Ep #34: Coping Skills for Kids: Naming Emotions with Janine Halloran

Why is it important to teach our children to name their emotions? How early can you start teaching them that? And what is the best way to teach them how to name their emotions? Today I had the funnest conversation with Janine Halloran. She is the kind of person you’d just want to be best friends and go to lunch with. We had so much fun talking about emotions and how all emotions are good, it’s what you do with them that counts. We swapped stories of times that we caused big emotions in our children, parenting moments. You’ll get to hear about, and how we dealt with that.

How we gave our children permission to feel their feelings and how we worked on our repair from that. Janine is a licensed mental health counselor who has been working with children, adolescents and their families for over 20 years. She founded Coping Skills for Kids to help children and teens learn healthy and safe ways to manage all of those big feelings that they have. And she is the author of several books including the Coping Skills for Kids workbook which we talk about in the show and how you can actually use that as an adult too. You are going to love Janine and this conversation.

Just as a quick side note you might hear a little bit of background noise today. My amazing next door neighbors who have been so good to us and told my kids to call them grandma and grandpa since my kids don’t have very many grandparents. And have just come over and helped us with so many things, put up our Christmas lights, taking care of carpools. They’re just fabulous humans. And they are putting in a new backyard. And so happy for them but it is a little bit noisy as the trucks are rolling around and hauling rocks and things.

And so if you hear a little bit of background noise, I hope you’ll give us just a little bit of grace and for that amazing family. And the episode is coming up right after this.

Welcome to the Raising Healthy Kid Brains podcast where moms and teachers come to learn all about kids’ brains, how they work, how they learn, how they grow and simple tips and tricks for raising the most resilient, kind, smart, compassionate kids we can. All while having lots of grace and compassion for ourselves because you know what? We all really need and deserve that too. I am your host, Amy Nielson. Let’s get ready to start the show.

Amy: Hi, Janine, it’s so good to have you on the show. Thank you for coming today.

Janine: Thanks for having me, Amy.

Amy: This is going to be so fun. Okay, so we are going to be talking about kids and their emotions. But before we get into that, can you tell me a little bit about you and how you got into this?

Janine: Oh, gosh. Well, I am a licensed mental health counselor from Massachusetts. And I have been working with kids and teens and their families for about 20 years. And when I first started as a counselor, coming out of college, I was really super excited. I wanted to help kids. So I’m at school and they teach you a few different strategies that you can use when you’re in school. And I felt like I ran through those in the first few hours I was working in a school on my first day. And I was like, “Oh, no, now what?”

Because you still have the kid who is having a really challenging time. And the things that you tried aren’t working and so what do you do? So that was when I was really starting to be like, “Oh gosh, I really need to build coping skills. I need to find new ones. I need to figure out what’s going to work at school. I need to figure out what’s going to work for these kids at home and be able to share that with the families.” And so over time I just kept collecting all these things, what worked with the kids, what research was saying, what I had found had worked with my individual clients, talking with other people.

And then I was like, “I wish there was a book. I wish there was a book that had all these strategies.” And my husband who has been with me for over 20 years as well, he was saying, “You keep asking for this book. This book does not exist, you’ve looked for it, so you can just write it already.”

Amy: I love it.

Janine: And so that’s sort of how Coping Skills for Kids came to be. And then it just sort of grew organically from there, people would say, “Do you have any visuals?” And I’d make visuals. I thought these were card backs, can you make card backs? Okay. Can you make posters? Okay. So I listen to what people want. And I try and do the best that I can to give people support and ideas for strategies to help kids deal with big feelings.

Amy: I love it so much. It’s kind of fun when you have your person that kind of pushes you just a little bit too and it’s like, “Hey, have you thought of this?” So that’s so great, I love that and so grateful for what you’re doing in the world. I am excited about this because I think emotions are such a big thing. I want to just talk about why does it matter, how is it helpful for children to be able to name their emotions, specifically naming them, why does that matter?

