Mina Blatt on Big Emotions: what is your child really feeling?

Your child comes home from school angry and upset. He throws a temper tantrum for seemingly no reason at all. You respond with the same anger and send him to his room in frustration. His bad behavior is not tolerable, so you punish him for his outburst.

You and your daughter spend a fun day at the beach. When it is time to go home, she protests and starts screaming at you. She is not ready to leave and is not going to leave. The louder she yells, the angrier you get. By the time you are able to drag her to the car, you are emotionally exhausted and tell her this is the last time you are ever taking her to the beach.

As a parent, is there a way to manage emotional outbursts successfully in our kids? Do our kids understand their emotions? They probably don’t even know the words to describe feelings such as nervousness, anxiety, fear or worry.  

During a Smart Sex, Smart Love podcast, Mina Blatt, a therapist with The Center for Relationship and Sexual Health in Royal Oak, Michigan, provides some strategies and advice for parents to help their kids understand and manage their emotions effectively.

Grounding, breathing techniques and time outs are three of several ideas Mina explores during the podcast. She also talks about how parents can manage their own emotions better when their kids have uncontrollable outbursts. Remember, we are role models for our kids. They are always watching and learning from their parents’ behaviors, Mina points out. To hear the entire Smart Sex, Smart Love podcast and pick up a few valuable tips on helping your kids manage their emotions 

Transcript

JOE KORT  0:05  
Welcome to Smart sex smart love, we're talking about sex goes beyond the taboo, and talking about love goes beyond the honeymoon. Today we're going to be talking with Mina Blatt about big emotions, how to talk to kids about their feelings. So Mina Blatt is a limited licensed social worker with our group practice the Center for relationship and sexual health in Royal Oak, Michigan. For many years, she has worked with youth in crisis and high risk situations. Mina has also worked with LGBTQIA plus clients, adolescents, teens, adults and families using a variety of techniques, including cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness based stress reduction, and a person centered therapy. She is with me today to talk about emotions and kids of all ages, I hope my age to manage them effectively, and how to talk with kids about their feelings. Welcome, Mina.

Mina Blatt  1:00  
Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction, Joe. And yes, kids of all ages includes the young and the young at heart.

JOE KORT  1:07  
Because I know we have DB DBT dialogic, what does it dialectical behavioral therapy for adults? Right. But um, I always think that anybody could learn from what you're about to teach us of any age?

Mina Blatt  1:20  
I sure hope so.

JOE KORT  1:21  
I hope so, too. So let's get started. And so I'm glad you're here. So let's talk about the basics when it comes to teaching children about their emotions and controlling them. Do they even understand emotions?

Mina Blatt  1:33  
So that's, that's kind of a tricky question. Because they have the ability to understand emotions. But they've never, you know, especially if you look at the younger kids, they've never been taught what these feelings are, you know, we have words like anxiety and nervousness and anger, and they just have these, you know, these feelings, and they a lot of times don't know, the words to express what those feelings are. So, but they absolutely have the ability to understand, like, you know, I'm in this situation, this is a stranger, I feel worried, I feel anxious, we just have to give them the tools and the words to use.

JOE KORT  2:18  
I like this, let's equate it to the idea that when you're sick, and you don't know what you have, but something hurts or something's wrong, you're freaked out until you go to the doctor, and they say you have this now take this, it's like, oh, there's a name for this, but kids don't have that. So it must be they must freak out.

Mina Blatt  2:33  
Exactly. And that's a lot of times where we get things like temper tantrums, or these, you know, like naughty behaviors, because that's the only way they know how to express this. And they're just trying to get our attention so we can help them through what's scary to them.

JOE KORT  2:51  
Right now, that makes total sense. So our emotions and expression of something else going on? And how How can parents get to the heart of the problem when their child is so emotional?

Mina Blatt  3:02  
Emotions are absolutely a symptom of the situation. You know, if you look at you and I, as adults, we get emotional based on what's going on around us. If a kid is super emotional, then implementing some kind of calming, like, Hey, let's go take five and three, or how about we read a book or color a picture together? Something to take them from that heightened level of emotion and bring them back down to something they're a little bit more comfortable with? And then talk about it and say, Hey, I, you know, you, you were feeling something really big what what happened that made you feel whatever, whatever was going on, you know, what, what happened just before you got so upset?

