by Carlene Wooddell

Created on: February 11, 2009

Helping our children cope with their feelings is not always an easy task, especially if they tend to hold everything in and are introverted or do not know how to express their feelings. The most important thing that parents or adults need to remember, is that everyone has very different coping skills, and therefore, teaching your child to cope with their feelings, will depend a lot on how you cope with yours.

I think the best thing to tell a child is that everyone has feelings and emotions sometimes that can seem overwhelming and that even the most mature person to them, may not have all the answers for coping with what they are going through. However, I think it is most important that children be allowed to express themselves in a manner that is not destructive, but constructive. Learning how to cope with feelings and emotions, is huge and must be started when they are young and do not wait until they have become teenagers or young adults, because then their coping skills will need much more help.

In my experience, I always allow my children to tell me how they are feeling, what has upset them? why do they feel let down? and I do my best to explain to them there are times in our lives, when everyone feels life is not fair, or have the why me syndrome and that everything in our lives happen for a reason, and sometimes it is so we can learn lessons that will carry us through in life. With my son, he will talk to me, although the exact reason he is having hard time, may be of something that happened hours or even days earlier, and I need to ask inquistive questions, to get to the heart of the matter. Whereas, my teenage daughter is all the more willing to cope with her feelings in the way of blaming others, because that is much easier than dealing with your own feelings.

It is my belief, that children will learn to cope with their feelings and events that cause these feelings by the role models in their lives. If they have someone in their lives that they look up to and see that person handle crisis, problems, etc. with calm assurance, by listening to what each other is saying and being there for each other, they will learn to cope. If, however, they have a role model, that screams when things go wrong, or says things like 'I don't want to talk about it' or 'it's okay, no big deal'..well, then that is where they may have problems. Part of coping with feelings is experiencing different things around us and adjusting to change. Change may not always seem good, but

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