Helping Children Understand How They Feel

If you've spent some time with a baby, you know how quickly they can go from one very happy emotion to something completely different. This is Focus on the Family, and today we'll explore how your feelings can have a profound impact on you, no matter how old or young you might be.

Your host is Focus President and author Jim Daly, and I'm John Fuller. John, I think every parent can feel that. It just grabs your heart to hear that young child, and you want to say, what can I do?

What do I need to do for you? And that's what this program is all about today, helping parents and children learn how to moderate their emotions better and in healthy ways. And when we aired this program earlier this year, you, our listeners, we really connected with it, and this was one of our most popular broadcasts of the year. In fact, Jim, we had one comment from a listener who said, can you write a book helping adults identify their emotions? That really would help us out as well.

Sounds like a good idea, John. There's a lot we don't understand about our emotions. There's some things we do know, but frankly, we've got to dig into that whole area of brain science and how our feelings impact us. I would add pray, too, and ask God to reveal those things to us. Sometimes emotions surprise us, like when something triggers our anger, for example.

Think of that. When we get triggered by anger as adults, we can kind of follow that thread to figure out what's going on and where did that start? But children don't understand those triggers. They don't know why they're angry or feeling lonely right now. Yeah, and we know that God designed us to have emotions. There's a whole range of feelings that we have, and I'm thinking of, you know, that whole fight-or-flight thing.

That's a God-given reaction for us when there's a potentially dangerous situation. No, that's right, and the Bible is filled with verses about emotion, like Proverbs 15-18, which says, a hot-tempered man stirs up strife. I remember reading this to my boys often, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention. That's one of my favorite Proverbs. It's a good one.

Or Philippians 4-6, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. So if you missed this program the first time around, we have a great conversation for you today that we recorded with Dr. Josh and Kristi Straub. That's based on a children's book they wrote called, What Am I Feeling?

And you can learn more about that book and the Straubs at our website, or look for the link in the episode notes. And Jim, here's how you began this best of 2020 conversation with Josh and Kristi Straub of Focus on the Family. Hey guys, welcome back to Focus. Thanks for having us.

I always have to start with this, because Kristi, you were once an Institute, Focus Institute. You remember? Yeah, I remember that. Yes, I was. So you came for a semester. Yeah. No, but like it really was. We were driving in today, and I realized, you know, our kids are with us for the first time.

They haven't been to visit, and they get to be a part of this. I'm like, this is where, you know, some of our like best friendships really truly started. And what's really crazy is we're here, and we're staying here in Colorado with one of Kristi's best friends that she met here at the Institute. Well, I was kidding, but I mean, it was such a good program. We had to end that a while back, but so many, I think 5,000 students went through that program.

Oh, really? Yeah, so it was a big alumni group. I said to Josh this morning as we drove in, I was like, I don't know if I would have met him had I not come here. Wow. It was that pivotal in my life. Like, just, you know, when you hit that intersection in life, and it was big decision makers.

I don't think we would be here. Well, that's a good testimony. Pretty cool.

Good story. Yeah. We need to start with some of the terminology that you use generally, like emotional safety, emotional intelligence. I got to confess, sometimes I'm, you know, the jazz hand thing is driving me crazy a little bit with the political correctness, I guess. But I do want to know what you mean about this and how important it is to know more about emotional safety and emotional intelligence.

Yeah. And the political correctness thing, when we truly look at what emotional safety is all about, you know, when you feel safe in a relationship, or when you feel threatened in a relationship and what that feels like. And it really started with us because when we were first parents, we were overwhelmed by all of the parenting, like, experts and the strategies. And, you know, you can't even leave the hospital before you have to make a decision about immunizing your children. And then, you know, there's the debate about spanking and not spanking. And should we have our kids sleep with us or not, you know, BPA free products, gluten free diet, and you're just so overwhelmed. You got to have a PhD in parenting. Yeah.

It's like, what the world. And so you increase your anxiety as a parent. And so I went back and I looked at all the research on parenting and what truly matters when, at the end of the day, when our children like your 17 night take at the end of the day, they start to launch, what would have really mattered.

And over and over and over again in the research, it always came back to this idea that there was a secure attachment with the parent that there was an emotionally safe relationship with the parent. Now, I want to clarify too, because that doesn't necessarily mean we don't discipline our children. That doesn't mean that they're not getting consequences for their behaviors and that we're not pushing them to challenge them. In fact, if we're not pushing and challenging who they are, that can be termed as unsafe. So, so we want to, it's this balance of support and challenge along the journey. And so I think it's important that we do define emotional safety in a healthy way.

