Wellness Matters Webinar - Building Emotional Intelligence in Children

A child’s world is constantly expanding which is an exciting time, but can cause some big emotions in times of change. Join us as we explore building emotional intelligence in children to support healthy growth and development. This webinar aims to highlight the importance of emotional regulation, a foundational skill that helps children manage and respond to feelings in healthy and adaptive ways. Emotional regulation can also support children in being able to navigate frustration and manage their thoughts.

In this talk we will explore:

• How the brain responds to challenging situations

• How to identify and discuss feelings

• Strategies to support emotional regulation (e.g. mindfullness)

• Books and resources to engage children in continued exploration of emotional intelligence

Facilitator: Julie Stirling

• What is emotional intelligence in children and why is it important?

  Emotional intelligence is a child's ability to recognize, understand, and manage their own emotions while also recognizing emotions in others. Developing emotional intelligence can help children build stronger friendships, improve communication skills, increase self-esteem, develop resilience, and better navigate challenges at school and home. The webinar explains how emotional intelligence supports both social and academic success and contributes to overall mental well-being.

• Why do children have such big emotional reactions to small problems?

  Children's brains are still developing, particularly the areas responsible for logic, decision-making, and emotional regulation. As a result, situations that may seem minor to adults—such as being told "no" or experiencing a change in routine—can trigger intense emotional responses. The webinar explores how children's developing brains process emotions and why meltdowns, tantrums, and emotional outbursts are often a normal part of development.

• How can parents help children regulate their emotions?

  Parents play a critical role in teaching emotional regulation through connection, modeling, and co-regulation. Effective strategies include helping children identify and name emotions, practicing coping skills when children are calm, creating safe spaces for calming down, using deep breathing exercises, encouraging movement and mindfulness, and maintaining age-appropriate expectations. The webinar provides practical examples parents can use at home.

• What are the best tools for helping children identify and express their feelings?

  Children often need support developing the language to describe their emotions. Helpful tools include feelings charts, emotion wheels, Zones of Regulation visuals, emotion thermometers, and body-mapping activities that connect physical sensations to emotions. The webinar also recommends using books and stories to help children recognize emotions, build emotional vocabulary, and practice empathy through relatable characters and situations.

Watch the video

Transcript

Good evening everybody and welcome to our Wellness Matters talk this evening building emotional intelligence in children. Our facilitator tonight is Julie Sterling who has been a practicum student at River's Edge since September. We've been really fortunate to have her. She's going to say a little bit more about her background in a little bit.

This talk is part of a series - you may have joined us for other Wellness Matters webinars. We have well over a hundred of them on our website. Lots of different topics that you're welcome to check out. And we have one more in our spring series coming up. I'll just let you know about on June 11th. We have a talk on boundaries that breathe, preventing burnout through healthy limits. And we just set our lineup for fall. We've got four or five talks this fall planned and we'll be posting them on the website again soon as well.

So Julie's talk I didn't ask you how long it is. Julie, what do you think?

It's about 30 to 35 40 minutes.

Perfect. So we'll have a little bit of questions. And if you need anything, but otherwise I'm going to turn it over to you.

Sounds great. Well, thank you very much.

So to begin, I'll just introduce a little bit about myself. So, as Nicole mentioned, my name is Julie Sterling and I'm a practicum student at River's Edge.

I've had the pleasure of being here since September and have worked kind of with a variety of of ages from adults to adolescence to and children.

One of my areas of interest is emotional intelligence and regulation.

So I'm excited to be able to present on that this evening. When I'm not at River's Edge, I'm an elementary school teacher and have spent most of my teaching career in specialized classrooms.

I've worked with a wide range of student needs and classroom supports.

And emotional regulation has been an important area of focus for me kind of in that realm.

I love kind of working with students to figure out what strategies or interventions help with regulation so that they can kind of have more energy to focus on learning, pure interactions, and having fun at school.

And when I'm not working, I love to spend time with my family.

