The key to figuring out and making sense of kids starts with understanding their feelings. This is rarely straightforward, especially when their feelings are complex and based on their own misperceptions of what’s going on around them.
Because kids often can’t tell us how they feel—either because they don’t know what they’re feeling or they’re developmentally unable to describe it with their words—they act out their big feelings with big (i.e., challenging) behaviors.
If we can 1) understand the feelings that are driving these behaviors, and 2) name those feelings for our kids, the challenging behaviors tend to disappear.
The key to all this (and the hard part) is deciphering what exactly our child is feeling.
This is what child therapists face every day, and we have techniques that help us figure out kids. Here’s a key technique that everyone can (and should!) use.
A key technique therapists use to decipher a child’s feelings
Kids deal with big emotions by trying to get rid of them. One of the most common ways they do this is by “giving” them to someone else. In therapy, we call it projection when someone “projects” their own feelings, behaviors, thoughts, or unwanted characteristics onto someone or something else.
Kids will project their feelings onto virtually anything, from their toys to the family pet. They’ll also project their feelings onto you by trying to get you to have the feelings they don’t want.
If they’re mad, they try to make you feel mad by throwing something. If they feel rejected because you took too long to tuck them in at night, they try to make you feel rejected by refusing a bedtime kiss.
By recognizing the feelings your child is provoking in you, you can decipher what your child is actually feeling.
The tricky part comes in not reacting to the feelings your kid is eliciting. Yes, they’re being a total brat, and you want to scream at them, but before you do so, consider how they might be wanting to provoke your anger so that you can better understand their anger. And perhaps they’re simply trying to get rid of their anger by giving it to you!
Recognizing this, you now have more options for responding. Yes, you can still scream at your kid. Or you could name their feelings so that they can start to work through them.
Taking it one step further
If the first step is to decipher your child’s feelings, the second step is to understand where those feelings are coming from. After all, if you’re going to name the feelings, it’s good to know why they’re having them!
For example, your child has a total meltdown when you insist they wear a hat and mittens to play in the snow. Later that evening, they won’t eat any dinner, demanding you make them a quesadilla, and you do so to avoid another meltdown. But then they refuse the quesadilla, and the meltdown follows anyway.
So, what’s going on?
Yes, your kid is probably feeling angry and helpless, maybe sad and frustrated, too. But where’s it all coming from? What’s behind these feelings?
In the end, a young child’s feelings stem from the core ways their mind perceives the world based on their developmental needs, which I break down in my post, “The 7 Key Ways a Child’s Mind Works.”
When we 1) understand these core needs and ways of seeing the world, and 2) watch for the nuances of their behaviors and the feelings our child elicits in us, then we can piece together why these feelings are happening now.
With this new, deeper understanding of our child and what they need, we gain fresh ways to help, nurture, and respond to them.