Janine: Oh my gosh, well, there’s some really great research that talks about the fact that when you can name your emotion, when you can say it out loud, when you can put a label to it, it becomes easier to self-regulate and almost kind of immediately. And I’ve seen this actually in real life with clients I work with, with my own children when they can say, “I’m angry”, suddenly it kind of dissipates the anger enough where they can actually start to calm down. And then talk about, okay, “So what am I going to do with this anger now that I have recognized it and I have labeled it?”

It becomes easier to tame it. So Tina Payne Bryson and Dan Siegel have done some great work, The Whole Brain Child is the gold standard. You’ve just got to read it, it’s wonderful. But they talk about that, that being able to name the emotion makes it easier to tame it, makes it easier to regulate yourself, figure out what you can do to be able to control or manage it. Emotions are what they are, they just are but we need to be able to figure out how to show it in safe and healthy ways.

Amy: I love it, okay, so naming it is really, really important. And then how do we kind of help kids start to be able to do that? I mean a lot of our listeners have kids that are really young that they’re working with, sometimes two, three, four years old. How do we help kids start to name their emotions?

Janine: Absolutely, beautiful time to start when they are little. I know sometimes people are like, “How can you start when they’re so young?” That’s the perfect time to start. There are so many ways you can work through in trying to help kids identify their emotions when they’re that little. First, I’d start really simply with, you can just start with very simple emotions, happy, sad, mad, just start with those three and that makes it easier. That way you’re not trying to explain to them what joyful or…

Amy: Go to your Brené Brown’s list of all the, yes, 40 different, whatever.

Janine: Right, exactly. You don’t want to expand it too much because they’re too little and they definitely have felt those things, but being able to name it, it’s much easier to name sad, mad, happy. And I love using books, I love using that time when we get a chance to read together when they’re on my lap or when they’re sitting next to me if they’re my client and we’re just reading a book together. So Mo Willems books are something that I’ve been using recently with some of my little ones. So, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus. Pigeon has a lot of big feelings. He gets very mad. And you can talk about pigeons’ very mad feelings. It’s him, he really shows he’s mad. And I also like using TV shows. So I know there are a lot of great shows for that preschool age range that are really focused on social and emotional learning. So you’ve got things like Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. You’ve got Bluey where they actually have scenarios where they’re having different feelings.

So to be able to help them figure out what those feelings are, to label it for them and/or ask them, “What do you think Bluey might be feeling? What do you think Daniel might be feeling? What do you think Peg or Peg plus Cat might be feeling?” All these different things that you can use as a way to start building that emotional vocabulary.

Amy: Is there any value to having them try to recognize facial expressions with that, can you make a face like a mad face or something like that, is that a good game or does that not really provide any value?

Janine: I think it provides great value because that’s how you know what other people are feeling. And that really helps with empathy and really helps with being able to take the other person’s perspective. Understanding that somebody else might be really sad but I might be really mad in the situation and that person might be really happy. And it’s just the beginning of that because that’s a really hard tricky thing for kids to learn so little, but that’s the building block of it, to be able to start noticing their faces.

I actually will play games with kids where they have the eyes and the mouth and they can change them and they can make different faces with them. And we’re like, “I guess, I wonder what that face is.” Looking at emojis and trying to figure it out. Looking at also pictures of real kids. So what are their faces doing? What are their eyebrows doing? What are their cheeks doing? What are their mouths doing? Are their mouths up or down at the corners? And helping them understand that. And even taking pictures of themselves.

Make a happy face and what do we notice about your own face when you’re making a happy face or make a sad face, make an angry face. So they can have some fun with that. And there’s a great book I love, How are you Peeling? And it’s all these vegetables and they have different feelings faces on the vegetable. It’s really fun.

Amy: That sounds amazing. We’ll have to get the link for that in the show notes, I love it. And I feel like maybe one of the tricky parts here that I’ve learned about more as I’ve become a parent too is as we’re talking about feelings and trying to help build empathy with other people, just also making sure that we’re not helping children feel responsible for other people’s feelings because then I feel like, well, we don’t want to make them sad or whatever. And I have to catch myself and be like, “Stop, wait, don’t say that.”

