The Power of Emotional Acceptance by Kitty Black, author of Follow Your Feelings

These were the thoughts going through my head as I sat on the floor of my kid’s room after having retrieved their sibling’s favourite toy from the rubbish bin, again:

One, lockdown had taken my child to a level of passive-aggressiveness that I found both impressive and exhausting. Two, nothing I’d done so far had curbed this behaviour.

Three, my kid looked miserable.

Their sad eyes stopped the lecture I had been mentally drafting. Instead, I told them a story about when I was a child and I put the basically empty water jug back into the fridge instead of filling it up. My brother was blamed, and my revenge was complete. My kid’s jaw dropped, ‘You did that?’ they asked. Relieved that their behaviour was not the pinnacle of naughtiness, the tears came, and they crawled into my lap and hiccupped their way through an explanation of wanting their sibling to play with them.

‘I wonder how you were feeling?’ I asked. The feelings were discovered to be a combination of loneliness and boredom, and less concerning strategies than both toy-binning and water-jug framing were explored.

Feelings are the basis of humanity. Feelings inform our decisions, whether we are immediately conscious of them or not. When we have the space available to accept our feelings, they can offer insight into our workings and needs. Feelings are a building block of relationships. Yet, we often rush through our feelings, seeking to return to an equilibrium that is unsustainable and unrealistic. The avoidance of feelings can also serve to intensify them. Patience and acceptance are key.

As a parent and someone who worked with kids in psychology and education, I wrote my new picture book series Follow Your Feelings because I wanted kids to have accessible, relatable stories about feelings, and how we cycle through them – especially in these times of stress and uncertainty. The willingness to experience and accept feelings shapes life-long emotional skills. Also, feelings happen. Like, all the time. Particularly to kids.

Sometimes, the feelings don’t appear to make any actual sense. Any caregiver who’s attempted to reason with a small child over the difference between the blue cup and the green cup when the small child is certain the blue cup holds everything that is wonderful and good, and the green cup is the fount of all disappointment will understand. Sometimes we go with acceptance over clarity and that’s okay.

Whilst feelings are relatively constant, individual feelings don’t last forever. But when we’re in the midst of some feelings, particularly negative ones, we forget that. Uncomfortable feelings aren’t fun. We don’t like them, and we tend to distance ourselves from them. For kids, engaging in impulsive behaviour is one way they might distance themselves from any negative feelings. Avoidance tactics are also popular.

The Follow Your Feelings books depict common (and some uncommon yet amusing) behaviours as part of the story in an accessible, non-judgemental way. To our eternal astonishment, impulsive and avoidant behaviour rarely yield the result we’re looking for. With practice and understanding, children (and um, adults) can move through this part of the cycle more quickly.

When we name a feeling, we immediately gain access to options. We know what we’re working with, and maybe we’ve even worked with this particular feeling before. Naming a feeling offers a crucial separation between emotion and self. For example, feeling sad doesn’t mean you are a sad person. Sadness is a transient feeling that will come and go, not a fixed personality. It is important for kids to understand that the experience of a negative emotion is separate to their identity. Even if your kid once declared after missing out on cake that ‘Cake is my heart and soul and now I am nothing.’ They’ll be fine, trust me.

A helpful strategy is to externalise feelings as characters. This can offer distance and make starting a conversation around feelings much easier. Kids might like to draw their feelings and give them a name. Children who might not engage with the question ‘Why were you feeling frustrated?’ could get on board with ‘Tell me about Frustration Frog?’ instead.

Feelings also offer us information. Through feelings, we can learn where our values lie, the relationships that are most important to us and the situations that offer us the most joy. We can also learn what loneliness, hurt and disappointment feel like. We use our feelings as springboards for empathy, understanding and as guidelines for what we do and don’t find acceptable. We learn that we can be uncomfortable and brave at the same time. Through information, we can develop solutions and methods for meeting the needs of our feelings. Whether that’s realising the way to convince your sibling to play ponies is by introducing a herd of monsters for them to battle, or by setting up a Zoom call with a friend who plays ‘properly.’

Through emotional acceptance, we can teach kids to manage and interact with their emotional landscape in positive, healthy ways. My hope is that following our feelings takes us all to the best places.

Max and Worry and Lucy and Sad in the Follow Your Feelings series are out now.

Kitty Black is the author of the Follow Your Feelings picture book series. She has a background in psychology and research as has worked as a school Wellbeing Coordinator. Follow Your Feelings: Lucy and Sad and Max and Worry are out now through Affirm Press.