Emotional Mastery

for children
Teaching children to acknowledge, accept and soothe

~Training Notes~

mums Unstuck Parenting Membership with

U m m K h a d e e j a
 Emotional Mastery
for children
Teaching children to acknowledge, accept and soothe

~Training Notes~

No part of this publication may be copied or distributed whether in digital or

printed form or other.
It is for personal use only and may not be sold or shared.

A reminder of the terms of use agreed to when you joined Mums Untuck

1- You will not share your product or service access with others.
2- You will not resell any product or service
3- You will not replicate the products, tools or strategies in your purchase,
for your own business or non-profit.

I trust that you will fear Allah to uphold this agreement and honor the
rights of your Muslim sister.

Copyright © Mums Unstuck 2022

info@mumsunstuck.com

mums Unstuck Parenting Membership with

U m m K h a d e e j a
 Children don't need to have their
feelings agreed with; they need to
have them acknowledged. The
more you try to push a child's
unhappy feelings away, the more
he becomes stuck in them. The
more comfortable you can accept
the bad feelings, the easier it is
for kids to let go of them
~Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish~
 Things to consider
Useful Ideas
Useful Ideas Questions / Challenges

Further Research Action Points

1
 My Personal Notes
Key notes and personal reflections during workshop

2
 Introduction
Look around and you’ll see the rising rates of depression and other mental
health disorders, including among children and teenagers. Self-esteem and
confidence are at an all-time low, and it doesn’t look to be getting better
anytime soon.

We see rising marital breakdowns and communication difficulties in

everyday relationships between family members.
People of all ages are struggling every single day. If adults are not equipped
with effective coping strategies, is it any wonder that so many parents
struggle to handle their children’s emotions when they are unable manage
their own?

Adults suffer, often because they were not taught how to handle their
emotions as a child. They were not given the compassionate ear of a caring
adult who sought to teach and provide understanding to the everyday
feelings and reactions they experienced….usually because they too were not
taught how either. How can you teach something that you don’t know
yourself?

When children show up with emotional outbursts, parents become triggered

with their own sense of frustration and rage. They don’t know how to settle
their child because they were not shown how to when they were a child.
They end up trying to enforce the suppression of feelings upon their child by
dismissing them, or, punishing their child for having them. And so this cycle
of emotional suppression and dismissal continues from generation to
generation because no one knows what to do with them.

3
You’re here because you want to change that script.

You’re here because you know that isn’t what you want for your children.

You’re here because you want your children to grow into healthy, well-
balanced adults who are mentally stable and equipped to handle life's
challenges.

You’re here because you want your children to be resilient, and in order to
have emotional resiliency, they first need to take hold on how they handle
their feelings. They need to know how they can manage and soothe their
own emotions in ways that are appropriate and in ways that will allow them
to accept themselves, understand themselves, and move on with normal life
without being held back by feelings that disempower and control them.

By the end of this training you will, insha’Allah:

Get clarity on what makes emotional mastery for children important

Recognise how you are managing your own emotions
Understand how your child is currently dealing with their emotions
Be able to teach your child emotional mastery
Be able to teach your child to self soothe
Be ready to handle misbehaviour and consequences with emotional
mastery

4
What is Emotional Mastery? Emotional mastery truly is a life skill very few people seem to
learn. Being able to gift your child the ability to handle their
emotions is a beautiful thing because it will equip them to deal
with difficult situations that many others fall down upon when
faced. It is a skill that allows your children to build an incredible
growth mindset and not let the trials of life get them down,
allowing them to thrive, insha’Allah.

When we are talking about emotional mastery and what that

means, the simplest way to describe it is to be able to accept
emotions and understand why they are present so that you can
soothe and manage them, allowing you to get on and move
forward with normal life.

One thing parents often talk about wanting for their children is to
build resiliency. The part they miss is that to build resiliency, you
have to teach awareness and management of difficult emotions
first.

We tend to have an attitude that makes us think that when

children are exposed to difficult circumstances and we leave them
to figure it out themselves, they will develop that strength of
resiliency.