Janine: It’s tricky. And yet you just have to give yourself grace because when you know better you do better. But sometimes you still make mistakes, it comes up a way up that you don’t need to, it happens. I do it all the time and then I repair and apologize.

Amy: Good. And we can do that and be like, reset.” I’ve actually done that with my kids, I’ve been like, “Can I just go back and redo that? Can I just have a redo? Let me just try that again.” And they’re really graceful about it and let me do that. So that’s great.

Janine: Yeah. No, there was one time my son was having some big feelings about losing a soccer game. I was like, “You don’t need to be upset about that.” I’m like, “Who am I?”

Amy: Yeah. Wait, wait, did I just say that? Oh, shoot.

Janine: I’m really sorry, buddy, tell me about it again, [inaudible].

Amy: I’m glad I’m not the only one. That’s good that we don’t have to be perfect to be awesome. Okay, so does that kind of help children become more comfortable? It feels like maybe it kind of gives them a little bit of ownership like I have feelings and I’m allowed to have feelings. And maybe does it give them, feel a little bit more of a feeling of control as they’re naming them because they can say, “This is a feeling. I know what it is, I’m having it”, whatever?

Janine: Yeah. And I think there is a piece of being able to understand what’s going on a little bit more, this feeling is flooding my body. My hands are squeezed, my muscles feel tight, my face is scrunched, what is happening to me? To be able to say, “This looks like mad.” And that is okay, mad is something that will come and go. You might feel mad and then it’ll pass, it’ll go through your body. And then you can move on and walk through your day, you can keep going, even though you get mad, it’s okay, mad is okay.

And I think that’s the other thing that I try to emphasize is that every feeling is okay. It’s okay to be mad. It’s okay to be angry. It’s what you do when you’re angry that matters. So are you being able to say that you feel mad? Are you being able to squeeze some Play-Doh to get some of that mad out? Can you stomp your feet? Can you throw a ball in a safe way? Can you squeeze some water beads? Do something that gets the anger out in a way that doesn’t hurt yourself, doesn’t hurt other people and doesn’t hurt stuff around you.

Amy: Yes. Oh my goodness, yes, I feel as I’ve gotten, so I have five children so I’ve had a little bit of practice at my own house and I feel like I’ve gotten better hopefully as I’ve gotten a few more years in. But one of these things that I’ve really worked with, with some of my younger ones is, yes, it’s okay to have feelings. So I think when I was growing up the messaging I got was, feeling mad is bad and you should not feel angry about it, it’s terrible. And now it’s like, no, you are going to have feelings. You’re allowed to have feelings.

You’re allowed to be mad at me as a parent if you disagree with me. And if I’m doing my job right, you’re probably going to get mad at me and that’s okay. So as long as you’re still respectful to me, and let’s find a way for you to do your mad, what’s a good way? And I love that you bring that up, how can we show mad and express our mad feelings without hurting ourselves or others or our stuff?

Janine: Yeah. And I have to say I grew up in a house too where mad was not allowed. Mad was the bad feeling and you just had to be sort of happy no matter what happened. And then I think that’s probably why I went into therapy as a teenager and became a therapist because I was like, “Wait a minute, I’m allowed to have feelings. This is amazing and everybody should know.”

Amy: Yeah, can we spread the word on that? Yeah, that’s important, it is. Okay, so as we’re kind of going through this, I feel so much of when I have these conversations with people, it all comes back to us as adults and how we’re kind of handling this as ourselves and how we’re modeling it for children. So what do we need to know, I guess about ourselves and our own emotions to be able to kind of do this well with children?

