Helping your adolescent with emotion regulation
Your adolescent may need help with ways to manage their emotions in difficult situations.
Emotion regulation is learned throughout life. It includes skills that help to manage and express emotions in healthy ways. Emotion regulation skills can be about how we think or what we do to calm ourselves when emotions are there.
The skills are best worked out and practiced ahead of time when the adolescent is not really stressed or upset. Planning ahead of time what they can do to cope in challenging situations has greater chance of success than trying to work out what to do on the spot.
For example, during the summer holidays, you could talk about what they might do when they are walking up to the new school gates. You might also talk about what to do when they are introduced to new people in the days and weeks before that situation.
Emotion regulation skills help adolescents manage their emotions in different situations.
- Fear: taking small steps towards overcoming a fear (such as working out the school map to know where to go on orientation day) can be important. It is helpful to use emotion regulation skills (e.g., relaxation, or tensing and releasing muscles in your body) at the same time.
- Anger: using emotion regulation to build in a pause may help an adolescent manage disagreements with their friends.
- Sadness: slow breathing might help to manage sadness saying goodbye on the last day of primary school.
Emotion regulation skills have life-long benefits, and a lot of learning occurs during adolescence.
Responding to anger
Anger lets us know when something is important.
For adolescents, it is often about wanting independence and having their own voice. Adolescents will sometimes do this clumsily or hurtfully.
Managing your reactions
Adolescents can set us off! They can be harsh, critical and their emotions can be intense. When faced with this, your reactions may be automatic and difficult to control.
For your adolescent, feelings of anger, fear, powerlessness and helplessness may be common. They can lead to them being challenging, hurtful and loud. You, in turn, might end up yelling or using guilt or sarcasm in reaction. Or you might just walk off. Big emotions can happen for everyone!
At these times of strong emotions, you may need ways to build in a pause before you react. This can make it possible to calm down a little and notice your own emotion, before trying to emotion coach your adolescent.
How to look after yourself as a parent
Research shows that parenting adolescents is one of the most stressful periods in life. This often means parents are more reactive and emotionally dismissive. Parents can struggle to be patient with their moody adolescents.
This is also a time when parents’ intimate relationships are at their lowest. Parents need to look after themselves. If they are in a better space, they can be emotionally supportive of their adolescents.
There are lots of things you can do to care for yourself. These may help you be calmer, more patient and manage the challenges of parenting a growing adolescent.
Sometimes we need to calm and other times we need to be able to let off steam to release emotions:
- calming activities – relaxation exercises, yoga, prayer, meditation, having a hot bath/shower, breathing slowly, listening to calming music
- exercise to release emotion – going for a walk or run or playing sport.
We also may need time with others or time alone:
- social activities – spending time with a friend or partner
- activities you do on your own – walking, reading, gardening or doing a creative, non-screen task like a puzzle or cooking a favourite meal.
These activities are important for adolescents to do as well, and role modelling them can help build healthy stress management skills.
Managing rejection
Your adolescent is going through the many changes of early adolescence and the transition to secondary school. It is very healthy and normal for them to push you away and want less of your input. This is part of them learning to have their own voice and becoming an adult. At times they can reject you roughly and it can hurt terribly.
Managing your emotions when you are rejected is important. This will mean that you don’t react badly, give up or punish your adolescent.
The following tips can help you manage rejection:
- Adolescents often say things in the ‘heat of the moment’ which they do not mean. You don’t need to take their words personally or assume this is what they actually think.
- Notice your reactions and how you feel. Would you call it anger, hurt, sadness, worry, disgust or humiliation?
- Build in a pause – hold back from your automatic reaction which might be to run away or attack. Take a big deep breath, drink some water or use other ways to build in a pause.
- Remind yourself that this is a normal part of adolescence.
By not reacting with anger and attack, you let them know you accept their feelings and opinions. This keeps communication open. It means your adolescent is more likely to talk to you about the issue later.
Useful ways of responding include:
- ‘Okay, you might not want to talk now, but I will be here if you want to talk about it later.’
- ‘I can see you are pretty annoyed right now. I’m happy to listen if you want to talk some other time.’
- ‘Wow, sounds like you are having a tough time.’
- ‘You might need a little time to think things through. We can chat about it later if you want.'
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