JOE KORT  3:50  
And I would imagine you have to guide them a little bit, right? Give them words, give them sentence stem, something like that?

Mina Blatt  3:55  
Oh, absolutely. Um, you know, it depends on the developmental age, we're talking about, you know, if they're a little bit older, maybe 678. They might have, you know, some more of the words to help describe, but if they're really, you know, if they're really young, even asking them things, like, you know, did it Did it scare you when mom yelled, or was it? Was it a shock when the dog all of a sudden ran up to you or, you know, things like that?

JOE KORT  4:24  
That makes sense. I'm thinking about my sister, she had three boys and then a girl. And my sick first nephew came and he was not very emotional. You know, he's very easy, easy to please. It was just it was a breeze really? My second nephew came and he for whatever reason, I don't know exactly what it was, was super emotional. Like I could not even pick them up at six months at my wedding without worrying that he was just going to go ballistically crazy, and I would babysit the kids and I remember my older nephew, putting his hands over his because my my second nephew would just scream and scream and scream and cry. Nothing I could do and nothing would calm him down. What about that? What do parents do for that?

Mina Blatt  5:02  
Well, at that young of the developmental age, I think that's a little bit more outside of, you know, the wheelhouse for the older nephew in that situation, you know, helping him get to a quiet, more comfortable place. Yeah. You know, is there another room or like headphones or something? Especially, you know, you said that he covered his ears. That's such a huge behavioral indicator that, that he's uncomfortable in that moment. Yeah. But I, I think a lot of what we're talking about with the emotions, you know, it's when we get to those kind of like, to end up ish, where, you know, they have a little bit more of that development going. I think when they're that young, you just hope that something keeps them quiet. So calm down.

JOE KORT  5:49  
Sorry, I threw a curveball. But I was thinking because it wasn't just six months, it really went on until it was three or four. And it was just so difficult. I remember just not knowing what to do, I just we had to go with it. We had to stop everything until he stopped crying, because there was no consoling him, you know, his room and go to a movie with my other nephew. That would have been cruel, would have never been right.

Mina Blatt  6:07  
Right? Um, you know, when it gets a little older, I almost wonder if there's, you know, maybe something else going on behind it. I know, I don't know what it actually means. But they talked about like, when a baby's colicky or something like that? Yeah. Because sometimes too, like, there can be like physical things going on underneath that caused these, you know, emotional type reactions. Because, yeah, if you think about it, if you or I have a headache, or we're not feeling good, we're more prone to baby maybe grumpy, or, you know, irritable with people around us because we don't feel good.

JOE KORT  6:43  
No, you're right. And now he does not like he's 21 years old. 21 years old. He's nothing like that. But um, you know, maybe my question should be how do parents deal with their emotions? Because I'm telling you, I was angry. It was upsetting. I had this one nephew was like, easy, breezy. Now you have this other kid? who's causing? Like, how do how does a parent deal there are terrible emotions?

Mina Blatt  7:05  
That is a great question. You know, we want to as parents model the behavior we see in our kids. So, you know, don't be afraid to, you know, look at the kids and go, Hey, Mom needs a timeout or dad needs a timeout, or, you know, and separate yourself from what's going on. Use the same type of breathing or calming stuff that you would want to see your kids do as an adult. And I think the most important thing, and some parents give me some some slack for this is apologize to your kids. Yeah, you know, if if I have a bad day, and I snap at my best friend's son, he's eight, I love him to death. If I get mad and upset and I snap at him, or I, you know, kind of lose control of my emotions. I always go back and say, hey, you know what I did? wasn't okay. I'm sorry. You didn't do anything wrong. That was on me. Like, I don't want them to apologize to

JOE KORT  8:12  
right. But I thought now, I'm not a kid psychologist you are. I thought kids don't understand apologies, until they're seven or eight. They don't really know what it means.

