Part of growing up is learning how to navigate the world around us. Like anything that must be learned and developed, the environment and the way in which you learn that information is important and makes an impact. When it comes to developing emotional awareness and the ability to self-regulate, we want to ensure that the individual has the best chance of creating healthy and positive attachments to the learning.
Fostering an environment for emotional awareness is a great place to start! Expanding your own emotional vocabulary and making a point to use it around your children can help them have more options when it comes to identifying how they feel. Adding some books about emotions and posters or cards and games can give an additional boost to their emotional knowledge. Also reflecting on your home and dynamics, ensuring you have an environment that encourages communication and expression of emotions while also ensuring that you are doing your best to model the desired behaviors. Kids learn by doing and by play, so implementing that into the routine can make a huge difference.
With self-regulation, we want to make sure our children have a tool box of ideas, activities and choices to use. One common practice is to encourage the regular practice of breathing techniques such as box breathing to help re-center them and ground them with the present. Helping your child develop coping skills that are good fits for them and perhaps identifying a place to keep supplies for easy access. While also being open to helping develop consistent routine and practice and helping your child identify any possible triggers. Helping them know what bothers them and how it impacts them can give them the power of emotional awareness and feel more prepared to engage in those self regulating activities.