What we overlook however, is just how

we were taught to suppress our
emotions as children so we could get
on with it, so do our children. That isn’t
healthy. That isn’t emotional resiliency.
That is emotional suppression. And
that does not teach children how to
understand and handle difficult feelings.

Emotions are such an integral part of being

human, yet we don’t teach our children
what they are. We teach them Maths, English
and Science. We teach them Arabic
and Islamic Studies. But we don’t
5
often think about teaching them how to understand themselves and how
they feel. We expect them to just know how to behave appropriately in
response to their feelings, and we are often quick to reprimand them when
they don’t. But, we don’t often teach them. It’s kind of odd, don’t you think?

We certainly wouldn’t expect children to learn maths alone. We wouldn’t

hand a 4-year-old a textbook and say “hey kid, figure out the maths”. We
know we have to teach them, show them, explain to them, and practice
with them.

If they don’t know what emotions are and why they experience them, how
can they develop resiliency to those dark and difficult feelings? The reality
is, when we begin teaching children how to understand and manage
their emotions as a life skill, emotional resiliency is an automatic default.
Resiliency is the end product of emotional mastery. Resiliency cannot
happen without mastery.

Why is emotional mastery important?

Let me first ask you that question. Why do you think emotional mastery is
important?
What would you say the value of having this skill is?
What is the impact of having this ability on your children?
What would it allow them to do?

When I consider this, I see many benefits:

It creates a much calmer home
It enhances the ability to communicate effectively
It helps to develop positive relationships
It allows children to understand themselves
It enables children to have greater compassion for both themselves,
and others
It enables children to trust themselves
It enables children to regulate their emotions
It enables children to control their behaviours
It enables them to be content with what is decreed for them
6
I might put it this way, when children are taught the skill of emotional
mastery, it allows them to notice what is going on inside, so that they
understand themselves. When they understand themselves and have the
vocabulary to be able to articulate how they are feeling, they can
effectively communicate that to others in a way that helps to build
relationships instead of weakening them. When they are aware of how
they feel, why they feel it, and what they can do about it, they can
regulate and soothe themselves so that they can approach challenging
situations in a way that empowers them, instead of being thrown off
course.

When a child can recognise their feelings...

Then they can understand why they have that feeling...

Which allows them to know what to do with the feeling...

So they can regulate and take control of their feeling...

Which empowers them to handle difficult situations

Why do we have emotions?

We have already addressed this in both the Controlling The Trigger and
Emotional Mastery workshops, so we will offer just a brief summary here....

Emotions are a physical reaction to our brain’s response to rewards and

threats. To move away from pain and that which will cause us harm, or to
move towards that which would benefit us.

7
When the brain recognises a threat, it sends out a chemical message into
the body to trigger a feeling. These feelings are there to act as a
messenger. To tell you to take notice of something that may bring you
either harm or benefit.

The difficulty comes when we don’t actually know how to interpret,

understand and manage those feelings, especially when they are difficult.
As a parent, when you are able to help your children to understand that
they have this messenger system that is there to help them navigate
towards safety, they can use it to help them figure out what they need and
what will help. That’s incredibly empowering.

It doesn’t happen overnight. It requires patience and time, especially if you

are learning to manage your emotions alongside your child.

Self Audit
Before you can begin to help your child learn to understand and process
their feelings, you must have a hold on your own.
You can’t expect your child to stay cool, calm and in control if you can’t.
Children do not do what you say, rather they become who you are.
You are your child’s mentor. The path you lay forward with your example is
often the road they, too, will take. Where you go, they will follow.

The patterns that you have around particular emotions are likely to be
passed onto your children also. So it is essential to take a long hard look
at the feelings you experience and the associations you have with them,
so you can start to consciously unlearn any negative connotations or
reactions you might have towards them.

8
What I want to invite you to do at this point, is complete a self-audit to
further your understanding of yourself.

This self-audit is about you, not your children. It is a look at how you feel
towards emotions because often how you manage yours is how your
children will manage theirs.

Download the Self-Audit worksheet to complete this task.

