My child spoke to me last night that, “Mom! I know anyone can lose a game. Still why do I every time over react on losing the game?” I consider his understanding to be quite mature at the small age of five! Still I wanted him to learn to disentangle this negative feeling and emotions. How could I make this happen?
To help him learn dealing with his negative feelings and emotions, what one can do is whenever the negative emotions come up for may what be the person or circumstance, he must strive to set positive against the same from within.
To start with one come to the level as that of your child. Being a friend you can share in casually, “When I have positive emotions it feel happiness all around and within whilst having negative emotion I feel miserable. I do not like this feeling of being miserable. How can I stop feeling miserable?” Try that child gives out the solution and suggestion and listen them carefully.
Amidst the conversation, you can share with him the following steps, which shall prove to be helpful for dealing with negative emotion and also to overcome any mistake.
Following four steps shall prove useful to get rid of negative emotion with positive ones:
- Firmly decide within – Negative emotions are wrong.
The negative emotions are a weakness, being very often mistaken as a strength. Make sure that the child has not harboured and is growing up in this misbelief. Else he could become even more miserable. Bringing about change in this belief is very important. Usually actions are derived of the past opinions. When the opinion gets changed in favour of positive, his emotions too will start moving in that direction.
2. Analyze – Why maintain positive emotions and why neglect negative emotions.
This can be understood as, When the negative emotions arise inside us, we
- Waste a lot of time.
- Never feel peace of mind.
- Lose our happiness.
- Always remain angry and frustrated.
- Hurt people.
- Cause great damage to our relationships.
- Over time, become lonely.
One the other side of the coin cultivating Positivity, We
- Become confident person.
- Get well respected due to positivity.
- Feel peace within.
- Harmonise our relationships with others.
- Feel happy.
- Remain healthy, etc.
3. Repent and seek forgiveness for negative emotions.
Bring this as a part of Child’s daily routine to recall and repent for all negative emotions arose within him. And teach him to confess them before God by saying, “Oh God. This was my mistake. Please forgive me. And give me strength to not do this mistake again.”
4. Do NOT protect Mistakes
Getting defensive of one’s actions or negative emotions to people outside, even though knowing internally that the mistake is ours is normal human behaviour. Knowing it is my mistake and then on protection of this mistake will bring grave consequence of continuity in our repeating mistake again and again. Therefore, help your son maintain his virtue of realizing his mistake that ‘he reacts disproportionately’ and at the same time acknowledging it too, until he overcomes it.
These 4 steps are a proven practice to overcome any mistake. Thus, inspire and encourage your child to gradually follow these and the best way being, you start following the 4 steps yourself. Children learn by watching their parents. Since you say you too are having a similar problem, it will only help you! And it will let him see through his own eyes how reacting positively can change even bad things to good whereas by reacting negatively, we ruin our things, our relationships, our happiness and our peace of mind too.
We all have lot of inner strength. If we choose to react positively, it will happen in course of time. Until then, pray to God to give your child the correct understanding and steer him onto the right path. And you daily resolve, “May I never hurt anyone through my mind, body or speech.”
An effort in this direction will certainly help your child overcome all negativity. And it is best done at this age!