I have two young kids. We love to be outdoors, biking, walking, gardening - we're in the midst of sports season.

But yes, and so I'm continually learning about emotional regulation, kind of figuring out what works for my own family, as well as the kids that I support in the different capacities that I have.

And I'm excited to share my knowledge with you tonight.

So just as a quick introduction just in case you might have forgotten what the talk was about we're going to explore just a child's world constantly expanding which is a really exciting time but can cause some big emotions in time of change.

So I'm hoping to share with you and explore building emotional intelligence in children to support that healthy growth and development.

The webinar aims to highlight the importance of developing and building emotional intelligence as well as that regulation piece so that kids kind of know what they can do when they're having those big emotions.

And I'll kind of specifically go through a little bit on brain development, and responses to change, how to identify and discuss those big emotions and feelings, strategies to support emotional regulation, and then I'm hoping that you'll leave with some practical and helpful resources, books, ideas, to continue exploring emotional intelligence at home.

So to begin I thought we'd start with what is emotional intelligence?

So it's a set of skills associated with children being able to monitor their own and others emotions and the ability to use emotions to guide their thinking and actions.

Having emotional awareness enables children to understand their inner experiences as well as the inner experiences of others.

It's also a key part of how children connect with others and kind of deal with those ups and downs and unexpected moments in life. So developing emotional intelligence enables children to manage their emotions effectively and avoid being derailed by unexpected situations maybe a flash of anger, sadness, those feelings that can just come up throughout the day that aren't necessarily expected.

When children develop their emotional intelligence, it helps them form friendships, play cooperatively, and handle disagreements without acting out or shutting down emotionally and it can be related to many other positive outcomes.

One of them being the support for social relationships.

So having emotional intelligence is key to building and keeping good relationships with friends, cousins, family, teachers.

When children can understand their own emotions and recognize emotions in others it's easier to handle social situations which can be unpredictable exciting and fun but also have you know moments of challenge.

It can also help with just better communication conflict resolution developing those deeper connections related to trust and social awareness.

And something I think is important fostering that empathy piece, so being able to relate and understand what other kids or adults are going through.

It's also helps support academic success, so it helps in that academic role.

Being able to focus, pay attention, kind of like reducing procrastination, enhancing problem solving, and making those connections at school, whether it's a teacher or, you know, administration or other students. being able to relate to the people around them that they're with you know if they're at school you know all day every day.

It also helps with supporting self-esteem. So emotional intelligence can have a positive effect on self-esteem. So, children who understand their emotions and can manage their emotions effectively can result in greater self-respect and confidence and being able to kind of manage those unexpected moments that may come up through the day, as well as resiliency. Maybe, you know, one time something didn't quite work out and they're able to try it again in a different way with a different coping skill, maybe with support from from another person.

So that resilience and that strength piece is helpful for kids as well and then their overall just kind of our overall well-being and health.

Emotional intelligence can have a profound connection on both our physical and our mental well health well-being.

Being able to understand and manage emotions plays an important role in reducing anxiety, kind of depression, like I'd mentioned before, increasing resiliency, stress management, healthier behaviors, being able to kind of engage in that fun play, taking a break, self-care, exercise, things like that.

And then you might be thinking, what is an emotion?

So emotions can be complex especially for kids, emotions can be overwhelming and difficult for them to understand.

Often we see the result of an emotion. It could be throwing toys, ripping up homework, frustration turning into screaming. Maybe you've experienced one of those or all of those or you know many different responses that kids can have to kind of their emotions and what's happening in situations.

Kids can feel emotions just as deeply as adults and sometimes even more so.

But unlike adults they don't have the tools sometimes to name or to understand or to manage those feelings and the emotions that they're having. It's something that they can learn over time, but they do need help and support to do it.

So in its basic form, emotions are those initial instinctual reactions children have to situations.

Some of the basic emotions can be joy, sadness, anger, fear, and emotions can arise quickly and are often short-lived, but can be very intense.