Mina Blatt  8:21  
To be honest, I don't have a ton of the like, concrete, you know, studies on that. Facilities, you know, if you don't want to, you know, do that apology type thing. Just saying like, you know, acknowledging what mom did? wasn't okay. Right, then, like, you know, better. Yeah, you know, i Mom shouldn't have yelled at you like that, or, you know, I'm using parents terms like mom and dad, probably because I'm an expecting mother. But this goes for aunts, uncles, guardians, grandparents, whoever you are, if you're interacting with a younger person, you know, the same things apply?

JOE KORT  8:58  
Yeah, no, that makes sense. That's very good. When what age should a parent start talking with the child about their emotions,

Mina Blatt  9:05  
when they can start talking? You know, and there's a lot of really great resources out there for especially for parents or guardians who may not have the best you know, arsenal of tools at their own disposal. There's tons and tons of books that break down emotions into really simple to grasp and understand terms and having those types of things and just reading them as you know, as bedtime stories or you know, as things to go through, just because just whenever and then when they have those emotions, those big emotions, those big breakdowns, kind of going back and being like, hey, remember we have this book that talks about this, let's Can we go through this together and see, you know if this if this matches what you're feeling right now?

JOE KORT  10:01  
I really love this. And the more you're talking, the more obviously, it's like, kids don't learn this in school families aren't teaching this to their children, which is why God made therapists, I think, because now we have to come into the field, right and then help people. But this could really circumvent a lot of problems in people's lives. If kids were taught how to manage and, and name and address their emotions. Oh, absolutely.

Mina Blatt  10:23  
And I, you know, it'd be great if we could teach this in schools, it would be great if, you know, we could have like emotions, one on one or, you know, coping skills with one on one from the time they start school. You know, even at home, but sometimes parents themselves have never been taught this know that you have you have you know, I was raised with older generation, my grandma raised me and she was of this generation that you didn't talk about it, it was so hush hush. And some of that lingered even into, you know, like my generations parents. So how, who, who learns it? Where do we start? And I think that's where, you know, we as therapists, and people who have this more public platform should get that word out about, you know, yeah, our how we understand emotions and talk about emotions, it's going to affect this new generation, these younger generations,

JOE KORT  11:20  
right? And I like what you're saying about getting books and information. Because if you were taught by your parents about feelings, you're gonna have a hard time having the language to talk to your kid. It's true about sex. You know, we have parents, we say, teach your children about sex. Okay? You don't want anyone elses, your church or synagogue, yours schools, you don't want them to do it, then you do it. But they don't. And they often don't, because they don't know what to say, because they weren't taught themselves.

Mina Blatt  11:44  
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, emotions over you know, things like sex and sexual health, we have a little bit more resources available, you know, I could list off a couple books series that I use in my personal practice that I have, that I will be buying a second set for at home for when my little one gets here,

JOE KORT  12:07  
that's great. I don't know, if you see this guy, and tick tock, I didn't hit my podcast, I forget his last name, his first name is Stuart. And he has a little boy who is gender. Heidi called gender variant, like he wanted to go to see Frozen as one of the princesses. And it he allowed him and he's like a very affirmative father, which you don't really see a lot of, for a gender, I don't know what you call it. You know, he's expressing himself in his feminine way in this little boy. So he's written all kinds of books. And it's great, because now they their children have books available if the parents would give it to them on how to express the stress those feelings?

Mina Blatt  12:43  
Absolutely. And that's such a beautiful thing. You know, I think our, you know, our younger, like Gen Z and stuff are pushing for, and even some of the younger millennials are pushing for all of this information to be out there about, you know, things like gender dysphoria and all of that, that, you know, even when I was a kid, which wasn't all that long ago, we would have, I would have never, never thought to have something like that. Or even see something like that in the stores.

JOE KORT  13:14  
Yeah, no, not at all. So let's talk about redirection. Right? You talk about that. And you see, can you tell people what it means? How does it work? And is redirection

Mina Blatt  13:24  
effective? Basically, it's taking what they're focused on and turning that focus to something else. So if we're focused on the dog ate my desert, you know, I'm a little one dog ate my dessert. I'm so upset. I'm mad, I'm yelling at the dog. As a parent, you know, parent needs to kind of redirect that focus away from the anger at the dog, because that's not going to lead to anything productive. When you're in that heightened emotional state. You're kind of closed off to everything else around you. It's almost like you have this emotional blinder on and nothing else even registers. Yeah. So, you know, I mentioned a couple of times separating from the situation or, you know, sometimes that's not possible. If we're in the middle of the grocery store. I'm not always able to just drop everything and leave. But there's a fidget toys. Oh my gosh, I love fidget toys. Yeah. Simple breathing exercises, square or box breathing, where you inhale to account of three or five or seven. Oh, hold that breath for the same count and you exhale.

