Emotional Literacy and Co-Regulation
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BEING A TRAUMA EMOTIONAL LITERACY INFORMED AND CO-REGULATION COMMUNITY ‘Emotional literacy may be defined as the ability to recognise, understand, handle, and appropriately express emotions. Put more simply, it means using your emotions to help yourself and others succeed.’ – Sharp, 2012. The role of carers Talk out loud to the child about their emotions and suggest how they imagine the child may feel in emotional situations Children are not born emotionally literate, or with the capacity – for example, ‘I wonder if you’re happy because you’re to regulate their emotions. They rely on those caring for them to smiling!’, ‘I wonder if you’re sad because you’re crying’. understand and respond to their signals of emotional arousal. Take everyday opportunities to teach the child about When a child is overwhelmed, they will look to their carer to help emotions – for example, watch movies or read books them understand, organise, soothe and recover (Fonagy, 2015). together and discuss how the characters might be feeling. Before a child can self-regulate, they need their carers to help them Help the child build a language for emotions. develop emotional literacy by first co-regulating emotions with Help the child to sort, understand and them. For example, in infancy, babies require adults to manage all appropriately manage their emotions. their needs, be sensitive to their cues and to provide a soothing presence in times of distress. Co-regulation requires carers to be Five steps of emotion coaching ‘bigger, stronger, wiser and kind’ and model appropriate self- soothing skills. If a carer is able to manage their own emotions by being present with the child and remain calm, it will help the child learn to regulate and understand their own emotions and provide a foundation for the child to develop their own emotional literacy. Children who are emotionally literate are better able to manage strong emotions, and this has far reaching and positive impacts on their self-esteem, confidence, identity (sense of self) and relationships. The impact of trauma Trauma often disrupts a child’s capacity to understand emotions – their own and others’. This impacts on and interferes with the child’s ability to manage and adapt to stress, and to securely attach to their primary carers. It also adversely impacts their peer and social relationships. Therefore, traumatised children need their carers to co-regulate with them to help them understand and manage emotions as they are often unable to do so on their own. Strategies to help children develop emotional literacy To strengthen a child’s emotional literacy, carers should: Role model responses to strong emotions and appropriate regulation. Work with the child to develop plans for how the child might handle a situation differently in the future. Talk out loud about their own emotions – for example, ‘I was Remember... disappointed when I missed out on the tickets to the show’, Accept all emotions for what they are and notice ‘It made me upset to see xxx get hurt’, ‘I am really cross emotions come and go. The key is learning how to right now and need to take a short break to calm down’. manage and express emotions for lifelong learning. Note: The terms ‘child’ and ‘children’ also refer to ‘young person’ and ‘young people’. Here to help! Come and talk to us if you’d like more practical ways you can be trauma informed. Sources: > Sharp, P (2012). Nurturing Emotional Literacy: A Practical Guide for Teachers, Parents and those in the Caring Professions. Routledge. > Fonagy, P (2015). Mutual regulation, mentalisation and therapeutic action: A reflection on contributions of Ed Tronick to developmental and psychotherapeutic thinking. Available at discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1462443/1/Fonagy_Mutual_regulation_FINAL_accepted.pdf LEARN MORE > How to Strengthen Your Child’s Emotional Intelligence (2017). The Gottman Relationship blog. Available at www.gottman.com/blog/strengthen-childs-emotional-intelligenc Published 2019.