I was very aware of how a friend ("A") at the weekend was dealing with her daughter who's 2 in a few days time. "A" was helping her daughter verbalise "being cross". She was also giving clear reasons for why she was asking her to do things (eg "Put those [branches of holly berries] down. The berries can make you poorly"). "A" is training to be a psychiatrist and is very calm when dealing with her feisty toddler. I found it very helpful to see these things in practice.
I would like to help J verbalise more - at this stage he doesn't have much vocabulary (though since last Friday he now says a very clear "choc-let" - in exactly the same way as the "Little Britain" Fatfighters character Marjorie Dawes does :-) ) - so it's a question of me giving him the words to help label the frustration etc.
I see other people who deal with toddler outbursts with too much reassurance or criticism - "there's no need for all that" or "what's the matter now?" (these are things I have heard people say to J). I will try and keep a log of how I deal with different things over a few days - it's too easy (especially since we're so busy) to just deal with whatever is happening right now and not reflect on it.
______________________ ___________________ __________________
This link will take you to a research article from the journal of "Psychological Science":
In this article, they study the link between affect labeling and certain chemical responses in the brain. Their findings are pretty interesting. It basically says that verbalizing our feelings makes our sadness, anger and pain less intense. They extend verbalizing to mean not only saying aloud, but also writing down on paper... basically labeling it of any sort.
This gist is: saying that your angry tells your body that you know that you're angry and it's ok to calm down now.
The science is: When you have an emotional reaction a part of your brain called the "amygdala" turns on. It's job is to protect the body in times of danger. Activation of the amygdala can cause increased heart rate and force of each beat ("pounding heart"); increased muscle tension that can even cause tremors; sweaty but cold palms; and even nausea and diarrhea.
When you label your emotion, either by saying it out loud ("I'm angry") or writing it down on paper, you activate another part of the brain called the "right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex". This part of the brain is in charge of thinking in words about emotional experiences. When it turns on, it basically tells the amygdala to chill out; that way your body can calm down and you can stop reacting and start thinking again.
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