JOE KORT  14:37  
And you're talking about doing this with the kid not the adult. Absolutely.

Mina Blatt  14:41  
Or can adult do it together? Yeah. You know, do it with your little one. Yeah, say, okay, you know, let's breathe right now. Let's breathe together. And, again, you're modeling that behavior and you're normalizing it because, you know, if you think about it, if I was having like a rough, emotional In all time, and somebody called me out and like, we'll go do some breathing. It's gonna feel almost embarrassing, almost like I'm being called out. But if we can say, hey, let's do this together, or other things like having something like a calm down box that has some of their favorite things. I know slimes big right now. I think it's terrible and disgusting.

JOE KORT  15:23  
Slime is it liquid?

Mina Blatt  15:24  
What is it? It's, um, kind of liquid kind of solid? I don't. It's a new thing that the kids do. I'm sure you can find it on tick tock, but they make it gets really messy. And I don't know, it's not not quite for me.

JOE KORT  15:39  
I'll get it for you as a gift for your newborn

Mina Blatt  15:43  
show. But, you know, like I said, fidget toys, those puppets are really big right now. They're like, basically infinite bubble wrap, you know, anything like that. And just having them focus on that, you know, bring the attention to something neutral, something calming. I like, once, once we've brought down that heightened emotional state. Now we can go back and talk about it, you know, going back to, you know, the dog ate my dessert? Well, yes, I understand you're upset the dog ate your dessert. But what happened? You know, did we leave our desserts on the floor where the dog can get to it? And the dog took it? You know? Have we shared too much food with the dog before and now the dog assumes that the food's gonna be theirs? Or even, you know, hey, we still have more dessert. How about we just go get another piece? You know, and trying to process through and, you know, see if there's a solution to what the anger is.

JOE KORT  16:51  
Okay. I like that. Helping them with cause and effect kind of thing. Exactly.

Mina Blatt  16:56  
I was also gonna say, you know, sometimes kids have these big emotions, you know, they got mad at the dog, and then they hit the dog, or had, you know, some kind of behavior like that, you know, when we have that emotional state brought back down. That's also the time to talk about Go. Okay. So you were mad at the dog and you hit the dog? Was that something that's okay to do? Why was that something that's not okay. How can we redirect that energy in the future? No. Because again, you know, there's all this energy for that comes with emotion. And we need to get it out. We want to get it out. But, you know, maybe we can hit a pillow. If we really have to hit something. Yeah, let's hit a pillow, not the dog because the dog could get hurt.

JOE KORT  17:43  
Right? Right. Good. No, that's very good. So that goes into the next question. What about punishing your child for emotional outbursts? Can you speak on that?

Mina Blatt  17:53  
Yeah, there's a balance as a parent, I mean, everything we do in life, there's a balance, some behavior is unacceptable. Absolutely. If, you know, if a little one is having an emotional outburst, and they break something, they hurt someone, they just story property, something like that, that can't be okay. You're still going to want to, you know, get them out of that heightened emotional state. In that moment, you're probably going to need to get yourself out of a heightened emotional state. And then when you when everybody's calmed down, and you go back to talk about it, that's when you say, Okay, I understand. You were feeling these big emotions, you were feeling really angry, or really hurt or really sad. But why do we think this behavior is not okay? You know, and absolutely, there can be consequences. If a child breaks something, or, you know, takes, you know, a bag of flour and dumps it all over the floor. logical consequence, you now have to help clean this up. You know, this. A lot of you know, I know I've had some, like technology are big right now. So the Go twos always take away the iPad. But is that a logical consequence for what happened? You know, did they throw the iPad? Yeah, absolutely. Take away the iPad. But did they throw back a flower across the room? The iPad and the flower aren't equivalent.