Janine: So it’s interesting that we were just talking about what the messages were when we were younger versus what we are working with our children. So we’ve sort of learned how to do things a little bit differently. And I think when we are parenting kids and we’re trying to raise them in a way that makes sense, we have to do our own work. There is nothing as humbling, opening up to your own self-reflection and seeing your little self in somebody else and recognizing the big feelings that you had or you have and then you’re like, “I’m arguing with myself.” That’s basically what’s happening.

And so it’s really hard, it’s very, very hard as a parent to be looking and managing that without exploring your own coping skills, without exploring your own self-care. You have to have a good way of managing yourself and being able to stay cool and calm and collected in those moments, which is easier said than done and I have been there, I have done it. But I’m telling you, to be able to figure out more times than not to be able to keep your calm, to be the thermostat, you set the temperature in the house, not the thermometer.

Don’t go up and down with them as they are doing all their stuff because they’re going to do it, they are going to do it. So being able to stay cool, calm and collected. How do you do that? You’ve got to do your own work. You’ve got to figure out what helps you. You’ve got to figure out your strategies. You’ve got to be able to know when to take a break, how to fill your own cup again so that you are able to do the work of raising kids, which is challenging.

Amy: So, so much so yes, very, very, very much because we get tired and hungry and just have feelings ourselves. I love that you said though that it’s like trying to do it more than not. I feel like in some of my trickiest moments of parenting, and I’ve kind of had the range of small now to teenage children, I think you have some older ones as well. And I think just getting to a point where it’s like my goal in parenting has shifted from being the perfect mom to let’s try to have more good moments than bad ones. We just try to have a lot more good moments. And so just trying to stay calm more than not, maybe is a good starting goal and then just increase it as you get better at practicing that skill.

Janine: Yeah, absolutely. One of my favorite parent educators, Nicole Schwarz. She wrote this book, It Starts With You. And she’s all about the grace that you need to give yourself as a parent, the calm you need to give yourself, the understanding that it’s not going to go perfectly. So in her book she gives examples, she’s a parent too, she gives examples of what she’s done and how it didn’t go well and how she was able to do something a little bit differently or repair it in the moment or shift in the moment even, because that’s what it is. Nobody does anything 100% of the time, but if we can have the intention of doing good and then think about more good than not good, I’m happy with that.

Amy: That’s a really good bar, let’s do that. Well, I think too, it’s such a good thing again to model for children this non-perfectionist thing, because I think we talk in theory about it. We’re like, “Well, we’re going to just be nice all the time and never hurt anybody or have”, whatever. But being able to just say, “Oh my gosh wow, I just said the wrong thing. Whoops. Can I do a do over?”

And I think that’s so valuable for children to see because they’re going to need do over moments too and it just takes away that pressure of perfection and lets them see I can be human and this is how I behave and how I fix it when I did something that wasn’t exactly what I would have wanted, maybe.

Janine: Yeah. And to know we all are human we all make mistakes, and here’s how you can repair it. Here’s how you can fix it. Here’s how you can move forward even when things don’t go properly. If you say something you shouldn’t have said, you can always say, “I’m really sorry, let me take it back. Let me try and repair that.” So you can continue to build your connection. And that is where the connection really builds because if you’ve made a mistake and then you’re like, “Oh, goodness, I’m so sorry. that did not come out the way I expected, let’s try it again. I apologize.” That’s huge for kids if parents apologize, it’s huge.

Amy: Okay, so just personal story really quick. My daughter was making, she’s nine, was making cookies with her friends the other night and she had made these really yummy chocolate chip cookies. And then she made this one big giant one and I came home and it was overbaked. And it was a fun concept but it was maybe not totally performed exactly. So I’m just doing my thing, I’m doing my mom stuff and I’m cleaning the kitchen and I’m whatever. And I just, I didn’t even think, I didn’t even think and I threw her cookie, this cookie away. It was so bad. They were so cute.

