Loading
Girafe Coaching
  • HOME
  • ABOUT ME
  • WORK WITH ME
  • EVENTS
  • BLOG
  • PODCAST
  • Menu Menu

Change your expat life

Six Steps to Help TCKs Process Their Emotions

If you parent and are going through a transition, you might be wondering how best to help your children. As parents, we do not like to see our kids hurt and sad. It’s not a pleasant feeling, and when it happens, we naturally want to reassure them that all will be fine.

However, not every child will open up and tell you what is happening for them. I know this because it’s the case for one of my boys. He goes through his day seemingly fine, but the anxiety of our upcoming move creeps in in different ways despite the fact that he doesn’t really talk about it.

Here are 6 steps you can take to help your TCK make sense of what is happening for her or him during a time of transition.

1- Identify the thought and feeling

The first step is to help your TCK name their feeling. What most children learn at school is happy face, sad face, and angry face. But you can help them embrace their full humanness by adding nuance to what they feel and naming the emotion they experience. There is list of emotions you can download when you sign up for the newsletter.

2 – Acknowledge what your TCK is thinking and feeling

This step means acknowledging what your TCK is thinking and feeling without comparing it to your experience, what you’ve gone through, what happened during the last transition, what their big sister or brother is thinking or feeling, or all the great new adventures and friends they will meet in a few months. These are natural inclinations, but they are not helpful.

Just stay with your child in their story. It’s going to feel uncomfortable, and you will want to reassure the child and minimize the pain, but go where they are and stay there.

3 – Ask your TCK powerful questions and give them time to answer

Silence is gold. Asking powerful questions and then staying quiet will help your child become aware of what he or she is thinking and feeling.

You don’t have to make it better. You can acknowledge and simply help your child make sense of what he or she is thinking and feeling. Powerful questions might include something like, “When you think that you will never see your friends again, how do you feel?”

Be curious, and ask your child why they are thinking what they are thinking. Why are they feeling the way they do? You can continue to ask the same question until your child wants to stop.

4 – Use empathy, not sympathy

Saying “I’m sorry” is not creating connection, it is simply expressing sympathy. Try, instead: “I hear what you are saying, and saying goodbye to your friends really sucks.” This is empathy.

You are not outside when you come from a place of empathy. You are with your child. You are not trying to fix, diminish, or look at the bright side. You are just there with your child in that moment. This is what creates connection.

5 – Help your child allow and process their feeling

In order to help your child allow their emotion, you can ask them to describe the sensation in their body as if he or she were talking to a robot who has never ever felt an emotion. Ask your child:
Where is the emotion in your body?

  • Is it hot or cold?
  • Is it moving or standing still?
  • Is it hollow or full?
  • Is it bright or dull?
  • Is it pulsating or radiating?

Teaching your child how to connect with their emotions and express how these emotions feel in their body is a magic wand you give them for life. It takes practice. To help, you might share with your child how sadness feels for you—just as if you were describing it to a robot: “For me, sadness feels like a mass in my throat that opens and closes like a frog throat. It moves slowly; it’s warm.”

You’ll see that when your child is able to describe the vibration and the emotion in their body, its intensity will diminish. When it comes back, you can help your child do the robot experiment again and once again describe what the emotions feel like in the body.

6 – Share that it’s not a problem to solve, it’s an emotion to allow.

Finally, help your child understand that when he or she thinks a certain way, it is normal to feel a certain way. Our thoughts are literally causing our feelings, which means that you can explain that sometimes we choose to think sad, anxious, or angry thoughts on purpose. This is part of the human experience. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s part of being human. You can explain to your child that when they feel sadness, for instance, it’s not a problem to solve but an emotion to allow.

When your TCK is in the midst of transition, they may choose to share their emotions or they might bottle them up. If you, too, have a child who struggles to express the feelings that come up for them around change, I hope these 6 steps help ease their process around sharing uncomfortable thoughts and feelings.

If you like this post, share it with your friends or on social media with Instagram or Facebook! Girafe Coaching is all about helping people like you love their expat life.

SEE MORE

The Journey to Change

January 4, 2022/by Caroline Giffon

Boundaries, Boundaries, Boundaries …

December 14, 2021/by Caroline Giffon

Do You Know What’s in Your Relationship Manual?

December 7, 2021/by Caroline Giffon

Why Success Doesn’t Always Make Us Happy

November 30, 2021/by Caroline Giffon

How to Keep a Journal

November 23, 2021/by Caroline Giffon

The Four Types of Procrastination

November 16, 2021/by Caroline Giffon
Load more

 

HOME I PRIVACY POLICY I TERMS OF USE I BLOG I CONTACT ME

 

Copyright 2022 Girafe Coaching LLC

Balancing Stones Podcast Balancing Stones the carousel The Carousel
Scroll to top

We use cookies on this site to gather data and improve your experience. For more information see our privacy policy.

Accept Cookies

Cookie and Privacy Settings



How we use cookies

We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.

Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.

Essential Website Cookies

These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.

Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.

We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.

We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.

Other external services

We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.

Google Webfont Settings:

Google Map Settings:

Google reCaptcha Settings:

Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:

Privacy Policy

You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.

Privacy Policy
Accept settingsHide notification only

Join the Girafe Coaching Community!

Be the first to receive the Girafe Coaching Newsletter with monthly tips, strategies and updates.