According to one child psychologist, there is a rather glaring misconception that parents often have about their children, and has stated that there are certain things that they shouldn't say to them.
Professor Sam Wass, an expert in child concentration and child stress, says there are some phrases that parents commonly use with their children that they should instead avoid.
One of these, he said, is that parents should try to avoid telling their children how to feel, whether it be sadness, anger, or something else entirely, as he said that "ibhibiting emotions doesn't work - it doesn't work for adults and it definitely doesn't work on a child, you can't just tell someone to cancel an emotion.
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"So for example in September you always see all these parents marching their children to their first day of school, dragging them by the hand and their child is in floods of tears and the parent is walking along and saying in a really cheerful voice 'it's going to be fine, you're going to have a lovely time, don't be scared'.
"And that is exactly what not to do as it just doesn't work."
Instead, Professor Wass says that parents should explain what the emotions they are feeling are:
"What we think does work is just describing what a child might be feeling, we call this building metacognitive awareness and it's the awareness of the inner child and what they are feeling," Professor Wass explained. "It's something we never teach children in schools but it's something we have to learn.
"Children aren't aware of what they're feeling, they can't describe it and that's because they don't know it themselves.
"It's only by you describing to them what they are feeling that they gain that self-awareness of what it is."
He added: "Something about being self-aware of what we're feeling helps us to manage that emotion and helps it to reduce.
"What I would do as a parent is just to help my child gain self-awareness about what they are feeling, so putting it in non-judgemental terms, saying something like 'it seems to me you are feeling this' and putting a verbal label on it to help them understand better and learn what their own emotions are."
One example where this can work is in the expert's explanation of how to 'defuse' a tantrum from a toddler. Logic is the commonly used tactic, but this doesn't work with young children, as their brains aren't yet developed enough to understand reason, reports the Mirror.
Professor Wass explained: "Toddlers are at this stage when the emotional centres of their brains are massive and their reason centres are tiny, so a much more effective way to deal with a tantrum is to comment on what they're saying and echo it back to them using their language."
So how exactly would you go about doing this?
"If the child is talking in two-word phrases, saying things like 'want juice' or 'want custard', you can match their language and their intonation," he clarifies.
"They'll be very up and down in their voice, so you copy that. Match their state and what they're saying, commentate on it, almost like a football commentator would, so if they're saying 'I want custard', you would say, 'Freddie wants custard' to make sure they feel understood.
"This feeling of being understood will help them calm down and then you'll be able to shift their attention onto something else."
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