They had gone into my recipe box and then taken the recipe and copied it all down on the marker board and done this whole, anyway so she comes down and is just in tears and I felt awful. Oh, my gosh, I felt so horrible. And so we kind of went through, we talked through this and I said, “Okay, first of all you are allowed to be mad at me. You are so allowed to be mad and upset because this was such a big thing for you and I did this and this hurt you and I feel terrible. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t do it on purpose, but I can see that I was not very thoughtful in this instance and I should have just.”

Anyway, and so and I said, “And when you’re ready to talk about it, I’d love to make it up to you, but you can go be upset as you want for as much time as you need and then when you’re ready, come and let’s, whatever.” And so this is kind of what I’ve gotten better at, I think as before I would have just been, “It’s not that big of a deal or let me let me get you something to fix it”, or whatever and tried to fix her feelings really quick instead of allowing her to have time to feel what she needed to feel.

And then, of course, she loves me, she knows I love her, she forgave me immediately. And then she came up to me later and is like, “I have something I think you could do to make it up to me” or whatever. And it was like this whole big thing. I hoped that in that moment, too, she could see, first of all, I’m not perfect and when I make a mistake, I can feel really bad and I can also have compassion for myself and I can try to make it right. And this is kind of what this looks like, I don’t know, something like that?

Janine: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s hard sometimes as a parent to see them hurting, especially if you did something to make it happen.

Amy: I know.

Janine: But then to be able to allow them to have the moment. I had to do the same thing with my daughter over the summer. We moved our children from the town that they grew up in to a different town. So I moved a ninth grader and a seventh grader, oh, yeah, I did. And I prepared them as much as possible, you do all the things to get them ready to do a big move. And I knew we were moving, so I prepared them for a while, but we got here and she was doing okay.

And then my oldest really wasn’t. And then we talked about it, she was really honest. She was like, “I’m mad at you because you moved me.” And I was like, “That is fair. You’re allowed to be mad.” And to be able to be okay with that, to sit with that is really hard as a parent but it’s so valuable because then it allows them to have that moment. So instead of this mushed feeling of you can’t be angry that I grew up with. Yes, you’re allowed to be angry, it is okay, let’s talk about it when you’re ready. I’m okay with you being mad. It is fine for you to be mad, I understand. I would be mad if I were in your situation and let’s figure out how to go and do it later, when you’re ready to talk about it, I’m happy to talk about it. I’m happy to explain it.

Amy: It’s so good. I love it. Okay, one more question for you. So if we’re trying to get ourselves to be in this place of calm and regulated ourselves. Do you have some top care tips or things that you suggest for parents that are trying to stay calm so they can be not reactive to, I think, children and also maybe not take it as personally? Because I think it’s hard to not take it personally in this moment where I’m like, “But she’s so mad at me and I already feel bad”, whatever, but yeah, just how do we maintain our calm in those moments?

Janine: So for me there is a couple of things that I would do in that moment and then a couple of things I would do preventatively or to refill my cup. So in that moment I try and take breaths. I try and just take some breathing, whether that is being able to just feel my belly moving out and in and putting my hand on my heart, hand on my belly or breathing, counting in and counting out so I can take some deep breaths. Because that’s just going to get my body in a calmer space. It takes a while to do, but I’m focusing on my breath to keep myself calm.

The other thing I do in those moments is I use mantras to talk to myself in a positive way. And saying, “They are not giving me a hard time, they’re having a hard time.” Or. “This is a moment and it will pass. It’s okay even though it doesn’t feel okay right now.” Different things that will help me in that moment to calm down. A lot of times with my teenagers, I’ll be like, “This is their teenage brain, this is okay.” Or when they were toddlers, “This is their toddler brain, it is okay, this is developmentally appropriate even though it doesn’t feel really great at all.” So I’ll talk to myself about it.

So I do those sorts of things when I’m there. Also I will say, “I’m noticing that you’re having a hard time.” I will sometimes give them their space and go and get a drink of water, go outside and get cool fresh air on my face just to get myself calmer in that moment. So those are sort of strategies that I try and use pretty quickly in the moment. And then what I do outside of that, when things are calmer, when they’re in bed, just plan-fully making sure that I have time to fill my cup. So I go and get a massage. I go get my nails done. I watch TV shows that I absolutely love.