Child Audit
Next, what you’ll do is get to know each of your children. This is the child
audit. Step back and simply observe your children, notice their emotions,
notice how they typically respond to them, and how they typically try to
soothe themselves.

This audit is going to take you a few days, or maybe even a couple of
weeks to do. Take as long as you need to complete because it is a tool that
will give you a great deal of insight towards understanding your children
and their needs.

Let’s take a look at what you’ll do (download the child audit worksheet to
complete)….

#1 What is important to my child?

There are four basic human needs everyone has that need fulfilled:

9
 1) Love
The need to feel loved and to give love. The need to feel connected and
have a sense of belonging.

2) Certainty
The need to know what is coming next. The need to feel safe and
secure.

3) Significance
The need to know you matter, that you are valued and important. The
need to feel seen, to feel worthy, to be heard.

4) Variety
The need for spontaneity and excitement. The need for change or
newness.

Each of these needs differs in importance or priority to each individual.

Everyone will have their own ranking of which of these needs are most
important to them.

Take a look at each of your children and notice which of these four needs
is most important to each of them. Which one or even two is the highest on
their priority list? Which do they appear to value most?

How emotionally charged is my child?

Everyone feels emotion, but not necessarily at the same intensity. Some
children appear to experience feelings at a high level; they may be the
loudest, the most “dramatic” or explosive. They tend to be the most sensitive
and can be highly empathetic to others’ emotions.

When they are excited, they can not hide it! When they are upset, everyone
knows about it! They can not keep themselves quiet when they perceive an
injustice!

How intense does your child appear to feel their emotions? Rate them on a
scale of 1 – 1o where 10 is most intense and 1 is most mild. You might think
of it as Mild vs Wild!
10
What emotions are difficult for my child?

Take note of which emotions appear to generate the biggest reactions.

Which emotions invite the most distress or difficulty and what triggers them?
Take a look at the Emotions Wheel to help you identify and name these
emotions.

How does my child attempt to settle emotions?

A small child will not know how to soothe, and you may start to see for older
children and teenagers that they have developed a pattern for soothing or
settling how they feel, that may or may not be healthy.

Notice how each of your children reacts and attempts to manage their
emotions. Pay attention to the language they use with themselves. Look out
for how they treat themselves during difficult situations. Are they angry at
their anger? Are they hopeless at their sadness?

How do they behave? What do they do when difficult feelings are faced? Do
they scream, throw, punch or kick walls?
How long does it take them to calm themselves if you don’t intervene?

Reminder:
it starts with you
My first response to asking how do you teach
children to master their emotions is of course, down
to how you manage yours. Your day-to-day
interactions set up the invitation to what is expected
behaviour. You know this already.
It is imperative that you lead by example, which
means you have to be working on yourself.
When I say working on yourself, I don’t mean that you
have to reach a level of “perfection” where you never

11
get caught up in your emotions. You’re human. So are you kids. You’re a
constant work in progress.

Those moments where emotion does get the better of you is a learning
opportunity for yourself and your children. For yourself, because you get to
reflect upon what happened to get you to that over-edge point and explore
what you might be able to do next time, insha’Allah. And for your children,
because you get to show them by modelling through your actions what it
looks like to make amends and apologise. How do you think your children
will ever learn to apologise when they hurt someone else if they haven’t seen
and felt what that looks like to understand the impact of why it is important.

A side note:
There are 5 R's to making amends when you might have lost control of
yourself…

1) Recognise what happened “wow, I slipped up there”

2) Take responsibility “I shouldn’t behave like that and how I behaved is

not your fault”

3) Reconcile with an apology “I’m sorry”

4) Resolve to never behave like that again and look for a way to help you
take control next time something similar comes up “I’m going to do
better next time, insha’Allah”

5) Repent to your Lord

12
How to teach children
emotional mastery?
It really comes down to using everyday situations as opportunities to
teach. Understanding emotions cannot be something abstract. They have
to be tangible for children, to really begin to process them. So helping
them to deal with life’s challenges as they show up, is how you’re going
to help your children to take ownership of their feelings and learn to
manage them.
Okay, but how exactly do you do that?......

