Big Feelings, Far From Home: Emotion Coaching
Why the way we respond to our children’s emotions matters even more when we are raising them far from home.
We all know the proverb: it takes a village to raise a child. But what happens when your village is four time zones away? So many parents raising children internationally are doing the emotional heavy lifting without the grandmother down the road, the aunt who takes the baby for an afternoon, the friend who has known us since school.
The good news is that there is a way to support children emotionally and socially, even without a village. It is called emotion coaching, and it is a widely used approach in child psychology, drawn from decades of research by Dr John Gottman and Dr Janet Rose's extensive work in the area. Some research suggests that children whose parents coach them through feelings are likely to grow up better able to calm themselves, concentrate and get along with others. The benefits can last across the lifespan and reach even into physical health.
In its simplest form, it is a handful of steps: tune in to the feeling, treat it as a moment to connect rather than correct, listen and let the feeling be valid, help your child put a name to it, and then problem-solve together. Some key points to remember:
The first: "calm down" and "you're fine" are perhaps among the least helpful things we can say. When we minimise a feeling, it can lead to a child feeling overwhelmed. When we name it, something remarkable happens in the brain. Putting a feeling into words, what Dan Siegel calls "name it to tame it" and what Matthew Lieberman's brain-imaging research confirmed, actually quietens the brain's alarm system. Naming a feeling is not indulging it. Naming is how it settles.
The second, and this one is crucial: validating a feeling is not the same as allowing a behaviour. You can accept every feeling your child has while holding a completely firm line on what they do with it. All feelings are welcome. Not all actions are.
The third is the one we skip. The first step of emotion coaching is about us. Children co-regulate before they self-regulate, which is the technical way of saying they borrow our calm before they can find their own. If we are flooded, there is nothing for them to borrow. And this is harder, not easier, when you are far from home, jet-lagged and carrying your own quiet homesickness. So the most underrated parenting tool in the world is simply a regulated adult. One steady breath before you respond can change the entire interaction.
Emotion coaching, in five steps
1. Notice the feeling, in them and in yourself.
2. See it as a moment to connect, not a problem to fix.
3. Listen, and let the feeling be valid.
4. Help them name it: "I wonder if you're feeling disappointed?"
5. Set the limit, then solve it together.
You may not have the village you imagined. But every time you sit with your child inside a big feeling and help them find their way back to calm, you are becoming something even more powerful than a village. You are becoming the steady place they carry inside them, wherever in the world they go next.
Sources
Gilbert, L., Gus, L., & Rose, J. (2021). Emotion Coaching with Children and Young People in Schools: Promoting Positive Behaviour, Wellbeing and Resilience. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Gottman, J., & DeClaire, J. (1997). Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child: The Heart of Parenting. Simon & Schuster.
Gottman, J. M., Katz, L. F., & Hooven, C. (1997). Meta-Emotion: How Families Communicate Emotionally. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Gus, L., Rose, J., & Gilbert, L. (2015). Emotion Coaching: A universal strategy for supporting and promoting sustainable emotional and behavioural well-being. Educational & Child Psychology, 32(1), 31-41.
Lieberman, M. D., Eisenberger, N. I., Crockett, M. J., Tom, S. M., Pfeifer, J. H., & Way, B. M. (2007). Putting feelings into words: Affect labeling disrupts amygdala activity in response to affective stimuli. Psychological Science, 18(5), 421-428.
Siegel, D. J., & Bryson, T. P. (2011). The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind. Delacorte Press.