How to Talk to Kids About Anything: Tips, Scripts, Stories, and Steps to Make Even the Toughest Conversations Easier

Copyright © 2023 by Robyn Silverman

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Contents

Introduction: Can We Talk?

Chapter 1: How to Talk to Kids about Anger, Sadness, and Other Big Feelings

Chapter 2: How to Talk to Kids about Self-Esteem and Body Image

Chapter 3: How to Talk to Kids about Sex

Chapter 4: How to Talk to Kids about Death

Chapter 5: How to Talk to Kids about Diversity and Inclusion

Chapter 6: How to Talk to Kids about Divorce and Nontraditional Family Structures

Chapter 7: How to Talk to Kids about Mistakes and Failure

Chapter 8: How to Talk to Kids about Friendship

Chapter 9: How to Talk to Kids about Money

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Notes

Index

About the Author

To my children, Tallie and Noah. Let’s keep talking.

Introduction: Can We Talk?

I was sitting on a park bench with the mother of one of my daughter’s friends when she turned to me and said, My youngest has been asking me about death recently. ‘Are you going to die? Am I going to die?’ Half the time, I have no idea what to say to these kinds of questions, so I stammer through some incoherent answer and then wind up changing the subject entirely to, you know, ‘Who wants ice cream?’

Tricky conversations with kids present themselves all the time (one minute, I’m talking with my son about breakfast cereal, and the next, he’s asking how babies are made). These conversations can be carefully crafted or come out of nowhere. In the back seat of the car. In the middle of the grocery store. Before bed. In line at the movie theater. Life lobs ’em up, and we’re meant to take a shot—sometimes with no feeling of preparation, no warning, no words, but all the emotions they never prepare you for when you don’t have kids yet and think you know everything.

Believe me, I always knew just what to say before I had kids. Without any emotional stake, I was clear, calm, collected, and an expert on every aspect of parenting. I wondered why anyone would have trouble talking to their own children about key topics such as courage, responsibility, making mistakes, or even death. Just open your mouth and let it rip, right?

Um, no. Now that I have my own kids, I thank goodness nobody’s keeping score, since there have been many days when I have had this little voice inside my head saying, Really? Was that the best you could do?

The truth is that we’re all humans with varied experiences, knowledge, and comfort levels, not Google or Wikipedia. And when we are smack-dab in the middle of a parenting moment, it’s not always easy to come up with sparkling words of wisdom on the fly. Yet as parents, teachers, and mentors, we want to ensure we can answer our children’s questions confidently and completely, even when they seem to come out of left field and hit us square in the nose.

And then do it again and again.

Critical conversations are not one big talk. They are a series of little talks that build on one another over time. A topic may pop up when your children are four (Why is the bug not moving?) and not again until they’re seven (Who will take care of me when you die?), nine (What happened to Rover’s body when he died?), and fourteen (What is the meaning of life and death?). Or your child may become hyperfocused on a singular subject, peppering you with questions and realizations during a marathon exchange over several hours, days, or weeks. The key is to stay open whenever opportunities present themselves. Research has shown most young people do not feel like they have at least three people to turn to in a time of need or challenge.¹ Let’s ensure we are one of the three.

After all, conversations are key to our children’s development. They teach them how to function in a grown-up world—how to describe, how to ask for help, how to understand, and how to feel okay (particularly about what’s happening in their own bodies and minds or in the world around them when they’re away from us). Conversations give them the opportunity to learn, connect, discover, understand, reflect, and grow.

Unfortunately, many parents don’t talk to their kids about tough topics; they may want to but feel unsure of what to say. Others talk to their kids about one critical issue but not another—or talk about a topic once and then never again, assuming the work is done. But the truth is that tough conversations are not ones to check off a list. We don’t have The Death Talk, The Sex Talk, or The Diversity Talk and then move on. If it were like that, I’d be handing you a pamphlet, not a whole book!