Conversations and real life teaching

It comes from having constant open dialogue and big juicy conversations
with your children, daily. Talking about their day at school, or their
interactions with a sibling. Talking about things they have done or places
they have been. Being interested in them and inviting them to talk to you
about anything and everything.

When they share with you something that happened, that’s when you can
begin to help your child identify their feelings in those everyday situations
by putting a name to them…

“He was taking all my cars and I kept shouting at him no!”
“It sounds like you were angry”

“They wouldn’t play with me and I was left all by myself and cried”
“It sounds like you were upset”
13
“I can’t do it! I hate maths”
“It looks like you are frustrated.”

“It wasn’t my fault. I was making a paper plane because it was hard sitting
in the lesson.”
“It sounds like you were bored.”

“It was so fun! We saw the train and all the steam came out then the driver
let me go up!”
“It sounds like you were excited!”

“I didn’t want to get into trouble.”

“It sounds like you were scared.”

“no one wanted to talk to me on the break.”

“It sounds like you were lonely.”

“I really want to go.”

“It sounds like you are disappointed.”

“I didn’t know what to do.”

“It sounds like you were confused”

“Everyone was looking at me it was horrible.”

“It sounds like you were embarrassed.”

When you do this, what you’re doing is not only helping your child to learn
to understand what it is they are feeling, but also giving them the
vocabulary and showing them that their feelings have a cause. Something
happened that led to the emotion. This empowers them to know that
feelings are normal and there isn’t anything wrong with them and who
they are.

When children start becoming more aware of themselves and their

environment, they can recognise why they feel emotion when things
happen. They begin to see the connection between events and feelings.
When they understand there is a cause, they can then start to process
triggering factors so they can take ownership and defuel them.
14
 Ask how they feel
Something else you can do is ask your child how they felt after
something happened. When you ask in a non-judgmental way, it invites
children to start paying attention to themselves, and it permits them to
share that. When you respond empathetically, it shows your child their
feelings are valid and accepted.

When we speak about showing empathy, it doesn’t mean we are

condoning misbehaviour. Your boy who whacks his sister around the head
because he was angry she was annoying him while he was building lego,
isn’t let off the hook or given an excuse. You will deal with that
misbehaviour so that he learns he cannot express anger through his fists.

But, before you can get to that point of discipline, so he learns, he has to
first feel understood. Understanding his feelings doesn’t mean you agree
with them or that his actions were justified in response to them.

Understanding his feelings means you see him. You hear him. You get his
truth. His truth is how he feels in response to his experience. You cannot
show him how to handle his emotions appropriately and effectively if you
cannot first show you understand his experience because he won’t listen
until you do. If he won't listen, he won't learn.

When your children know you are here to support

them without judgement, when they know you are
on their team, they will be more willing to talk to you
about how they feel. And it's only when they feel safe
to share with you, that they will. If they don’t feel
talk to you, you cannot help guide or teach them.

15
 Share how you feel
Another thing you can do to help your children learn to understand
emotions and themselves is to share your feelings with them.

When you express how you’re feeling, it allows children to see that
feelings are normal, and there is nothing bad, mad or crazy for having
them. It is also helpful to add to that feeling, what it is you need in
response to it.

When I say share how you feel, obviously, it goes without saying, you do
not bombard them…they are your children, not your therapist! They don’t
need to know every feeling you have at every moment of the day. Use
wisdom when you’re sharing to determine whether sharing is appropriate
or not.
Children can internalise your emotions as a reflection of something they did
or something they are, especially if they are highly sensitive and
empathetic themselves.

You might let them know that you had a hard day at work that has left you
feeling mentally drained right now and you need 30 minutes just to unwind
so you can be here for them.

You might let them know the piled-up laundry is overwhelming you and so
you need some help to get through it so that you can feel better.
You might tell them you’re really happy today and would love to do
something fun together!

You don’t let them know how empty or lost you feel because you’re at
home all day, or how upset you are after a dispute with dad. As I said, use
your wisdom to know what is and isn’t appropriate.
Sharing feelings is about normalising them and demonstrating how to
move forward despite them.
16
 Separate similar feelings
We know that emotions are felt in the body. When someone is nervous,
they might experience the sensation of having butterflies in their
stomach….they might also have butterflies when excited.