I will listen to music that is probably inappropriate and that’s okay. It is, I understand, [inaudible], it’s fine because I loved it. It brings me joy. It helps me move my body in a way that makes me feel good. So I try and do those things that I know will give me that reset. And I put it on my calendar. So I go to Zumba every Wednesday. I do a couple of workouts on other days during the week. I go for a walk, I watch certain TV shows, whatever it is, it’s going to help me. I have a cup of tea or a cup of coffee.

Those things are so important to keep my balance and to make sure that I can actually walk into the world and do what I need to do. That’s why I schedule it because I need to. Amy: Because it’s important, get that on there. I love that. So tell me about this book and this Coping skills, tell us about that a little bit so we can send people to get that.

Janine: Sure. So I wrote Coping Skills for Kids, the Coping Skills for Kids workbook. So it’s divided into different types of coping skills. So things like movement, things like being able to distract yourselves, because being able to play is actually a coping skill for kids and it can really give them a break. It’s a great stress reliever for them, being able to relax and come up with strategies to help them relax like doing a progressive muscle relaxation or an intense and release muscles. Different fun ways of teaching them to breathe, like blowing bubbles or using a pin wheel.

And then talking about it, which is the processing strategy, where do I feel different things in my body? So I tried to come up with a bunch of different strategies that I have found work for kids. And it’s written kind of in a simple way so that even us as the adults when we’re reading it, it’s not overwhelming or too complicated. So we can show them and explain to them what to do and practice it together. So lots of fun, I had a fun time writing that book.

Amy: This sounds amazing. Well, and it almost I feel like sometimes as I’m learning things for my children, I’m practicing them on myself. And this whole thing of learning where to feel emotion in my body is a concept, okay, so I’m almost 40 and I learned that just barely. But oh, my goodness, it’s really powerful and you can kind of like okay, I think I’m feeling this because it’s in my stomach or this one’s in my chest. And this is where I usually feel anxiety or whatever.

So I feel like this is actually really therapeutic for adults as well, and it’s kid Simple. But you could do it and it actually helps you figure out yourself and then you’re even better at helping your kids with it. Is that a kind of a thing?

Janine: Yeah, absolutely. I remember the moment where I figured out stress versus anxiety in my body and I was like, “This is amazing. This is so helpful.” So now I know. But that’s the thing, one of the comments I get a lot when people read Coping Skills for Kids and I actually have a teen workbook as well is I need one for adults. And so it is something that I’m thinking about writing, because I do think it’ll be helpful for us. But I use these strategies all the time. My editor for the Coping Skills for Teens workbook, she’s like, “I use this book all the time.”

Amy: Yes, exactly. I know. I’m like, “I think I need a copy just to have, this is really great.”

Janine: I was like, “This is great. Thank you so much, Amy.” She’s wonderful.

Amy: I love it. Oh, my goodness, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing this with us. And we will definitely include the link to Coping Skills for Kids in the show notes so people can go grab their copy for their kids and also themselves. And thank you so much. And where else can people find you online if they want to come and follow you and learn more from you?

Janine: So they can go to copingskillsforkids.com, but they can also go to Janine Halloran. So that’s just my name .com. And that’s where my Calm and Collected podcast lives. And then you can see all the things that I have to offer. There’s a lot of stuff that I have created. And as I was saying at the beginning, just people kept requesting things so I just write and create just kind of all the time. It’s fun. It’s fun for me, so lots of fun things out there.

I even just launched a resource library that has all types of coping skills and I keep adding to that every month. So that’s been really fun and a lot of creativity that’s gone into that. So a lot of my energy is there now, which I love, so it’s really, really fun.

Amy: That’s fantastic. Okay, so we’ll include those links as well. Thank you so much for coming on and good luck with all the amazing things you’re doing. I can’t wait to see this book for adults.

Janine: Thank you so much.

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