What is emotion coaching?
Being an emotion coach requires adults to respond fully to young children’s expressions of their feelings and to help them to learn to regulate them for themselves — not just to make them feel better but as a crucial part of building their emotional resilience and assisting their development into fulfilled, balanced human beings.
Emotion coaching presents the perspective that the brain is a whole-body social entity and it is through interactions with the world and — most critically — through relationships that it grows and develops into an integrated, fully functional organ.
This process continues throughout life and it is the balanced, integrated brain that is the key to achieving a happy successful life.
Wherever adults care for children, within families or a childcare facility, they are creating relational spaces where they, as the adults, can be happy, balanced motivated individuals and children can be nurtured and grow to their fullest potential.
Emotion coaching with babies
Within an early years provision, attachment and attunement is dependent on the relationship you have with the babies you care for, as well as with parents.
As a key person, your role is to gradually get to know babies through the settling-in process.
Babies and toddlers need to form a close trusting relationship with you in order to build a secure attachment.
Ideally, to achieve consistency and continuity babies should not change their key person in their first two years.
Babies cannot keep building new relationships with a new carer without it having an effect on their emotional well-being.
The same person and same routine is key
You should always be responsible for the routine aspects of care for your key children, as it is through these seemingly unimportant tasks that attachment is built.
Feeding is a time of closeness, intimacy and affection. Being rocked to sleep at rest time is comforting and soothing so promotes security. Nappy changing or personal care is a time of trust and playfulness.
Sometimes it can seem easier to organise this work between staff on a rota basis, but that is not helpful for babies as it is hard for them to cope with being handled by different people.
These tasks are relational so should be done by you, as their key person, or in your absence, a designated back-up key person.
Emotion coaching with babies starts with the key person relationship and builds on from settling-in.
The importance of secure attachment
Careful attention should be paid to the emotional expressions of babies and these should never receive dismissive or disapproving responses.
Babies cry for a reason, not because they are deliberately miserable or want to be difficult.
Settled babies will rarely cry unless they are hungry, startled, lonely or tired, and crying inconsolably is not a ‘normal’ part of settling-in.
It means that babies are not securely attached because settling-in has not been done properly.
When babies feel insecure, their brain goes off-line, and they become distressed.
A happy secure baby is in their river of well-being[i], allowing for their brain to grow and develop normally.
Bearing in mind that brain growth in the first year is faster than at any other point in their life, then the importance of optimum opportunity for that through secure relationships cannot be underestimated.
Take your time and find the best way to soothe
When babies are distressed, they are calmed by carrying and rocking, firstly because the warm closeness of their carer’s body is reassuring and secondly because their brains are wired to respond to gentle, repetitive rhythmic movement.
Some babies who are very distressed and/or sensitive need to be wrapped to their carer’s body with a sling to provide ongoing closeness and movement.
It is better to take the time and persevere with finding the right soothing and calming answer for a baby’s distress.
Not only do your physical actions act as calming strategies for babies, but so does the sound of your voice and your non-verbal communications.
Body language and facial expressions provoke responses in babies, e.g. a smile in return for a smile, conversely negative or closed body language will create distress.
These are highly sensitive responses to stimuli gleaned from your mood and attitude.
Reassure babies with a gentle voice and kind words
Babies respond to the way adults talk to them in an almost musical way with their bodies, moving arms and legs in sync with the sounds they hear as well as the sounds they make in responding.
Babies’ brains are social brains and they require connection with others, most of all those carers with whom they are attuned and can experience contingent communication.
Responding to babies distress requires empathic and soothing words and intonations.
For example, by saying:
‘Aah. Are you feeling tired? Come, let’s get blankie.’
‘It’s ok sweetheart, food is coming soon, yes it is. Not long now, yes, I know you are hungry and you want your bottle.’
‘Did that make you jump? Did it scare you? It’s all right, there now, shhh, it’s alright. I’m here.’
Choose your words carefully
As babies get older, the language your use, rather than just the sound of your speech, becomes more important.
This is when the words used to comfort become as important as the physical nature of that comfort, so how you respond verbally to the emotional expression of toddlers is important.
By now, all the words that have been used that just sounded good before will have meaning to toddlers which will help them understand their feeling states - tired, hungry, scared - and that these states can be dispelled by soothing movement and comforting speech.
Words or phrases that describe big feelings, such as happy, sad, cross, fed up, excited, tired, had enough, cannot cope, missing mummy/daddy and hungry, help toddlers to not only feel secure in knowing that they have been understood but that they now have a way of self-recognising their big feelings and are learning to put those feelings into words for themselves.
It also gives the message that not only do you recognise their feeling states, but that you also validate them.
Helping very young children recognise and name their feeling states while they still rely on you to regulate them is an important step in the milestone of emotional self-regulation.
Emotion coaching for babies entails keeping them feeling calm and safe so that they can enjoy a relationship with you, other babies and have fun playing.
Relationships and play all stimulate the brain and promote its growth and integration.
[i] Seigel, D & Payne Bryson, T. (2012) The Whole-Brain Child:12 Proven Strategies to Nurture your Child’s Developing Mind. London: Robinson.
Learn to become an emotion coach
This blog post was an extract from Alliance publication which explains the neuroscience behind emotional resilience and outlines techniques that early years practitioners can use to create an environment which supports emotional development and promotes listening and talking together.
It is available now to order from the Alliance shop.
and receive 20% off.
Simply quote EC120.
Delivery is expected in late January.