And kids might not know what to do with those short intense bursts of emotions that they feel throughout the day.

They can be helpful as they may alert a child to how they are feeling in the moment and drive their initial reaction.

Emotions are not just feelings. So, in childhood and throughout life, our emotions will help guide our thoughts and our imagination and our behavior and our judgments and how we interact with people.

And emotions can vary throughout the day. So, I always say there's no good or bad emotions, rather just normalizing that that children can have a variety of emotions in an hour, in a day and that they might yeah, feel the intensity of those emotions change rather quickly or they might sit with an emotion for a longer period of time. And just normalizing emotions and that a child's response can be an important step in helping develop that emotional regulation those skills as well as what they do when they feel those big emotions.

Next I kind of as I was preparing I found this kind of image of a curve of emotions and I thought it was really helpful to kind of see what happens when a situation can trigger an emotional response and that intensification as we like peak up to an emotional peak and then a deescalation down from that emotion.

And I just wanted to take a moment and say that experiencing your child's or, you know, any of the children that you know in your life's big emotions can be difficult. Raising kids means navigating a lot of big emotions.

In these moments, it can be hard to know like what to do or why your child might be acting that way.

And the truth is sometimes kids don't really know what they're doing either or what their response to a situation might be.

When something stressful happens, kids don't always have the words to explain what they're feeling.

We'll talk about this in a few slides, but their brains are still developing rapidly, and they're learning communication skills and processing skills.

And so they're still learning how to pause, reflect, and regulate those emotions which can be hard in the moment for both the child and the adult that is with them.

And in the meantime, kids often react more emotionally, which can make their responses like quick and intense.

Sometimes we might not even notice what might trigger an emotional response. It could be a toy breaking or a parent saying no and that could trigger a response that from the outside might look really intense compared to the situation. that there's so much going on in a child's brain and in their ability to kind of regulate how they're feeling about a situation.

I kind of thought of an example to go along with the curve. And my example was we could pretend there's a little Susie and she goes with her dad after going to the grocery store after school to grab some ingredients for dinner. She's had a long day, is tired and hungry coming home from school and she might see like a delicious treat or a chocolate bar and she asks for it and her dad like gently tells her no.

And that could be the situation that might trigger an intensification of emotions.

It might start by kind of being angry, maybe some yelling, which could escalate to falling onto the ground, having a bit of a meltdown, and then ultimately like that peak emotion, could be like hitting or kicking her dad as she's kind of experiencing this emotion.

aAd it's important to remember to just protect, be present, maintain safety for your child. it can be really hard especially when you know we're out in public and there's lots of people around.

But to be there kind of after that peak as the emotional deescalation begins and that could be that you know their adrenaline is starting to leave the body and having that moment to connect support co-regulation and then being able to discuss the event after the fact.

Children can go through different stages of emotions and have different reactions at each stage. And sometimes it can be helpful for a parent to kind of identify what is like your child's calm state.

Knowing certain triggers might be helpful. Looking for those warning signs and paying attention to the signs that tell you that your child might be starting to have a difficult moment or that intensification is you know increasing a little bit.

For some kids it can be you know something very simple just like a change of a look on their face or sometimes it's more obvious like they might start like ripping something up or throwing something around. Knowing kind of for your own child like what those what those signs might be, identifying what the peak emotion might look like.

And these are the moments that your child might be too disregulated to listen to anything or say or apply any of those coping skills. Instead, at this kind of stage, we just want to keep them safe, let them know that we're there. And then help in that deescalation piece. So, I thought it was just a a helpful visual.

And of course, everyone isn't the same and some kids their curve might look a little bit different, but just to kind of understand that that wave of emotions for kids.

All right. And then next I'm going to just talk about kind of supporting your child's and what what parents might be able to to do or to start thinking about regarding emotional regulation.