Yeah, no, that's really good. In one sense, this topic seems pretty simple, straightforward. We all have emotions and we usually were able to keep those in check. So the question I think is, why is this topic important? Why should we be adding one more thing, the kind of your children's emotional stability to the list? It sounds important to me.

So why would we do that? Well, let me do this first of all, because I think this really is a research study that sets the tone for this. Google a couple of years ago did this study, they wanted to test their hiring process to see if it was working. And what they were hiring for were STEM skills, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, which is what we train our kids for it's what they go to school for is to get these hard skills. And so they tested their most productive teams within Google. And what they found at the end of the study was that STEM skills came in dead last of their most productive teams within Google. And the top three skills were emotional safety number one, empathy number two, and emotional intelligence number three.

They found that it was the soft skills that were the most important as it related to outcomes. And so it was this idea that when we're working on a team, there's a sense of camaraderie, I'm not going to bully you, I'm not going to make fun of you, if you have an idea that doesn't seem to make sense, we're going to put that idea on the table, I'm going to feel valued, we might not go with that idea. But at least we're working as a team. And there's a sense of, we're in this together type of mentality. I like that, you know, one thing I've said here at focus, you know, higher character, train competence.

And I think character that those are all things that are wrapped up in character. But companies do themselves and organizations do themselves a good deed when they hire people that have character. And you can train the competence that they need.

Yeah. And when you're a safe person, when you're carrying that safety with you, and people feel like they feel like they're part of your team, you can motivate them to do anything. motivation comes out of feeling like I'm an important part of this team and important. And those are the skills that our kids get early on, that it's not just in their career, it's in their closest relationships, when they go to get married, when they go to have children, when they go, it spans all across their relationships. Well, the emotional side, let's look at that. What are some consequences when we or our children, which is the topic of our program, have unresolved emotions?

What typically happens? Well, and it's funny, because we're talking about kids, right? We wrote this as a kid's book, and we did it intentionally, because we wanted it to get into the hands of more adults. So they can really this is for us, because so many of us grew up in a home where emotion wasn't talked about. And a lot of us grew up in homes where certain emotions were maybe punished, or dismissed, or minimized. And, you know, for everyone who's listening, I think just to take that pause that step back to see, like, really, where do I come in on this spectrum, because we all come in carrying emotion. But if you ask most people today, like, how are you feeling? Or, you know, how you doing? You know, we just saw you guys, how you doing?

Busy, good. None of these are feelings, right? We're just busy.

Honestly, we're overwhelmed. We don't really know what we're feeling. But they're all there under the surface. And so if we can teach adults to then teach kids, just dig in there, that emotion is valuable. Because what we find is, you know, especially in Christian culture, I think we can look at emotion, like it's a hindrance to our, you know, sanctification, and you know, that we want to just keep it in check. But what we actually find is the emotions that we leave out of check, that we maybe punish, dismiss, minimize, we like, don't allow in our homes, or even maybe in our relationships, like take advantage.

Those are the ones that have the most control over our lives, they will come out somehow, and typically sideways. And this is when they come out and misbehavior in kids, they come out in tantrums, they come out in maybe depression, addictive behaviors, if you're scrolling Instagram, if you're a workaholic, if you're turning to alcohol or drugs, there could be a reason that we go to these, what we call numbing behaviors, we're just trying to numb something that we can't name, we don't know what it is, we just, we feel awful, we don't feel good. And we want it to stop. And so that's why emotion matters so much. If we're not in tune with the fact that I'm, I'm anxious, I'm sad, or I'm still grieving the loss of XYZ. And it might have been years ago, and we might have thought that, you know, the world would tell us to get over it, you should be past this. But we're not right, it's not that easy.

Or you can hear that, but you can't make it happen. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's why counselors are in business, right? Because they're trying to help people cope with those wounds. And one of the other factors with that, too, is a number of years ago, I was counseling juvenile delinquents, and I was gonna ask you about that. Yeah, my job was to help them have remorse on their victims. But the reality was, they didn't even know what they were feeling, let alone to be able to help them step into the shoes of the person that they victimized and understand what they're feeling. It had to start. So the very first thing that I would do is I would give them a feelings chart with these faces on it, so that they could begin to identify, because in most cases, any juvenile delinquent that I sat with, they either didn't know who their father was, or they had a very, very strained relationship with their dad.

