions. In the process of interacting with their parents, children not only realize that emotional expression is allowed, understood, and accepted, but they can also learn appropriate ways to deal with emotions from their parents. (Compared with such classification standards and small examples, you can try to judge which category your parents’ meta-emotional concept belongs to? Which category do you think is better?) At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, Western scholars began to focus on the meta-emotional concept of parents. Research. In recent years, Chinese scholars have also done some contextualized research. Most research results promote the concept of emotion-teaching meta-emotions and believe that it has a significant positive impact on children\’s emotion regulation ability. The key to the two-step method of emotional education is how do we effectively teach children’s emotions, especially negative emotions? Researchers say you can try this two-step method: 1. Help children understand emotions. Babies are born with the ability to feel emotions and can experience emotions such as fear, fear, and excitement. But it does not have the ability to interpret emotions and regulate emotions at the same time, which is affected by brain development to a certain extent. In the infant\’s brain, the emotional hemisphere and the cognitive hemisphere are parallel to each other, which means that he cannot \”explain\” why he has emotional reactions. When they have strong emotional experiences, if they cannot get help from the outside world in time, they will often be \”scared\” by their strong emotional feelings, become overwhelmed, and then feel fearful. As parents, we need to help them understand the emotions they are feeling, such as sadness, jealousy, anger, frustration, etc., and let them understand that it is normal and acceptable to experience these emotional reactions. The child accidentally broke a vase at home and burst into tears. At this time, it is more important to help him realize the emotion of \”guilt\” than to blame him for his carelessness. You can try saying this to him: Mom: Baby, mom knows why you cry. Child: (Looking up at mother)…Mom: You cried because you broke the vase and felt sad, right? Child: (nods sharply)……Mom: Baby, do you know? You feel sad because you feel guilty. You blame yourself for making a mistake and breaking such a beautiful vase. Child: (It turns out that the feeling after making a mistake is called guilt) 2. Empathy (empathy) After the child understands his own emotions, we can start to guide him to regulate his emotions, using the method of \”talking to the child\” Empathy\” (or empathy) method. Simply put, empathy is the ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes. It relies first on cognitive abilities, the ability to understand other people\’s mental states and assess other people\’s feelings and intentions. For adults, cognitive ability is naturally not an issue. As long as we think about it, we can definitely discover and understand our children\’s emotions and feelings. But empathy also relies on emotional ability, which requires parents to really \”put themselves in their children\’s shoes\” and truly understand their children\’s emotions, rather than \”pretending\” to understand in a condescending manner. Some parents know the skills of \”empathy\”, but they are not able to invest 100% of their emotions. Gradually, their children can feel the difference. Generally speaking, empathy includes the following small steps: Here is a small example at the beginning to help explain: Tim, his little friend, broke the Lego he worked so hard to build. Ogawa was so angry that he wanted to hit someone. Listening and responding First, encourage the child to retell what happened and give a brief affirmative response, \”Oh, that\’s why you are angry.\” The starting point of empathy is to understand the facts in the child\’s eyes and listen to him. As parents, we seem to be better at talking, but often neglect to listen to our children. Only by listening to him quietly can you understand the story of his experience and understand his true inner feelings. Identify feelings (name emotions) Put yourself in your child\’s shoes and help him understand his own emotional reactions. At this time, you must stay calm, control your emotions, and empathize with your child. This does not mean you have to have the same excited emotional reaction as your child. You can try asking him something like this: \”Are you feeling angry because Tim destroyed your Lego?\” Showing love and care to him and telling him \”Mom cares about what you think and feel\” will help you solve the problem. You can try asking him: \”What do you need mom to do now? Can you help you build the Lego again?\” To solve the problem together, you can first let the child come up with a solution to the problem, \”What do you think you should do so that you won\’t be angry?\” ?\” Then provide our plan, you can try to say: \”Your idea is very reasonable, but my mother thinks that next time, I can try to express my \”unhappiness\”. For example, tell Tim clearly that you broke the I\’m not happy because I lost my Lego. You should apologize to me. I need your help to put the Lego back together.\” The last thing I want to say is that as parents, we guide our children to regulate negative emotions, not to let them get rid of them. These emotions do not require them not to cry, not be sad, or not be afraid. This is not how high emotional intelligence is defined. They need these \”bad emotions\” to make their lives more fulfillingHowever, they need to learn to regulate these emotions within a reasonable range and degree, so as not to let them expand uncontrollably into \”savage beasts\” and hurt themselves or others.