And I just wanted to stress that learning to regulate emotions is a complex process. Emotional regulation calls on so many skills including paying attention, planning, cognitive development, language, processing.

there's so many things going on and for many children, they're still developing all of these skills.

So when they come to navigate these intense emotions, it can be difficult. And it's important to remember that children develop these skills at different times. Their ability to manage emotion depends on many factors. Some of it being genetics, natural temperament, their environment. Maybe you don't fully know what happened at school that day. Maybe it was a really stimulating day in the classroom, you know, maybe there was some conflict with a friend.

It can also be physiological factors. Are they really hungry? Are they really tired? Waybe they didn't have the best sleep or they're staying up late for sports one night.

So just being aware of how all of those different factors can impact the ability to regulate emotions.

And the good news is is that parents and caregivers can play a critical role in helping children learn to manage their emotions.

and then in the little bubbles they just have a few kind of thoughts that parents can be aware of.

One of them is to be is being starting early. So all kids benefit from teaching about feelings. parents can start talking about emotions, identifying emotions and feelings when their children are still babies, toddlers.

It's just helpful to point out like characters in books or in movies and it really starts to help normalize those discussions around emotions and their impacts for kids, as well connecting.

So studies have shown that children who have that secure trusting relationship with the with their parent can have better emotional regulation. Being consistent, being comforting spending that time together to create connection can help support children.

Talk and teach is very similar to starting early.

It's once again just normalizing teaching kids to recognize and name their emotions. trying to have conversations in the heat of the moment doesn't always work or support regulation rather waiting until everyone is calm and that can be adults included can help really identify kind of strategies to use next time.

things that went well, moments that were hard when everyone is slightly more regulated. modeling behavior from parents.

Children learn by what they see their parents doing and what their parents say, so modeling for kids.

Narrating out loud even like I'm feeling frustrated right now so I'm going to maybe like take a deep breath or walk away from the situation for a minute.

But just letting kids kind of see the the regulation that we go through as adults can help them you know learn different skills and techniques.

Also the vocabulary that we use normalizing that mistakes happen that big reactions happen and how do we kind of repair and move forward and acknowledge kind of what what happened. staying calm, which can be easier said than done.

But this is similar to modeling that calm behavior.

If you're about to lose your cool, take a minute, calm down.

Find whatever works for you to kind of think about your own regulation and how kind of, you know, as adults, we're showing up to help kids regulate themselves. Sorry.

and then developmentally appropriate. expectations. So being aware of developmental stages, maybe a little tiny bit about brain development.

Like where do you think your child falls? Like if they're, you know, 2 years old, probably not you know, expected that they would self-regulate and talk themselves through a challenging situation to get to regulate themselves. So just recognizing kind of the developmentally appropriate expectations and and kind of working with the stages your child is at.

And then the last one which I really really love is to find the positive.

And sometimes that might be harder than than we think but just finding those moments to praise, to point out the positive, to you know reward a behavior that maybe you've been working on. Instead of possibly always going to like a punishment or kind of thinking about the negative, finding those positive pieces that kids are doing and kind of boosting their their self-esteem and and their excitement to keep working on whatever it is that they're kind of working towards.

We'll go through a little bit more of those in detail, but I wanted to just quickly kind of point out some developmental stages.

I'm not going to go through all of the stages, but I wanted to just kind of pinpoint a couple key pieces for emotional development. So this is the Pia stages of cognitive development and for kind of like 0 to two years old. It's that sensory motor stage.

I thought it was just interesting to point out that emotions are immediate and reactionary.

So they're usually in response to something in that present moment. You know, crying if they're distressed joy laughing if something is is funny. So in that sensory motor stage it's very much present focused and an immediate reaction just something to kind of think about. In the pre-operational stage which is that 2 to 7 emotions are very intense but short-lived.

Kids in this stage are egocentric, so it's hard for them to take the perspective of someone else.

And they're getting a having a lot more complex emotions and feelings, which can increase the likelihood of tantrums or meltdowns or kind of big reactions to events.