And so they didn't have a male figure to help them kind of navigate what emotions were like in their life. You're listening to one of our best of Focus on the Family broadcasts with Jim Daly, and our guests are Dr. Josh and Christy Straub, who've written a really wonderful children's book. It's called What Am I Feeling? And I'll urge you to check out the Straub's book and our entire collection of best of 2020 broadcasts.

The links are in the episode notes. Let's go ahead and continue listening now to more from Dr. Josh and Christy Straub. Christy, you designed this book to help young children identify their emotional responses. And this came from, I think, a real life situation that you had with your son, Landon. And it's a cute story.

What happened? Yeah. I mean, we're just average parents.

And I mean that in every sense. We were sending our son, he was going to a new school at the time, and he was just experiencing a ton of weird emotional reaction, like that we really couldn't pin down. He was crying in the mornings. He was begging us not to go. He was having weird, even just like physical reactions in his body. And finally one day, you know, and we're trying to be the courageous parents that are like, we can do hard things.

You know, we would never send you to a school that we didn't believe in and where you weren't safe. And nothing was helping. Honestly, it was getting worse. And so one morning I said, like Landon, what does it feel like? And he looked at me and he said, mom, I feel flippy in my tummy.

And I was flippy in your tummy. And I thought that's fear. It's just straight out fear. It's that butterflies in the stomach.

How would we describe it? But this is coming from a kid's description of what an emotion feels like in your body, right? Because emotions, I mean, they feel big to us.

They can literally overwhelm our lives as adults. As kids, I mean, they're experiencing really big feelings inside little bodies. And until we give them language that helps them put it in a box really, which is what that emotions chart does, it gives them another face to look at to say, yes, that right there, you know, when your cheeks get hot, you feel flippy in your tummy.

It's fear. OK, so it's like teaching your kid what blue is. We just have to teach them what the color blue is and have a box for that. And that's the same for emotion. And it helps them organize what feels chaotic and probably really scary.

Well, organize and manage, which is the key, in my opinion, and help them understand what they're feeling and how to cope with it. Right, exactly. Because this is where I think we can like we get the spectrum right of parenting, where then it becomes this permissive like whatever you're feeling is OK. And we'll just let you throw a temper tantrum on the floor of the grocery store because you just need to emote. That is not what we're saying. And one of my favorite lines in the book is a feeling is just a feeling. It's not in charge of you.

And this is where we get to take. I know it again for all of us, right? Like how many times a day do I need to hear that? A feeling is just a feeling. It's not in charge of you. Because when we give feelings a name, when we organize and can understand in our little brains or our bigger kid brains, what what we're feeling, if it's depression, if it's anxiety, if it's fear, if it's sadness, we at least can start to organize. And then we can say this feeling doesn't get to it doesn't get to be in control. And it doesn't get to be in control of our kids either.

And that's our part as parents where we get to come in then and start coaching them on how we handle and manage emotion in a healthy way. We don't just shove it out and dismiss it and not allow it. We do. But we have to look at it first. Because if we don't, that's where it's going to come out.

No, that's good. Let me ask you this, too. You know, these barriers to emotional health. Let's cover a couple of more.

You touched on them a little bit, but I really want to give the listener that perspective. You point to the frantic pace of families today. Let's start there.

How is that contributing to the problem of emotional insecurity? Well, I think even for that, how often are we in such a rush as moms and dads? Like we're just trying to get the kids to the thing right to the thing that we think is going to help them I don't know, become president. And you know, let's talk about church on Sunday morning. Get ready for church. Let's go right to the soft spot.

Who has not failed at that point? Exactly. Kids get ready for church. We're going to be spiritual. What's really, what's really, what's really powerful about this is when your own children say, Mom, Dad, a feeling is just a feeling that's not in charge of you. Yeah. Be careful. Because you're driving down the road. It becomes a real teachable moment for us.

But real recently, like this is a real story. Our son Landon going to school again, I was trying to get him to put on the sweatshirt. I was like, it's cold, wear the sweatshirt and then the coat. And he was like, no, Mom, I don't want to, I don't want to.

But then it like kept escalating and escalating to the point where he was like, crying, throwing a fit about wearing a sweatshirt to school. And I was like, dude, like I, I can't, I can't, we're just need to get out the house. And I'm like taking a deep breath. And I don't know where I found it in me. But somewhere I found it in me to pause and step back. Like buddy, what is really going on?

