CC76 - Strengthening Emotional Wellbeing with Julia Pappas

Chatabout Children Podcast with Sonia Bestulic

In our previous chat with Julia Pappas, we talked about what emotions are, what emotional development is, and how we regulate emotions. We’ve learned that our ability to acknowledge, express, and regulate emotion is a very crucial life skill and fortunately, as parents, we can teach this skill to our children.

In this episode, we’re diving a bit deeper and discussing how to strengthen emotional wellbeing. We tackle specific strategies and tools that we can use to nurture that strength in our children, such as building emotional vocabulary, storytelling, simple observation, and so much more.

Julia shares some common issues parents have when dealing with their child’s emotional wellbeing and how their emotions might translate into behaviours when the child’s needs are not met.

No child comes with a parenting manual. Julia re-assures all parents that there is support. She shares the skills which are needed to strengthen our child’s emotional wellbeing and the difference between teaching the recognition of emotions and teaching emotional regulation. Julia gives us some real-life examples of situations wherein a child may still not have developed the skills needed for emotional wellbeing and how we can best respond to them.

The first step is to be observant. Whenever you are noticing a negative behaviour or the way a specific emotion is expressed, ride that out. This is what I see; this is a challenge. Then flip it into, this is what I would like to see instead. Be specific about the skills you want your child to learn. Ask yourself, What would I like my child to be able to do, to express, to show? And how can I teach that?

It is important to remember, even in the midst of a meltdown, that your child is trying to communicate. Remember that emotions and behaviour are devices to communicate a need.
Knowing ourselves as parents, how we process emotions, and how we support our own emotional wellbeing will help us in guiding that process in teaching and modelling to the child.

So, sit back and enjoy this episode of the Chatabout Children Podcast with Sonia Bestulic as she interviews Julia Pappas.

Links
Chatabout Children

Julia’s website

The Parenting Presence Podcast

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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1. Episoide 75 (00:00:00)

2. Marker 05 (00:10:15)