There are so many parenting guides out there on discipline (and we are grateful for the help!) but not many focused on communication, which is why I wanted to write this book. Instead of simply telling parents, teachers, and coaches to broach conversations about important topics, I wanted to show them how. I wanted to provide scripts and tips and share my own struggles as well as the stories other parents have told me—the good, the bad, the ugly. I wanted to share the incredible insights of so many experts I’ve had the pleasure of working with and interviewing for my podcast, How to Talk to Kids about Anything. I wanted a whole chorus of people to come together and say, Yes, we can do this. Skills in action!

Life is messy, and we don’t always have the time, the headspace, or the patience to deal with tough topics exactly when we need to. But if we don’t take the reins of these conversations, we allow strangers—some kid in gym class or a random social media influencer—to take the first crack at it, so let’s take aim and do the best we can. There are awkward discussions at every turn and more nuanced conversations at every stage of life. We need to be ready.

Who Am I?

For the past thirty years, I’ve been reading, writing, presenting, and talking about children. As a child- and teen-development specialist, I’ve worked with kids from preschool age to college bound and beyond, including non-disabled kids, deaf kids, autistic kids, and kids with all kinds of mental disabilities and physical challenges. I’ve also founded girls’ groups to discuss body image and friendship and created classes to talk about bullying and character development.

Yet when I look back, I think my interest in conversations came not from my career but from an ugly experience in fifth grade—I was bullied and ostracized, and none of the key adults in my life knew quite what to say to me or the other kids involved. As you can imagine, feeling like you’re on your own at age ten, even when you are surrounded by adults who want to help you, can feel devastating. I decided I wanted to become the adult I needed when I was a child—the one who not only knew what to say but could also help other key adults know what to do and say when their kids needed them the most.

When I was completing my PhD at Tufts University at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development, focusing a great deal on children’s friendships, bullying, sense of self, and body image, I wrote a character education curriculum, Powerful Words. It is a system of scripts and support materials to help teachers, coaches, and after-school educators talk to children about everything from respect and responsibility to courage and perseverance. We used it in classes (my husband and I owned and ran a martial arts and fitness academy in Massachusetts for ten years), and it was used in other facilities worldwide. It still is.

But even a deep dive into the research and curriculum for kids didn’t fully prepare me for the real thing. Having your own wide-eyed child ask you why a friend doesn’t have a daddy or needs a wheelchair can put marbles in your mouth. I was (and am!) always finding ways to synthesize information across experts and translate their tips into scripts to be used on the fly. I’ve developed a reputation as a scriptician, and some parents have asked if I make house calls since it would be so much easier if you could just talk to my kids for me! Comments such as these are what led me to start the How to Talk to Kids about Anything podcast, where I am able to learn and disseminate the scripts I know parents, like myself, want and need, and it led me to this book.

How to Read This Book

Clearly, you can read this book any way you’d like. You can read it in its entirety and then go back to certain chapters when you need a refresher, or you can read it front to back or on a need-to-know basis. The chapters in this book represent nine of the topics I get asked about most often when I’m presenting at conferences or just sitting and talking to friends:

My son is so scared about the first day of school. What should I do? (Chapter 1)

My daughter’s complaining about being fat. Why? I’ve never told her she was or that it’s a bad thing. (Chapter 2)

I blew it. My son came out to me as gay, and I was totally tongue-tied. Did I mess him up for life? (Chapter 5)

My child has trouble making friends. How can I engage him to want to try? (Chapter 8)

My daughter said, ‘Mom, what does sex mean?’ Dr. Robyn, help! (Chapter 3)

Many answers to these complex questions, as you’ll read, have science behind them, but they have also been battle-tested within my own family. I’ve done ’em wrong, and I’ve done ‘em right, but the important part is that I’ve done them and learned a lot about what works for my brood and what doesn’t.

In this book, I’m giving you everything I’ve got—the mistakes I’ve made, the conversations I’ve had, and the studies out there to help guide you through all these wonderful and difficult conversations, big and small, with your children. By the end, you’ll not only have an anthology of tips, scripts, stories, and steps, but you’ll also have your own notes on what works and your own stories to share.