Yeah. Why don't you want to wear this sweatshirt? Tears start coming down. And he tells me that the week before he'd worn a sweatshirt to school, he tried to take it off. And you know how often you take off your sweatshirt and the shirt comes off with it underneath, you see your belly, and a little girl in his class made fun of him.

That has he had his bare stomach in class. He was like, you know, pointed out Landon Hall. And he was so embarrassed. He's like, Mom, I can't, I can't. I was like, doesn't that change everything? Like, oh, that makes so much sense, buddy.

Like that's, he was so embarrassed to go back to school and have to wear a sweatshirt and have to, you know, maybe expose his bare tummy again. And those are the things when we're so frantic, we don't take the time to go underneath. Like what is really going on? Because often there's times where, yeah, they're tired. Yeah, they just need food.

I need food. You know, there are times when it's just discipline, just poor behavior. But there are times when there is something really going on that in his world, I mean, that'd be akin to like, you know, one of us showing up here with our fly down, you know, doing this whole broadcast. Well, I'm thinking maybe we should paint a clown face on Landon's tummy. See, that's the bad parenting. Let's have some fun.

Let's paint that twain face and then aim for her. And when he's a teenager, he'll probably have the emotional capacity to realize like that could be funny and you can turn it around, especially when he's a teenager and he's got a six pack and he's excited to Yeah, that's a sports dad. But you know, the thing I want to make sure listeners know that we are serious about this because those are where the emotional triggers began for adulthood. You know, there's going to be something down the line potentially if Landon doesn't cope with that, where he's very self aware of his body, his tummy, and he's not going to want to go swimming. Yeah, with other people. I was like that I had freckles all on the back of my legs and PE class, I dreaded swim day, you know, where everybody went to the pool. And it was co ed. And people would make fun of my freckles.

It was every time. And so I just, you know, that's when I started when I'm not feeling too well. I don't want to go swimming. I'll go shoot baskets in the in the gym. But that's where those things happen, you know, and Landon has to figure out, okay, it's okay to see a bear tummy. It's not gonna bother me.

Why does it bother you? Right. And his parents like we're not in like, just like you're saying, we don't need to fix it for him. But we do need to just be there. And I think that's the I hope that's the guilt free drop for all of us. We don't need to know counseling techniques.

We don't need to know how to make this better. We can just sit with them and hear what's going on. And that right there, going back to the very beginning, that's emotional safety. Christy, in fact, you had an interesting experience, I think with your daughter Kennedy, who went through a phase of crying all the time, crying can really be one of the most trigger evoking moments. And I as adults, we just don't manage crying of children very well.

I see it on airplanes all the time. You know, you get this little mom traveling by herself with maybe a little baby and she's pregnant. I mean, your heart should go out for her.

You should help her put her stuff up and all that I try to do that. In fact, not long ago, I was walking down the gangplank at Denver Airport and this poor woman was struggling, this young woman. And I said, Can I just hold your baby while you get everything organized?

She's at the end right before she gets in the door of the plane. And I'm holding this little chubby baby. It was so cute. And I'm going to talk to her. And she looks at me, she goes, Are you Jim Daly from Focus on the Family? And I was like, Oh, she goes, I've got to take a picture of you holding my child.

But that's the attitude to have. Let's help these, but especially these crotches the old guys that are on the plane. They're looking around like, Can anybody shut this kid up? And you feel like going over and saying, Hey, buddy, I know, right? Don't you remember? Did you never have children?

Because you couldn't find a wife. But I mean, react to that to how crying evokes in us adults. Such a response. Oh, I mean, talk about fight, fight or freeze.

I mean, literally, that's like for us in our home. That was almost a traumatic response just because of our kids was traumatic. But, you know, I remember with Kennedy, like she just went through this, it was everything came out in tears. And it's tears are actually really confusing, because they can communicate so many things and nothing at the same time. And you have no idea what it means.

And for her, we had to start digging. Why? Like, what is it, sweetie? Like, what is it? What are you crying about? And it just tears and tears. What we came to find out it was anger.

She was angry. And this was something actually it was super personal to me and my story. And I had gone through some counseling. And I remember it was just, I literally sat in the room and I just cried and cried. And this sweet counselor, she just kept she said, What's behind it, Christy?

