The Kimochis^® Start School series, produced by Strathcona County’s Family Resource Network and Mental Health Capacity Building team, continues with a three-minute video for you and your child to watch together about Cloud, another one of the Kimochi^® characters. Cloud teaches us about the hard-to-have feelings of sad and mad. Cloud reminds us that all feelings are OK. We can be sad and mad, but we need to remember it’s not OK to hurt anyone when we’re feeling that way. Breathing is a very powerful way to calm our body and our brain. The video includes suggestions about ways to practice breathing. It’s important to practice breathing when we’re calm, so that tool is available to help us when we’re having big feelings.

There are, of course, other ways to take care of our feelings. This brief article is about a caregiver’s role in helping children cope with their big emotions.

Some things parents can do at this stage are:

• Help children recognize what’s going on for them physically when feelings are happening—for example, are they breathing hard or tensing their muscles. This conversation could happen after the feeling passes.
• Simply acknowledge and let feelings happen without immediately trying to reason, convince or distract them out of their feelings—while still ensuring everyone is safe.
• Share your calm if you can or take a break if you need to.

One of the activities shared below the video is talking with your child about things they can do when they’re having hard-to-have feelings. This can be a great tool to refer to when these feelings inevitably come up!

The EIPS Early Learning team has also complied information around building independence. Children generally have a natural inclination to move toward doing things themselves or letting us know how they want things done. Facilitating this independence is an important way to build feelings of confidence and resiliency. Sometimes children struggle with certain self-help skills. This short video offers suggestions to think about when we ask children to participate in self-help activities and some strategies to support them when common barriers come up.

Think about setting your child up for success in the early days of kindergarten. For example, shoes and clothing they can easily manage can go a long way to helping them both feel and be independent. Labeling all personal items, so adults can easily help them find their things when needed, is also helpful.

If your child has significant barriers to working on self-help skills—for example, motor or language challenges—we can work to support your child in increasing independence by finding ways to adjust their part in the task and allow for choice and voice in the activity.

Another way to build skills, confidence, resilience and family togetherness is to adapt a ‘teamwork’ mentality to household chores. This differs a bit from assigning chores in isolation or paying for chores to be done. In essence, children have a meaningful role to play in the household and work is done together as a family. Variety and novelty often go a long way to keeping kids engaged in these jobs. Celebrating together when something is accomplished is also motivating. Here are some suggestions for age-appropriate ways children can help around the house. The bonus is children often carry over these skills and mindset to the school environment.