While this book is for you, our kids gain so much from all this as well. Yes, they gain insight and answers as well as the language they need to talk about these topics with others, but most importantly, they learn that the adults in their life are always a trusted source for information. We don’t bail when things get awkward or difficult. We show up. We pull up a chair. We listen and advise as needed. And in a world where communication has become increasingly muddied and sporadic, that’s really saying something.

Only we can offer our children the truth while keeping their developmental readiness in mind and their best interests at heart. As key adults in the lives of our children, we are their safe places, their buffers, their soundboards, their teachers, their best listeners, and their dependable advisers. When they are with us, we want them to know they can ask us anything—tell us anything—and we will step into that conversation with both feet, prepared with what they need in the moment.

And the best part? You don’t have to go it alone. We’re in this together. So let’s get talking.

Chapter 1

How to Talk to Kids about Anger, Sadness, and Other Big Feelings

How Can I Tell You How I Feel?

A boy took my son’s ball away from him on the playground. Being six years old and, in that moment, full of frustration, confusion, and anger, my son did the first thing that came to mind: he shoved the boy. When the initial rage subsided, my son’s irritation turned inward. My hands were so mad, and I couldn’t stop them from pushing, he grumbled to me later.

Big feelings happen, and when they do, they are often paired with intense, reflexive reactions that burst out without any thought or planning—hot, swirling, pitted, pent-up energy that can make people act in ways they never would under normal circumstances.

And I’m not just talking about children.

Angry parents and caretakers can scream, stomp, grunt, or slam the door better than any child. There are stretches of time when I feel like I need a sign that reads: It’s been x number of days since I lost my shit. We all have these moments. Why? Because we’re all human, we’re not perfect, and we all have our triggers. Dirty dishes in the sink? Check. Wet towels on the floor? Check. Rolled eyes, sharp tongues, and short tempers? Check, check, and check. For me, it’s the constant sibling bickering. There have been times when I’ve gotten so frustrated with my children for yelling at each other that I start to yell at them for yelling!

Of course, anger isn’t the only big feeling. There are many: sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, happiness—and a mishmash of everything in between. All told, there are some thirty-four thousand different emotions that can be felt and experienced in the human body.¹ The more we can experience, respond to, and get comfortable with them, the more we can

express and connect with others,

become emotionally agile,² and

reduce the intensity of unpleasant big feelings such as anxiety, fear,³ and loneliness.

That last point is important. Big feelings are how our bodies react to and cope with what is happening in the moment. They are hardwired into our brains, which means we can’t stop them. We need to feel them, express them, and regulate them in productive ways. The secret to being an emotionally intelligent parent, Dr. John Gottman, author of Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, writes, lay in how parents interacted with their children when emotions ran hot.⁴ I would add that the secret is also in understanding what’s happening in our children’s brains when they act out. As I’ve said to my own children, we must learn how to manage our big feelings so our big feelings don’t manage us!

It’s Not My Fault!: The Science behind Big Feelings

You might have heard that when our brains sense we are under attack, they throw us into fight-or-flight mode. That’s because the amygdala or feeling part of our brains (or the downstairs,⁵ primitive lower region, as neuropsychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel and parenting coach Dr. Tina Payne Bryson refer to it), sounds an alarm, sends down a gate, and puts the upstairs, thinking part of the brain on hiatus for a little while. When that amygdala gate is down, it blocks off the stairs between the two levels, leaving the downstairs (feeling) part in charge. This is what Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, calls emotional hijack (previously coined amygdala hijack)⁶ and what Dr. Dan Siegel refers to as flipping your lid.⁷

The hijacking is typically a good thing because we don’t have time to problem-solve and think through possible solutions in an emergency—when, for example, someone is setting fire to a building or taking a bat to a nearby beehive. We only have a short time to flee to safety.

Because the thinking part of our brains isn’t finished developing until our late twenties, our children’s brain alarm systems can be a little faulty. They can’t well distinguish the difference between an angry arsonist, a beehive basher, and their little sister taking their favorite toy away from them. Therefore, the lid gets flipped no matter how many times you say, It’s your sister’s turn. You already had a turn, so you shouldn’t be upset. In that moment, you’re using your upstairs thinking brain to reason with your children’s downstairs feeling brain—and your kids are not hearing you! You might as well be speaking a different language!

Emodiversity

While we may wish our kids could be happy all the time, as it turns out, they wouldn’t be healthy if they were. Studies show that those who experience emodiversity, a range and abundance of both negative and positive emotions, are happier and healthier than those who remain numb or tend to fixate on any one emotion for a long period of time. Additionally, in environments that place a premium on expressing only positive emotions, those who experience negative feelings tend to falter. As Susan David, PhD, psychologist and bestselling author of Emotional Agility says in her TED Talk, Tough emotions are part of our contract with life. You don’t get to have a meaningful career or raise a family or leave the world a better place without stress and discomfort.⁸

When we attempt to suppress emotional thoughts, feelings, and expressions, there can be negative consequences. Studies show that emotional inhibition and invalidation contribute to children becoming dysregulated, distressed, depressed, anxious, and more negative over time.⁹ When we try to reject, dismiss, and prematurely urge our children to move away from tough feelings, they can wind up with more of them. Plus, if we ignore or minimize our children’s feelings, we could hurt our relationship with them and make them feel lonely or even worthless.

Conversely, when parents accept their children’s feelings and view emotional displays as opportunities to empathize, connect, and strategize, kids tend to have fewer emotional and behavioral problems, including issues with anger, anxiety, and acting out. Feelings are just a message to us, Dr. Laura Markham, psychologist and author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting, told me. When you allow yourself to feel an emotion, it begins to dissipate and heal.¹⁰

Parents often ask me if they should be sharing their own negative feelings with their children. The knee-jerk reaction, of course, is to say no—we want to protect our kids from the unpleasant things in life. But research shows that parents and key adults who hide their negative feelings from their children may not only confuse them but also appear less emotionally available. In a recent study of 107 parents and their children, researchers at Washington State University found that when parents pretended everything was fine, the kids exhibited more signs of stress and, in fact, both parents and kids were less warm and engaged with one another.¹¹ Also, parents who admit to and cope with common negative feelings such as anger, sadness, and fear show kids how to handle these emotions, regulate them, and make a situation better.

The key to emodiversity is to feel a whole host of emotions—and express them in healthy ways. We don’t want them to build up and lie dormant. As Marc Brackett, PhD, author of Permission to Feel, so beautifully told Brené Brown on her podcast Unlocking Us, Hurt feelings don’t vanish on their own. They don’t heal themselves. If we don’t express our emotions, they pile up like a debt that will eventually come due.¹²

Bottom line? Every feeling has a purpose. Talking about uncomfortable emotions and embracing them can result in better mental and physical health and, potentially, greater happiness in our kids and ourselves.

Game

One, Two, Three, Feeling Face!

In my Powerful Words character curriculum, a comprehensive character education system I write for educators who work with children, when the powerful word is empathy, we do a game called One, Two, Three Feeling Face. It’s a game in which one child is the emoter and the other child/children are the guessers. The emoter faces away from the others, and we yell, One, two, three, feeling face! The emoter turns around, showing the feeling face of their choice, and the other kids have to guess which emotion it is. You can add in body language as well! The game is typically done in rapid fire and often leads to peals of laughter while kids learn about reading emotions.

Feelings at a Glance

When you’re teaching kids about emotions, it’s important to give them labels to choose from that pinpoint the nuances of the many emotions people can feel. Clearly, a child who is a little miffed needs a different label than one who is furious, just as a teen who feels a bit grouchy warrants a different label than one who is feeling distraught, depressed, or miserable.

Dr. Gloria Willcox, who invented the well-known feeling wheel, posits there are six core emotions: mad, sad, scared, peaceful, powerful, and joyful.¹³ Each one of these is then split into more specific feelings that vary in definition and intensity. Sad, for example, is split into words like depressed, ashamed, and guilty and then further split into labels such as remorseful, isolated, and inferior.

There are more simplified wheels or alternative images that provide somewhat different emotions, like that of Dr. Robert Plutchik, who proposed eight primary emotions: joy, sadness, disgust, fear, anger, anticipation, trust, and surprise (some of these you may recognize from the Disney/Pixar animated film Inside Out).¹⁴ The wheel shows variations of intensity and relatedness (like opposites sadness and joy or anger and fear) as well as mixed combinations of feelings (disgust + anger = contempt). These can all be used to help your child put names to a variety of emotions.

We can use the wheels by asking our kids to label how they are feeling, then pointing out how we think they are feeling based on their visual cues, how we are feeling, and how others are feeling:

You look quite serene, sitting there by the water, relaxing.

You’re banging your fists on the table—you must feel frustrated!

She’s sitting by herself and crying quietly. I wonder if she’s feeling lonely.

Your sister didn’t feel prepared for the test, so she was anxious about taking it.

There are so many kids in our new neighborhood. I’m hopeful we’ll all make a lot of new friends!

I know you were both surprised and sad to hear about your friend moving away.

Allowing your children to learn more precise ways to describe their feeling helps them gain understanding of what they’re experiencing. Also, according to educator and bestselling author Rosalind Wiseman, getting granular,¹⁵ or specific, about emotions allows young people to get the right help at the right time, especially when they’re anxious, depressed, distraught, lonely, suicidal, or otherwise troubled and in need of help.¹⁶ And it allows them to develop better social skills and peer relationships.

Print out a feelings chart, table, or wheel, and put it where your kids can see it, use it, and ask questions about it. Simple questions (such as How are you feeling right now? or When you look at your baby cousin’s face, can you guess how Sammy is feeling?) can increase your children’s emotional vocabulary.

Parenting Out Loud: Big Feelings

Modeling different feeling words can be a useful way to expand your child’s emotional glossary.

Say I’m feeling sad right now because I miss Grandma, so I’m going to spend some time baking and listening to music because that makes me feel a little happier.

Say I can feel myself getting angry inside my body, so I’m taking some deep breaths while I go for a walk to calm myself down.

This lets our kids know that we all have permission to feel and the power to positively cope with negative emotions in ways that make us feel better. We can even tell them we’re not failing for feeling, as emotional development expert Alyssa Blask Campbell said on my podcast.¹⁷ We all feel—including parents! Here are some other ways to provide the language our kids need to describe the feelings that are troubling them.

Scripts in a Pinch

Situation: Your child’s best friend moved away, and your child is crying. This friend won’t be able to come to your child’s birthday party and/or they won’t be in class together next year.

Script: "It’s okay to feel sad when your friend moves away. [Child’s name] was a very good friend to you, and you feel so disappointed that your friend won’t be at your birthday party or in your classroom next school year. These kinds of feelings hurt. I’m here for you whenever you need me!"

Situation: Your child is yelling, I hate you! or You’re a bad parent! or You’re a poopy head! in the supermarket because you wouldn’t buy them the cereal they wanted.

Script: "You are clearly very angry with me! You wanted that cereal very badly, and you are furious that I am saying no to your request. It’s okay to feel frustrated, but I don’t like being called names, and when you yell, it’s hard to hear what you’re trying to tell me. I’m right here if you want to talk more about it calmly and pick out a cereal from this area."

Situation: Your child is hiding behind you when meeting the new teacher and pulls you toward the hallway. Your child says, I want to leave and go home. I hate it here.

Script: "I’m getting the idea that you feel nervous about being here and meeting your new teacher. What’s going on? Are you worried about something? You can tell me how you feel!"

ARE YOU AN EMOTION SUPPRESSOR OR EMOTION EXPRESSER?

Be sure to declare your home (or classroom or sports field) a safe place to feel. Ask yourself these questions:

Do I show an awareness of my child’s emotions, whether positive or negative?

Do I label and share my feelings with my children in age-appropriate ways so they can see how to handle them in healthy ways?