What is with all the tears? And I kept I was like, sadness. She was like, behind that. I was like, I don't know.

Is there a depression? And she's like, Nope, behind that. Anger.

She's like, that's it. And so often, especially for little girls, we're taught that anger is not okay. For boys, that's a more culturally appropriate emotion.

But for girls were to be soft and sensitive and sweet and kind, and be controlled, right, emotionally controlled in that way. But tears are okay. And so we realized for Kennedy and for her mom, tears would exhibit anger in a way that wasn't really helpful, because we weren't getting her anger out. We're just crying.

And so with Kennedy, we got her a punching bag. And we taught her like, sweet, it's totally fine. You can be so mad at your brother. You can be you can be mad at mom and dad that it's okay to be angry, angry is okay. But there's certain ways that are okay to exhibit anger. We don't hit people, we don't yell at them. We don't, you know, we don't use our words to, but we can punch this punching bag, we can, mommy can go to the gym or go for a run or, you know, there's healthy ways to get the emotion out. And it really is an energy release that actually has to happen from the body.

Otherwise, it just keeps sending us on this treadmill, this circle, right? Josh, you had a really insightful story. And we're right at the end here. But you had this great story about I think, a special ops commander who was trying to help his son accomplish something important on the playground.

What happened? Because I think it's instructive for us dads like, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that story. So I remember they had the What Am I Feeling book, and his dad was helping him to go across these rings, like the monkey bar rings.

And they sent me this little video on my phone, which was really, really cool. Because the little boy said it was that I can't. And his dad said, Well, and we talked about Sam in the book and what was on the other side of fear. And so his dad helped him across those monkey bars. And the little boy says, you know, he says, What are you feeling? And he says, I feel brave, Dad. And just the idea that, you know, when we step into that fear, and we label it on the other side of that is that sense of courage and bravery and thinking straight. And that's where Paul got it right in Philippians four, he gives us the framework, go to the Lord in prayer, make your request, label your emotion.

And then after that, the peace will calm your brain, and you can think straight. And it's incredible. You're touching all the soft spots in my life, my freckles.

And in the second I fell off the monkey bars and got a black eye. Is this an intervention? Well, that's exactly what we came here today for. How are you feeling right now?

Let's continue this discussion offline. But this has been great to have you and it's such an important thing for parents to be aware of their children's emotions and vicariously than being aware of their own right. And you've stressed that really well, Christy throughout the program this time. And so this book, What am I feeling is really a children's book.

But guess what? It's for you, mom and dad, too. And it will help your children be more stable emotionally. And I'm telling you, with our kids right at that launching point, Trent 19 and Troy 17, this is where all of that work over the years counts. What you're doing with your young kids now is really, you know, paying off when you see them launch into the adult world.

And they are stable and they're healthy and they're having fun and they can balance things. So this is great. And that's how we concluded our best of 2020 episode with Dr. Josh and Christy Straub talking about their children's book, What am I feeling? And John, let me recommend everyone that needs this book, get a copy. It's a great tool for young children and a good basis for conversations in your family about emotions and how to deal with them.

Perhaps, you know, a young family who would benefit from the Straub's book or maybe you have grandchildren who would love a copy. We can send it to you when you send a gift of any amount to focus on the family today. And that's our way of saying thank you for helping us equip parents and partnering with us to build stronger families. You know, when we work together, we can give families hope for a brighter future. So please give generously to focus on the family, especially now when we have a matching gift opportunity. Any gift you send will be doubled thanks to some generous friends. And that's why we need to hear from you today. Donate and request your copy of What am I feeling, that book by our guests, when you call 800, the letter A and the word family or online. And we'll have the link in the episode notes. And then earlier in this broadcast, we mentioned the parenting assessment that we have.

It's a free tool at our website. You can get a good overview of what's working well in your family and maybe some tips on where you can grow a little bit as a mom or a dad. And John, let me remind everyone that Focus on the Family can help you if you're struggling with an emotional issue.

Maybe it's depression or an anger problem. Whatever you're facing, we're here for you. And we have our team of Christian counselors, and they are able to speak with you and give you godly counsel.

So don't delay. Contact us today. And again, that number 800-232-6459 or check the episode notes for more. And coming up next time, it'll be a heartwarming conversation about heaven with our guest, John Burke. Through the eyes of these people, God's given us the gift of truly being able to imagine what the Bible's told us all along. On behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family. I'm John Fuller inviting you back next time as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ.