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It's not just us needy, bleeding heart, tanty-throwing adults who struggle with mental wellbeing. Kids have big feelings too. Rebekah Ballagh, a bestselling author with 350,000 Instagram followers, has a new book focused on helping children understand their feelings and how to manage them. It rhymes, has nice drawings and covers 14 human emotions providing helpful tools to deal with them. I Zoom Rebekah at her Nelson home. If you want the vibe of our chat, imagine a super friendly person answering my questions quietly in the kitchen because her daughter is sleeping in the other room.
Q: Hey Rebekah, what's your deal?
A: I'm a qualified counsellor, self-development coach, trainer and mindfulness facilitator. I've spent most of my time creating mental health resources, running coaching programmes, training teachers, and working with workplaces. Since I had my daughter, my work has morphed online. My mission is to make mental health accessible, digestible, colourful and a little bit fun.
Q: Good stuff. Do kids and adults have different feelings?
A: I think they have the same feelings but don't interpret them the same way. Kids don't have the language that we have to explain them or to explore them. Kids just don't have the kind of understanding and maybe control that some of us have as adults.
Q: What is the difference between the way kids express big emotions and the way we adults express ours?
A: I think the little ones are sometimes better at displaying their emotions than we are because they're less filtered. You might see their feelings obviously and outwardly. They may show them more as opposed to them being able to speak to them. We might also see them expressing them as things that they can feel physically, as opposed to being able to use words. They might say that they've got a tummy ache when they feel anxious instead of being able to tell us that they're worried.
Q: Is a 'don't fight it, feel it', approach the way to go?
A: Absolutely. If we teach kids that from an early age, we see a massive change in how they are as adults. I think most adults need to learn how to allow a feeling to be. What we resist persists. When we try to push away feelings of guilt or grief or sadness or anxiety, they come back, and they come back stronger. There are strategies and tools we can use to help us calm down and help us to regulate, and I have put these in the book. Feelings are not bad. It's okay to let them be there. I think we could all go a long way with it.
Q: Kids love a reaction, we all do; if they get a lot of attention when they're angry or sad, is there a danger they'll start acting sad or angry more often to get more of that sweet, sweet attention?
A: I'm sure my daughter has pulled the wool over my eyes a few times with some of her feelings. They can certainly learn some tricks. But, for the most part, I think there's no damage done in validating a feeling. If they can feel that it's seen often, they don't have to keep pushing it out as this huge thing to get our attention. If we can acknowledge things earlier before it really ramps up, that can also be helpful.
A: Can we be too involved in our kids' emotions and problems? I've weighed in on things with my boys and felt like it was just pouring gasoline on the situation. Is it sometimes better to let them get at it?
Q: Absolutely. Yeah, I think it's how you teach children to be independent problem solvers. When we try to jump in and remove all the discomfort and solve everything, we make them feel like everything is certain when actually the world isn't certain or comfortable all the time. If they can learn to sit with some of it, that's a good thing. You can't leave a 1 or 2-year-old on their own with something for too long, but as they get older, they do have to start to be able to sit with an emotion themselves.
A: If a parent is anxious, sad or angry themselves, do kids take on those emotions?
Q: Yeah, with an anxious child, there's often a parent who's a bit of a worrier or a bit anxious. We don't want to make a parent feel like it's all their fault. But we can recognise how our own patterns and behaviours play out in our kids. They learn a lot from how we are. So as much as we could teach them good manners and good ways to manage their emotions, we can also teach them worry and anger and all of those things as well. Hopefully, this book helps us big people manage our emotions as well as help the little ones.
Q: Do you see your book as a bedtime read or more of a dip in and out resource?
A: It rhymes, and it's written for children. But I see people using it in very different ways depending on the age of the kids or even just their attention span. You could use it as a read-through, or you might just explore one or two emotions. It might be helpful after they've had a really big emotion. You could flip to that page of the book and read through it with them, and then flip to the back section, where there are different tools to help kids manage their feelings. So yeah, I see it as not just a storybook but also a resource to turn to — a guide.
Q: In the book, you represent emotions as letters written to the kids. Are emotions just messages from within telling you there is something you need to address?
A: That's it. Each emotion is, in some way, drawing attention to something or sending us a message. Looking at it this way takes the judgment out of it. When they pop up, it's like, okay, you know, here's anger. What do I need to do? What do I need to learn?
Q: An angry kid is a powerful force. It can be a punishing emotion to manage. What are some practical ways to deal with that beast?
A: I think anger is a sign that you are dysregulated at any age. It's a bit of a threat response. If anger has led you to kind of flip your lid, you're not seeing things super clearly. So it's useful to use any tool that will help bring you back to being a little bit more logical. So things like deep breathing activate our parasympathetic nervous system. You can also use those more energy-releasing outwards things. In the book, I list a wall push and star jumps for children. Something that gets the shaking energy out of the body.
Rebekah's daughter's sleep ended, so I let her get back to her life. Big Feeling is a book designed to help little children, but full disclosure, I've used a couple of the techniques in the back on myself. It's good stuff.
• Big Feelings and What They Tell Us by Rebekah Ballagh. Published 9th August 2022.
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