When someone is angry they might feel their head is going to burst (hence
the term hot-headed!), or that their stomach is turning knots, or that their
breathing becomes fast and shallow.

It takes a little skill building to recognise what the physical sensation that
presents itself means. You might have a child who for example, feels
butterflies because of nervousness or excitement, but they may not know
how to distinguish which emotion it is, because the physical sensation can
be pretty similar.

Use the Feelings Wheel with your child to help talk through and identify
which feeling it is (download the Feeling Wheel Poster).

17
If we take the example of nerves vs excitement here, you can see on the
Feelings Wheel that nerves are within the Fear segment, and excitement
is in the Surprised segment. To help your child understand himself and
what he is feeling, ask whether he feels scared or surprised….a better
word to adapt surprise so it makes more sense, might be happy.

If he tells you it is fear, then it’s nerves. You can then talk to him about
what it is he is afraid of and help him to process those thoughts and find
encouragement.

Another issue you need to be aware of, is that children might complain of
feeling sick or ill, when in actual fact, it is a complex emotion they are
feeling within their body.
Children might complain of having a stomach-ache and feeling sick,
referring to it as a physical illness, however those stomach pains may be a
result of stress or anxiety. Again, it helps to talk to your child to help them
understand the difference between physical illness and physical,
emotional sensations.

Help them understand feelings

rise and fall
Children need to understand that feelings rise and fall. They rise in the
heat of a moment, and once acknowledged and named, they begin to fall.
When you notice your child is experiencing a difficult emotion, help to
identify and name what it is they are feeling. Let them know that this helps
them to calm the emotion and it will drop.

Let them know that feelings rise and fall when we pay attention to it, they
don’t last.

18
 Teaching your child to
self soothe
How do you teach a child to begin to manage their emotions so they can
self-soothe themselves? By soothing them!

Think about this a moment…when a child experiences something difficult,

often parents are negatively triggered…and in that triggering tend to say
things to their child in anger, or frustration or in response to their own
discomfort.

What might a parent who is triggered do?

They might shout. They might ignore.
They might tell them to “shut up”, “Don’t whine”, “You’re overreacting”, or
“You’re being stupid”.

Imagine a child experiencing anger, or hurt, or sadness, how does being

shouted at, or ignored, or hearing disempowering language help them?
It doesn’t.

The way you treat and speak to your child often becomes the way
they treat and speak to themselves.

What do you think a child who is in the midst of a

difficult emotion needs from you? What do they need
when they feel embarrassed, or angry, or sad, or
frustrated, or nervous, or afraid?

They need your comfort. They need your

compassion. They need your kind and gentle words
to tell them they are going to be alright, insha’Allah.
They need your empathetic ear to tell them “I know it
hurts” “I know this is hard” “I’m here for you” “I’m here
to help you”.

They need you to validate the feeling instead of dismissing it.

19
Show empathy by reflecting back what the problem is…
“You don’t want the lights off, is that right?”

Ask how your child feels...

“What is it that you’re feeling sweetie?”

Repeat what your child shares with you and give a name to the emotion...
“It sounds like fear”

Ask where in the body they feel this feeling...

“Honey, what do you feel in your body when you have this feeling?”

Show your child what they can do to let the feeling fall...
“Honey turning the lights off is scary, it makes you feel funny in your
stomach, even grown ups get scared sometimes. Do you know what helps
me when I’m feeling scared….it is making dua and reminding myself that the
same things that are there in the light are there in the dark. You are okay
sweetie. Your feelings are normal. Let’s help you to feel better”.

You’re telling them throughout that it is okay and you understand.

These affirming words, this way of validation and soothing will become the
language pattern they will adopt with themselves.

It can be helpful, especially if you find soothing your child difficult, to have a
list of words you can use to soothe them. You might even find it helps you
have a script ready that you familiarise yourself with so it feels natural to say.