Do I use my child’s emotional expression as an opportunity to connect and teach or discourage and punish?

Am I an empathetic and supportive listener who validates my children’s feelings?

Do I actively label my children’s emotions so they have the language to express themselves?

Do I make myself available to assist my child to discuss, problem-solve, and cope with a frustrating situation in an age-appropriate, positive way?

Do I show my child that I feel a range of emotions, positive and negative, and I am able to express them in healthy ways?

Quick Tip

WIG-ing

Psychologist and communication expert Eran Magen, PhD, developed an ingenious way to reflect our children’s feelings and show them that we’re listening and working to understand their tough emotions. It’s summed up in the acronym WIG (short for what I got),¹⁸ as in, What I got from what you said is that you are really upset that Morgan told Taylor your secret.

As Ned Johnson, coauthor of What Do You Say, explained on my podcast, WIG-ing can

show our children that we get them, which is the single most important way to calm hard emotions and make sure someone feels heard.

stop us from jumping into problem-solving, blaming, and advice giving. Instead, WIG-ing gives us time to count to ten in our heads before moving into action.¹⁹

Big Feeling: Anger

I remember when my then-eight-year-old son picked up my daughter’s protractor, which she had borrowed from one of her beloved fourth-grade teachers for her math assignment. He just wanted to look at it but also, with the telling smirk of a little brother, wanted to bother his sister—you know, just a little bit. While my daughter barked, Don’t touch it, called her brother "so annoying," and chased him through the kitchen, my son impulsively flicked the flimsy piece of plastic onto the ground, where it broke it into four jagged pieces.

The result wasn’t intentional, and he bellowed in his defense, "I didn’t know it would break!" My daughter, red-faced and furious, yelled, pointed, and cried at the injustice. She swore she’d never, ever talk to him again.

Perhaps you might call me delusional, but I thought (fantasized?) that by the time my kids were in upper elementary school, it would be pretty much smooth sailing for a while, but feelings don’t take a hiatus. Anger doesn’t evaporate as children get older. However, starting when they’re young, we can teach children to cope with anger in ways that allow them to express it, manage it, and deal with it when it gets out of control.

What makes children escalate or melt down?²⁰

Unmet needs: They’re thirsty, but they forgot to take their water bottle to the park.

Unmet expectations: They thought they were going to spend the afternoon playing with friends, but you need to take them to the dentist.

Cognitive inflexibility: They want to wear their favorite sweatshirt to school, but it’s wet and in the wash. They insist that no other sweatshirt will do.

Inattention: You have a big deadline that has to be met, and you’re unable to play with them at that moment.

Impulsivity: They take their little sister’s new stuffed animal. She screams and hits them, so they shove her.

Fatigue: They stayed up late last night and woke up early this morning. Even brushing their teeth is a hassle.

Hunger or poor nutrition: They skipped breakfast and picked at their lunch, and now it’s almost 2:00 p.m., and they’re hangry.

Traumatic life experiences: They’ve just been through something upsetting and/or hurtful, such as a messy divorce, an abusive home situation, or the loss of a loved one.

These underlying causes can frame meltdowns and help us both understand the triggers and address them.

Quick Tip

Eye Level Tantrum Taming

It’s not unusual for a young child to have as many as nine tantrums per week, according to Denis Sukhodolsky, a clinical psychologist at Yale Child Study Center.²¹ That entails fits of crying, kicking, stomping, hitting, and pushing for five to ten minutes.

It’s normal to get frustrated with your children in these moments, bark orders, and make yourself sound and appear large and in charge. But this can backfire by escalating the very behaviors you are trying to squelch. Instead of derailing your child further with an intimidating presence or loud voice, use eye level empathy and quiet understanding:

Crouch or sit down to get to eye level.

Take some deep breaths to help encourage coregulation.

Validate all feelings while confirming that you understand the situation. Say softly, I can see you’re upset. You wanted to pick the movie tonight, but it’s your sister’s turn. You want it to be your turn. You’re clearly very frustrated.

As author L. R. Knost says, When little people are overwhelmed by big emotions, it’s our job to share our calm, not join their chaos.²²

When Your Children Feel Angry

Anger gets expressed in many ways. Sometimes it’s quiet and brooding, and other times it can be loud, in your face, or even coupled with unsafe or unkind behaviors. When anger brings potentially dangerous or emotionally harmful actions with it, follow the CARES formula.

CONFIRM AND COMFORT

What to do: When children are angry, validate their feelings. This helps to calm people down, as they feel seen, heard, and understood. You can offer a hug or simply be a calming presence.

What to say:

It’s okay to feel angry. It’s hard when your brother comes into your room without knocking and you want your privacy. I’m here to listen.

How frustrating! You and your friend planned to play after school today, and now she’s unavailable. I get why you feel angry. That stinks!

ASSERT

What to do: In a recent podcast interview, Deena Margolin, LMFT, and parent coach Kristin Gallant—the creators of the company and curriculum Big Little Feelings—talked about okaying the feeling but also upholding the boundaries (or bumpers, as they call them) of kindness and safety consistently and unwaveringly.²³

What to say:

While it’s normal to feel many different emotions, it’s not all right to act on those feelings in a mean, unfair, or unsafe way.

It’s okay to be mad at your brother, but it’s not okay to use angry hands to hit or hurt. (Or, as Margolin and Gallant structure the communication, I can’t let you hit him.)

REMIND AND RESULT

What to do: Use natural or related consequences rather than unwarranted or unrelated punishment to teach. It’s important to keep others safe and unharmed while we help our children cope with intense emotions.

What to say:

We can’t throw sand at our friends, even if we’re angry [reminder], so we’ll need to leave the sandbox to calm our body and keep our friends safe [result].

You can also remind your child, Remember, when you get angry, you can take three deep breaths, pound your Play-Doh, or listen to the music you put aside for this on your iPad.

EXPLAIN AND EMPATHIZE

What to do: Later, when your child is calm, willing, and able to talk, link the natural or related result to what happened (or could have happened).

What to say:

We needed to leave the sandbox to calm our body because throwing sand can hurt someone’s eyes.

We needed to put the game away because hitting is unsafe and hurtful. It can be frustrating when you’re playing a game and your little brother isn’t sticking to the rules. (This can also be used to convey different perspectives: Remember when you threw sand at Olivia because you were feeling angry? What could have happened to her eyes? What is a safe action to take next time you’re feeling angry?)

SCHEDULE

What to do: Remember to try again! Kids learn how to cope with anger by practicing. Schedule another opportunity for your children to regulate their emotions in real time.

What to say:

We can try playing with this toy again after dinner.

We can come back to the park tomorrow and try again.

While our knee-jerk reaction may be to punish unsafe or unfair behaviors in the moment, using the CARES format can help build connection, create understanding, and relay learning over time.

The format is also helpful when our own anger gets the best of us:

It’s okay that I felt angry when your brother wasn’t following directions before school. (Confirm/Comfort)

It isn’t okay that I screamed at him. (Assert).

Saying mean words in that tone makes people feel small and sad. I needed to leave the room so I could cool my temper, wash my face, and take a few deep breaths. Next time, I’ll try to do that. (Remind/Result)

It’s important that I apologize to you now because yelling is not a kind way to communicate my feelings to others—even when I get angry and when I’m worried we’ll be late. I imagine that my loud voice scared you too, so I want to say ‘I’m sorry.' (Explain/Empathize).

Next time I start feeling frustrated, I’ll give myself a big hug and tell myself, ‘It’s not an emergency. I’m okay,’ so I have a better chance of keeping my temper in check. Let’s come up with a plan to leave for school a little earlier tomorrow so we can get in the car without all the yelling and have a pleasant ride. We can even have a dance party in the car! (Schedule)

The CARES formula keeps empathy for ourselves and others at the forefront while also providing the opportunity for a new understanding. It allows us to model that (1) it’s okay to make mistakes, (2) we need to acknowledge how