JOE KORT  19:30  
That's good. That makes sense. Right? And it's not fair. It's an easy you want to because I think the parent gets very upset and they want to make the child suffer for what they did. Right? And the consequence, but that may not be the right one.

Mina Blatt  19:43  
Yeah. And, you know, of course, behaviors. All behaviors have a consequence, positive, negative. You know, everything we do has a consequence, but we want to teach, like logical consequences. You know, if I'm late to work, my boss isn't going to take my phone away. You know, I might get, you know, I might get written up or you know, some kind of penalty pertaining to work. So why as an adult and my taking the kids phone away or the iPad away for something that has nothing to do with the iPad,

JOE KORT  20:20  
I think this is a great idea. The next time you don't do your progress notes, or someone doesn't do what I'm saying, Give me your phone. Because progress notes.

Mina Blatt  20:27  
Oh, man, I better stay on top of my notes.

JOE KORT  20:30  
Oh, what a great I never thought you know, when you put it out of context, I like when people do this. When they take it. Let's get it away from the kid when we take the iPad away from an adult who did a Prowl, you know, we wouldn't you know, it wouldn't be. Yeah, that's really good.

Mina Blatt  20:42  
Really? Yeah, exactly. We think of kids. And again, this is kids of any age, this is even getting into like teenagers and stuff. We look at them as being like, not like us, you know, we're adults, we're over here in this category. And kids are over here in this category. But like, yes, there's differences in development, and maturity, and so on and so forth. But at the end of the day, we're all humans, we all experienced the same types and the same ranges of emotions. So and we are trying to teach them to be healthy, productive. Adults.

JOE KORT  21:20  
Agreed. I love it. So let's move to adults. So now we've been talking all about the kids, how it's a problem to control for kids, what about adults? How would you help adults with controlling their emotions?

Mina Blatt  21:34  
A lot of the same things, you know, you with adults on, you know, now we've developed the ability to have like abstract thinking, and more, you know, abstract thought type processes. So you can explain it to them, you know, using some of those bigger, more technical terms like anxiety, panic, things like that. But it's, it's a lot of the same if I have an adult come to me. And they describe to me what I know, as a professional to be a panic attack. I'm going to, I'm going to teach them about that. I'm going to teach them, you know, where panic attacks come from where anxiety comes from, how to recognize, there's a lot of physiological symptoms that go along with things like that, you know, how to correlate the physical and the emotional and the mental. And then I'm going to teach them the same tools. So that square breathing that I mentioned earlier, so one of the first things I teach to somebody who comes to me with anxiety, regardless of their age. And, you know, really, it's the same tools, it's the same tricks, I can just talk a little bit differently with an adult than I can with like a little one.

JOE KORT  22:53  
Right. And I would also tell clients, when they get to an A big reaction, to not make any decisions to not say many things to people, because we do and say all kinds of things when we're in a highly reactive place, unregulated place, and it's not productive. Would you agree with that? Or what do you think? Oh, absolutely.

Mina Blatt  23:07  
You know, if if you are super, super angry at your spouse, for some reason, you don't want to talk to them in that moment, you want to walk away, right? You want to give yourself a timeout. Um, you know, it's all the same. We just use different language to describe it.

JOE KORT  23:29  
I think timeouts are underrated. I think they're really important for adults, for kids to really be able to say to somebody, you need a timeout, you know? Exactly, yeah. And it

Mina Blatt  23:38  
doesn't need to be this big punishment. You know, you think timeout, you have to sit in the corner for 20 minutes. No, like timeouts can be a good thing. Sometimes I need like, I will give myself a timeout. Yeah. Because I know I need it.

JOE KORT  23:53  
Yeah, that's good. That's how you learn to regulate yourself rather than someone else regulating you. Exactly. Right. And that's really what children are learning, you're talking about, here's how to self regulate parents teaching their children how to self regulate, because there's a lot of unregulated people in the world. Would you agree with that? Yes, I would. And it really comes from families that don't talk about feelings or, you know, neglect feelings, or just pretend they don't exist. And it's really shocking to me, even 2021 This still goes on. It's still like that.