No judgement and No Solutions

It is imperative that while your child is experiencing their emotions and you’re
trying to help them through it, you do not judge and do not offer solutions.
They need your empathetic ear to listen without judgement and without
telling them what they should go and do.
Figuring out how to resolve a situation will come later, but at this point, it is
about giving sound to your child’s emotions so that they can experience it
without shame and blame, allowing them to process and develop
understanding of themselves and what happens around them, so they can
20
let go of that feeling.

When children have your permission to safely share their story, to be heard,
it brings about calm. It helps the start of the fall of the emotion. When you
see that there is the beginning of an emotional state change, point that out to
your child so he can understand what is happening

“Does it feel better now that you spoke about it? ……That’s what happens
when we share our feelings, it helps the emotion to start to settle”.

Later, once emotions are settled, then you can come back to discuss a way
forward. You mustn't enter this stage, until your child has had the
opportunity to share his story and feelings otherwise, he will end up staying
stuck in that feeling, ruminating.

Dealing with emotions when there is

misbehaviour and consequences
Can you think of a time that you issued your child with a consequence and
their behaviour went off the charts in response?
I know mine certainly have. One of my earliest memories trying to use the
traditional time-out approach (AKA the naughty step -something I do not
recommend now – see the Positive Time Out training for more on this) was
with my eldest who was probably about 4 or 5 years old. I put a small ikea
chair in the hallway and told her to sit there. She sat,
but she sat screaming and kicking the wall in front of
her.

One mum during an earlier training confessed that

in response to sending her daughter to her bedroom
as a consequence to misbehaviour, she wrecked the
room, throwing everything everywhere.

It is a common occurrence that children's feelings appear

to escalate and worsen when consequences have been
issued. The problem is that it is often not the children’s
21
children’s behaviour that causes problems, it is the consequences that adults
dish out that are. The way parents respond to children's misbehaviour can be
the cause for the way children's emotional outbursts escalate.

We have discussed extensively during the Logical And Natural

Consequences training that consequences are important, however they
should be directly related to the misbehaviour.
The consequence has to be logical, it has to make sense for the child to learn
from their mistakes and behave better. Not allowing a child to visit a friend at
the weekend has nothing to do with a child breaking a sibling’s toy. But
using pocket money to pay for a replacement, does.

When your child experiences a consequence that does make sense, and they
react with anger, annoyance or frustration, in those moments that emotions
are flared they cannot hear anything you say. They cannot process
anything outside of how they are feeling there and then.
It can be really easy in those moments to find your own sense of anger being
triggered, so it is vital that you maintain your calm. It is also crucial that you
are not withholding love in order to give a consequence. Remember,
discipline is about helping children to learn from mistakes, not paying for
them.

You can in those moments of heightened emotions, help them to soothe and
calm through expressing empathy and understanding.

“I can see you are upset/angry/frustrated because you’re not getting pocket
money for three weeks to pay for your brother’s toy. It is okay to be upset
about that. I’m still here for you and I love you”.
Once they have calmed, then you can talk about it and move forward.

22
 Emotional State Change
Your children are not going to be with you 24 hours of every day. There are
going to be moments when situations happen, triggering difficult emotions
that you won’t be there to help them learn to soothe. When they are at
school, or madrassa, or a friends house for example.

An essential skill for them to have, while they are still working with you to
help them learn to self-soothe, is to know how they can manage their state
so that it doesn’t impact them.

Emotions can get in the way of learning for example, and so if something
happens at school, you want your child to be able to know how they can
temporarily put those emotions to the side and step into a positive state of
mind that will allow them to focus on the learning, or complete the test.

This isn’t about ignoring or suppressing a feeling, it is about knowing how

they can manage their state until they get home to you, where they can let it
out and process with you.

It's about showing them how they can use a temporary plaster to help them
make an emotional shift enabling them to carry on with their day.

This is where the positive mindset stuff comes in….

Making dua
Changing negative thoughts into positive thoughts
Focusing on that positive mindset
Breathing
Moving their body
Looking at what they are grateful for

23
mums Unstuck Parenting Membership with
U m m K h a d e e j a