In that concrete operational stage, that's about 7 to 11 years, kids are beginning to develop more empathy and able to consider multiple viewpoints.

They're increasing their emotional regulation. Maybe they've been practicing it and kind of working through it for the last several years.

And they're able to kind of engage more in that cooperative play negotiation, understanding those big feelings and emotions that they're having. And then in the final stage which is 12 plus years formal operational they can conceptualize emotions reflect more on their internal state empathize with others and and work through almost different emotional kind of challenges start popping up as they're more in that heightened self-conscious phase grappling with like abstract social and personal ideologies and and and kind of those deeper friendships. And next I wanted to very briefly kind of share a little bit about brain development.

I don't expect anyone to be a brain expert at the end of the evening.

I mostly wanted to highlight a few parts of the brain that are important to understanding emotional regulation and to kind of stress the importance of recognizing that all regions of the brain don't develop at the same time and speed, which can impact how children manage and respond to big emotions and feelings.

So the first kind of brain that I'm going to talk about is the one kind of on the the left, I guess my left, it could be your right, sorry. just the brain in the little child's head. And the first piece that I wanted to talk about was the preffrontal cortex.

So this is a really important part of the brain and it controls our planning, our judgment, and our decision-making.

It's kind of like the what's the word I'm looking for? Like the logic part of the brain.

What's interesting is this part of the brain is not fully developed until people are into their mid 20s you know 20 to 25. So children are working with a very rapidly developing brain that prefrontal cortex which is really important for kind of decision making is not fully developed which would you know impact those reactions to emotions.

There's also the limbic cortex which is kind of a little ring of tissue at the edge of the cerebrum and this focuses on development continues throughout childhood sorry and into adolescence and it handles our emotional experiences and helps with generating feelings and reacting to stress and to fear and to different emotions.

and then we have it's very little tiny but mighty. It's the amygdala and it's fully functioning at birth and it's the brain's emotional response center or almost like the alarm system.

And then it helps coordinate kind of a response with other areas of the brain in the body.

It also processes emotions like fear and can trigger that fight, flight or freeze response much quicker than the logical prefrontal cortex. So if children are kind of relying on their amydala to help with their emotions, it can tend to be impulsive reactions to emotions and situations.

And so while all these parts of the brain are kind of developing and there's many more that I haven't shared about, that's what kids are working with as they're developing their responses to situations and interactions with people.

The good news is is that the relationship between parents and children play like an important role in that brain development. Caregivers who are responsive to their children's needs help to build those healthy connections as the brain develops.

and I also just wanted to add the other picture of the brain that says meet the brain team to kind of highlight the ability to include children in learning about their brain and areas that help them recognize emotions and respond to situations. So, giving children that knowledge and the vocabulary to describe certain parts of their brain can be empowering, can help them feel more in control in their responses to joyful things, stressful things, challenging situations.

So I looked in this diagram. They kind of gave fun names and characters to parts of the brain like Hippo, the hippo campus, helps to solve problems. Amy, the amygdala, tries to protect from danger, but sometimes not always in the right way.

and then I think there's text, the detective, and helps to like solve those problems.

So I just wanted to include it. There's lots of different examples online, but it can be really empowering for kids to learn about their brain and even you know what parts of the brain are helping them with their responses to situations things like that. And then just while we're talking about the brain, I just wanted to talk about fight, flight, or freeze.

So when a child is stressed or upset, they may shut down, have a meltdown, lose control of their body.

And this can be stressful for adults who are helping them, working with them.

and it can feel like they're being, you know, disrespectful or defiant or not listening.

When really this could be an automatic kind of response from the brain.

if you remember the amydala, the brain's emotional response system or the alarm, it's always monitoring for threats and safety.

And while it does this all for all emotions in general, it's especially important for when we're feeling angry or scared, our amygdala is actually quite powerful at processing emotions like anger or fear. And it may cause like an aggressive or scared response before the rest of the brain realizes what's happening.

That's why it can be so hard to get angry without even thinking, or why we often react to a scary situation before we might fully understand what's happening.

At the same time that the amygdala is activated our prefrontal cortex sometimes is kind of goes offline or shuts down which is the logic part of the brain so a child can be in distress or a meltdown and not really necessarily differentiate between you know what's happening is it a real threat to kind of feel like you need to fight or flight from or is it perceived D is something that we might be thinking or our brain is thinking it's a threat when it might be something that we wouldn't perceive.

So that's kind of the fight or flight response and we might notice it. You might even notice it in yourself.

You know if we think of the caveman if our brain saw a bear we know to run away to protect ourselves.

But even now like an email can trigger that response for some people or you know a social situation and once we kind of know those feelings we can try to think of regulation skills that can help us to get out of that fight or flight so we're able to make those decisions with the logic part of our brain.

And for kids that emotional regulation can be co-regulation or self-regulation. So co-regulation is when an adult works or supports a child's managing their emotions.

you could almost think about it as an external support when a child cannot calm themselves down.

One example could be soothing a crying baby, offering a hug to a distraught child.

So co-regulation is kind of that first step in regulation and can help children learn different calming skills and emotional vocabulary. Self-regulation is when a child can kind of manage their emotions and behaviors on their own.

This involves a child recognizing their feelings or emotions and using coping strategies that work for them.

It's important to remember that this can take time to to develop and practice strategies that work for individual children.

We'll explore some emotional regulation strategies in a little bit and different tools or ideas to support that emotional regulation.

It's also helpful in this kind of self-regulation that we're still as adults modeling teaching emotions, validating emotions and having different supports on hand for kids to practice and try.

But now I'm going to kind of switch gears a little bit to give maybe some resources or some ideas about labeling emotions.

Then we'll move to emotional regulation and then a little piece on kind of literature that can help kids.

So the next part I wanted to talk about was identifying and labeling emotions.

Before kids can regulate their emotions, they need to be able to identify emotions.

So labeling talking about emotions can give kids language to share what they're experiencing. can help them identify accurately, communicate effectively and identify appropriate regulation strategies.

I've included the zones of regulation. So this is quite common in in classrooms even at home parents can use it and it's just helpful visual for kids to see different zones. So the red zone, yellow, green, and blue. kids can identify what zone they're feeling you know in that moment, maybe when they first get to school, maybe when they wake up in the morning.

And it's just helpful to have kids recognize the different zones, as well as starting to pick out a regulation strategy.

You know, the example is if you're in the blue zone, maybe stretching might help if you're feeling tired or sick.

So it's just one kind of visual for kids to use to be able to kind of identify emotions and even see kind of which emotions are like kind of clumped together and those colors associated with them. So that's one one helpful tool.

I've also included an emotions wheel or a feelings chart.

These are available online. There's lots of different different ones.

and they can be really helpful in helping children identify, name, and communicate their emotions.

With the feelings wheel, it can help kind of identify that core feeling. Maybe they're feeling mad and then subsequent emotions that might follow. Maybe it's terrified or enraged or whatever that emotion might be. It can just help expand that vocabulary.

It can also help just increase that emotional literacy, build autonomy. It can give kids a voice to share how they're feeling and how and starting to match coping strategies with different emotions. So maybe when I'm feeling angry, I can do this.

So just a couple of more visuals and tools to help kids just even see the different emotions. and increase their vocabulary. And the last two in this area, one is a feeling or an emotions thermometer which can just be a helpful visual scale to help children identify how they might be feeling and the severity.

What I find helpful using these with kids is they're able to identify maybe some strategies. If someone's feeling very angry, maybe they know to take a break or go for a walk.

And if they're kind of in that not angry to angry zone, maybe deep breathing will help.

So that they're not escalating, you know, kind of higher and higher up that thermometer.

So that's kind of the cool thing about the thermometers as well. And then body mapping is kind of the picture, like how do I feel?

And this can be a really helpful tool because children will often like can feel an emotion as do adults.

That physical con sensation before we can name it.

So this can help with enhancing the emotional literacy, linking those physical sensations to an emotion.

Often kids will say, "It feels like I have butterflies in my tummy." And that could mean that they're feeling nervous or scared, or they have a race car heartbeat.

Maybe that's showing they're anxious or angry or excited.

And once they're able to kind of become more aware of those emotions or that they're feeling those sensations, they might be able to learn to engage in a coping strategy before you know the they've es an emotion has escalated and it's harder to come back down.

I also like to do this activity kind of with kids.

We do it together and this can just help normalize and create safety around discussing our emotions and the different responses we have. And, you know, I'll share, you know, when I'm feeling angry, my chest gets really tight. And maybe that's something they'd noticed but hadn't been very aware of. So, I find doing it with kids is helpful. Yeah in that normalization and just having those open conversations.

Next I wanted to talk about emotional regulation different skills.

so emotional regulation is our ability to kind of recognize, understand and manage emotions kind of in a healthy way.

It can there are many different coping strategies, different situations that we might be able to use them in and appropriately expressing our feelings and coping with change or challenging behavior.

I always like to remind people that everyone regulates in a different way. What helps one child may not help another. And it might take some time or some investigative work to figure out which skills are helpful you know for one child versus another.

Also I always like to remind with any coping skill practicing throughout the day even when kids are calm is helpful.

It's hard to reach for a new skill and try something for the first time when we're in the kind of peak emotional behavior.

So you know, having kids be familiar, practice, model, reinforce strategies, so that they're there when they're needed. And I'll just walk through a couple kind of coping strategies. One of them being deep breathing.

This can calm the body and override that fight or flight or freeze response. It can disrupt our stress stress response and empower and increase feelings of independence. If kids are able to kind of bring themselves yeah regulate their own emotions.

There's a variety of deep breathing exercises. There's little cards you can find online, stickers that you can place on things.

But kind of the main important piece behind it is we want to have kids kind of breathe deeply through their belly.

We can explain putting their hand over their belly to watch it expand as they breathe in and breathe out slowly and kind of watch their stomach contract a little bit.

So there's box breathing and five finger breathing.

some kids really like the smell the flower where you breathe deeply and then blow out the candle.

So there's a variety of deep breathing exercises. Sometimes I'll have kids I'll lay a bunch of cards out and they can pick which ones look interesting to them.

if they're really artistic, they might like to draw their own.

just kind of have fun with it. Be creative.

It's always cool what kids pick what they think is a cool way of of doing a deep breathing exercise.

And if they're connected kind of to the process of picking out what they want to try, it might be more meaningful and they might remember it a little bit more to use it in practice.

There's also lots of videos online that will kind of walk kids through a deep breathing piece as well.

Doing it a few repetitions will help kind of calm that nervous system.

another, piece is a calm space.

So having kids find a calm, quiet space to lower their stress, and to process their emotions and situations.

We don't want it to be a punishment, rather a place where they feel safe, to go kind of regulate their nervous system to be able to use a coping strategy.

there's also yoga and movement breaks.

There's quite a few online that you can watch, as well, you know, there's just going for a neighborhood walk, playing Simon Says.

Just getting that movement break can boost energy, reset the nervous system, help interrupt stress response, and it can be Cosmic Yoga is a really popular kids online yoga site as well as Go Noodle. They have little workouts, movement breaks specific for kind of emotional regulation, lots of really fun ones.

Both are quite common in school and are and are accessible for free. So those are kind of two additional resources.

Mindfulness I wanted to share as well. So mindfulness can help kids kind of slow down, observe their thoughts, and manage those big emotions.

It's helping kids kind of pay attention to that present moment and what they are hearing, seeing, or experiencing.

It can help kids focus like I mentioned, on that present moment and it can help with their stress or focus and that resiliency.

Go Noodle, I mentioned it before, they have some really, great mindfulness videos where your body is melting or doing rainbow breath, they have a bunch of different channels for that.

Also kind of one of my favorite ones to use at school is just asking kids, can you please find 10 blue things around the classroom?

I remind them, you just need to find them with your eyes. You don't need to shout them out and share them with me.

But once you've counted 10 things, you could give me a thumbs up and I'll know you've, you know, found your items.

And that's just a way to kind of bring their awareness into their present space.

and also just have their brain kind of if you know for getting elevated, just kind of re-engage that prefrontal cortex and find the things around them in their present space.

And the last one I wanted to leave you with was journaling.

Journaling can provide a safe space for children to process big emotions and explore and identify their emotions.

It does not have to mean that they're writing, you know, a full page. It can be doodling, drawing, making lists, responding to like pre-made questions in a little book.

But it just can also help kids kind of get their thoughts out, which then might make it easier for them to communicate with an adult after the fact.

Writing it down can just help us kind of make sense of our thoughts, process process an event or a situation and be able to share that with with someone after.

And then my final one that I just wanted to share was learning through literature. So stories and books can be really valuable in supporting children's social and emotional kind of health and learning. It can support emotion emotional well-being by building our empathy, enhancing self-awareness, fostering regulation, increasing that vocabulary. So there are a wide variety of books that help kids identify different emotions.

Kind of the top row, the way I feel today I feel silly.

I really like that my zoo a book of feelings kind of gives every animal a feeling. So books can be really great and they can start from board books up to you know books for all ages for kids to be able to engage in identifying feelings.

And then there's a big bright feelings series and each book kind of goes through a different um emotion that someone can have or personality. There's one on being shy. I think there's this one with a monster and it just helps kids connect to characters that might be going through similar emotions and feelings and changes in their personality as the kids in the book.

So that's a really great series. I think there's about 10.

And then I included What Should Danny Do? It's a really cool book that goes through some social emotional learning so kids can choose their own adventure throughout the book. his superpower is making a choice and sometimes the choices lead to better results than others.

But it provides lots of opportunities for kids to discuss what could you do in this situation like what what could Danny have done here?

So that's really great one.

And then even emotional regulation. So, when Sophie gets angry, really, really angry, kind of talks about that emotion, situations that might cause that emotion, and then that regulation piece after.

so just a few different books.

The library is great.

I find books just helpful if there's a difficult topic or you don't know how maybe to bring it up with kids, there's usually a book for it, and it also just helps kind of get that conversation going.

So you can talk about like how is that character feeling? How do you know they're feeling this way? Can you show me this particular face?

How did the character act when they said something?

What did the character do when he or she felt this way?

What could you do to help a friend in that same situation?

So it just opens up really wonderful like rich questions that you can engage in conversations that you know otherwise might not have had through the characters and books stories even even movies as well.

And that kind of brings me to my last slide. And I just wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that taking care of yourself as part of taking care of your child and responding and managing to children's emotions can be can be tiring. It can be difficult, but it can also be so rewarding when we get to watch them grow and develop and kind of have their own, you know, mix of strategies to regulate their emotions.

It's important that as you are your child's greatest role model that we take time to kind of self-regulate and create awareness around oursel around what our triggers are you know engaging in our own body scan identifying you know our own techniques that help us calm down in the moment. Is it a technique that we can use you know when our kids are around or you know emotions are elevated?

and also just having that self-compassion piece.

There's no right or wrong way to handle a situation. And, as kids are learning, so are we, and we're able to focus kind of on growth and repair and learning from kind of what's been going on.

And lastly, just finding time for that self-care piece.

A moment maybe listening to your favorite song, reading a book, taking a deep breath and taking those time to build those connections with our with our kids.

So that we're able to be there when they might need some help with co-regulation or you know they're experiencing those big emotions and sorry I went a little bit over but that was a lot of information probably but thank you for listening and if you have any questions I'd be happy to try to answer.