Mina Blatt  24:23  
Yeah, it's it's true. And it it is sad, and it is unfortunate. I think now, you know, we're starting to be able to talk about this more and more openly. Which helps, but we just need to continue the conversations. We need to talk to the kids and the adults and everybody and say hey, you are responsible for your own emotional reactions. Yes, it can be affected. You know, things can be triggered by what happens around you. But at the end of the day, you're the only Anyone who can respond with anger or who can respond with hurtful things, right? That's on you. And

JOE KORT  25:07  
then I think what we haven't talked about, and we have a few minutes left, I'd like to say, kids that don't show a lot of emotion, but they have a lot of emotion, right? They're often overlooked. They're like, well, that kid's doing fine. We don't really have to deal with him or her yet, or them. Yes, you do. Because they still need to learn language. And sometimes men and and young men come into my office, they can't name their feelings. So I always tell them, there's five feelings. Mad, sad, glad, afraid. ashamed. Right? I usually go through those five things. I mean, there's more, but those are the main ones. And what do you think about a kid who doesn't share their feelings? And parents are like, well, I don't need to really teach them. They're, they're managing them. But they might not be,

Mina Blatt  25:45  
you know, if I a quiet kid is sometimes more to worry about, then a loud kid. You know, you because again, they are so easily overlooked. They're considered, you know, good, because they're quiet and obedient. But you still still having those conversations? And you of course, need to have it a little bit differently. But my favorite question in the world is what's on your mind right now? Just, it's very broad, it's very open. Or look at how they play. You know, if you sit down and play with them, what does that play look like? You know, you have to be a little bit more of a detective. And, you know, and that's something like, if you're worried about your child, and they're having a hard time expressing emotions with you, or you're having a hard time communicating with them. It's a great time to seek out help from like a professional too. Yeah. But yeah, just because a child is quiet and doesn't outwardly express a lot of emotions, it is still super important, because they're still having those emotions. Yes. Yes. Like you said, that could turn into an adult who now doesn't know how to identify or, and is having, you know, maybe more problematic expressions of emotion.

JOE KORT  27:08  
Absolutely. What else would you like people to hear before we come to an end?

Mina Blatt  27:13  
Um, I think, oh, gosh, just everybody feels emotions, the same. Kids feel the same things the rest of us do. They just don't have the tools to understand where that comes from. You know, we as adults have temper tantrums, just like kids do. And, you know, just I think the most important thing is just saying like, Okay, I, I need to work on my emotions. You need to work on your emotions. Let's learn how to do that together.

JOE KORT  27:50  
Yeah, I like that. And just keep it keep this conversation going. I'm so glad you're with our center, and that you're a part of our team helping kids helping adults do all this deal with their big emotions? How can people find you Mina?

Mina Blatt  28:03  
Ah, well, you can find me at the center. Or, I'm not super. I have a Psychology Today profile. Um, I guess those are the main ways to find me, I have a great webinar out there you do the world of the internet,

JOE KORT  28:21  
so that the way they can find you is to go to www dot c rsh.com, which is the Center for relationship and sexual health. That's where your webinar lives. Your Psychology Today page is linked to us as well. So yeah, those are the best ways to find you. And then they can just send you an ad or call or they can send you an email.

Mina Blatt  28:39  
Yep. Very well said, Joe.

JOE KORT  28:43  
I set it all up for you. So I'm glad that damn all that. Thank you so so very much for having doing the webinar and then doing this and getting this message out there. It's really important message for the for the kids and for the adults.

Mina Blatt  28:54  
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And thank you for giving me a platform to, you know, be able to talk to everybody and say, Hey, let's talk about these big emotions because they're out there. Yeah, totally.

JOE KORT  29:07  
Thank you. And hopefully, my listeners here enjoyed listening to this smart sex smart love. If you did, I'd love you to go read it. And if you didn't, then don't read it. But you can hear me more. It's word sex smart, love calm. But you can also follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok, which is at Dr. Joe court, Dr. Jo E. K O R T. And you can also go to my website, Joe ct.com. So thanks for listening, everybody. I hope you enjoyed the show and we'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai