Riley, a 13-year-old girl in Pixar’s movie “Inside Out 2”, is entering puberty. Riley’s emotions must now navigate a whole new set of emotions like Anxiety and Embarrassment. The film focuses on two groups who are vying for control of her.   The character Joy finally confesses, “Do you know how hard it is to always stay positive?”  As parents, we, like Joy, are most often inclined to desire our children to maintain only pleasant emotions while curbing all other feelings, or the other extreme ignoring emotions altogether and instead focus only on behavior.  Thankfully, God’s Word has much to offer us in both categories.

God has gifted humans with emotions, and they are essential to life.  They allow us to respond to the world around us – the good and the bad. Unfortunately, we need unpleasant emotions just as much as pleasant ones because we live in a fallen world, and it calls for us to become angry at injustice, sad at loss, fearful in the face of danger, and indignant at sin. Sometimes, it is proper to feel bad (Matt. 5:4). Emotions are also important as they reveal what is in our hearts. How and why we respond with an emotion identifies what or who we consider valuable. Consider the different responses you would exhibit by reading a story about a child being bullied or your own child being bullied. Reading the story may cause an acknowledgment of injustice, but when it is your child, you become furious at the unfairness and rise to action on behalf of your child (Eph. 4:26, James 4:1-3).     Simply put, emotions are expressions of worship that connect us to God and others or reveal a self-centered heart.    

Parents, unlike Riley, your child does not have an emotional control console in their “mind headquarters”; they just have you. This metaphorical ’emotional control console’ refers to the guidance and support parents provide to their children in managing their emotions. Proverbs 22:6 call parents to be trainers. Training a child speaks more about the process than the details of parenting. It takes a long-view approach to parenting because training is not a one-time event but an ongoing process. So, I encourage you to train your child emotionally in the context of emotions. Emotion training is not in place of discipline but is just as essential. Here are some practical ways you might consider and use. 

  1. Offer the opportunity for Do-Overs. When we feel strongly about something, our emotions rush out of us with gusto, and toys are thrown, names are called, and even punches are thrown. Discipline might be called for in these instances but training them would suggest that you allow them to try again responding properly. This process would require patience and understanding because emotional training is a journey, not a destination.
  2. Role Play is like do-overs, except it is practiced before an event and not after. This is especially useful before you encounter an activity or location your child has responded poorly to in the past. Therefore, pretending to be in that situation before it occurs is an excellent emotion-training exercise.
  3. Identify the Emotion—Help your child use biblical language to identify his/her emotions. His language helps your child connect Scripture to life. Then, work together to memorize passages that train your child to think about this emotion.
  4. Identify the Heart—Emotions always tell you what your child loves, desires, and values. This works in the positive as well as the negative. God’s Word is your baseline for all emotions; therefore, your goal as a parent is to promote godly emotions, not just pleasant ones and faithful emotions, instead of simply controlled emotions. It may be appropriate for them to be sad or mad, so parents help them know how to respond biblically.

Parents, become experts in your child’s heart so you can be his/her counselor (Proverbs 20:5). As they grow into adulthood, we want them to understand their hearts, motives, and God. Emotion training is one tool to accomplish this parenting task, and it can lead to a future where your child is emotionally mature and equipped to handle life’s challenges. 

Practical Help:  The following are two common childhood emotions and how you might coach through them:  

Anger: There are primarily two categories for the heart of anger. The first is identified in James 4 as a desirous heart that chooses anger to obtain what it desires. The second is in response to an injustice, whether real or perceived. For instance, the two responses can be seen when a child desires a toy another child has and refuses to give it up.   A heart of anger causes the boy who desires it to grab the toy and make a run for it. However, a heart of anger can also cause the boy who unfairly lost the toy to cry out. They are both angry hearts, one selfish and the other acting in response to the unfair treatment by their friend. Both boys will need to be instructed on how to biblically respond. Training one to see others as more important than himself while praising the other for involving an adult in the solution.   Remember, even righteous anger must be directed by biblical truth; therefore, reminding your child, “When you become angry, you may not….”  (Eph. 4:26)

Anxiety: Just like anger, fear has two primary categories, real fear and imagined fear. The world is a scary place with things we should be afraid of. Therefore, you will want to train them to fear crossing the street, leaving their mother’s side at a store, talking to strangers, and such. Imagined fear has to do with the monsters in the room at night, darkness, going to new places, and being away from Mom and Dad. Most parents train their children well to guard against genuine fearful situations but struggle with imagined fears. Parents often struggle with their child’s imagined fear because they too struggle in this category (Matt. 6:34). Controlling or shrinking their world is one method children (adults too) use to manage their fears. So, they want to sleep in mom and dad’s room, control the nighttime routine, or refuse to be comforted by any other means than – fill in the blank. Finding creative solutions to comfort them (we had monster spray at our house, which worked on the closets and under-the-bed monsters) is not entirely unwise. Still, caution is in order because short-term solutions may become long-term obsessions. Anxiety is an opportunity to help train your child to trust in God’s care for them and the omniscient nature of God, even in the dark. So, spray under the bed or leave the lights on in the closet but also memorize scriptures that display God as powerful than any fear, find storybooks with characters who depend on God for their outcome, highlight God’s creative care over all His creatures and how that relates to his care for them (Matt. 6:25-34).