For Mint Lounge
Published on 10 November 2024
From a young age, children begin to verbalise their feelings, making it an ideal time to introduce concepts like anxiety and envy in simple terms.
The conversation around Inside Out 2 seems to be still going strong, months after its release. It offers food for thought to adults as well, especially the climax scene—the one in which the 13-year-old protagonist, Riley, has a panic attack. Her heart races as Anxiety, the new emotion introduced in the story, takes over. It’s a downward spiral until a certain sense of self-acceptance kicks in, that her sense of self is a combination of all that is good in her, combined with the not-so-pleasant thoughts and memories. “Perhaps if we had understood these emotions better as children, we would have handled them better as adults,” a mother to an 11-year-old told me recently. Counsellors agree with this stream of thought. They believe that it is important to talk about emotions with children from a very young age, even the complex ones. This prepares them for the uncertainties and vagaries of the future.
According to Mumbai-based child psychologist, Payal Narang, such conversations need to start as early as three to four years of age. “At this age, children begin to recognise and verbalise their feelings, making it an ideal time to introduce concepts like anxiety, envy and embarrassment in simple terms,” she says. Open communication about emotions helps children manage their own feelings, fosters emotional intelligence and builds a strong parent-child relationship.
Emotional competence—or how children learn to express and control their emotions—is crucial. In the movie’s prequel, Riley was shown as an 11-year-old girl, who had just moved cities and was adjusting to a new life. The core emotions at that point—Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger—reflected the way the child responded to certain situations. In the sequel, she is shown to have hit puberty and four new emotions—Anxiety, Envy, Embarrassment and Ennui—join in.
Content creator and parenting influencer, Stuti Agarwal, who watched the movie with her six-year-old son and three-year-old daughter, feels that as a family, each of their understanding (of the film) varied depending on their age. “My son could understand most of the movie, my daughter not so much,” she says. “But if you ask me, children are more perceptive than we realise. By talking about complex emotions, like they show in the movie, we help them understand aspects crucial to their emotional and mental well-being.”
Talking about negative emotions, particularly like anger, sadness and envy, helps develop this competence. “Talking about the good feelings is easy; about the bad ones, not so much,” says Vadodara-based parenting coach Nirali Jain, “As a parent, if I were to share my own experience with negative emotions and how I handle it, my child would be able to recognise and regulate hers.”
Gurugram-based parenting researcher, Snigdha Anand, particularly likes the way the movie has treated the ‘negative’ emotions. Although they seemed like the villains initially, the story goes on to underline the purpose of every emotion. For example, fear protects us from dangers that we see and anxiety protects from dangers that could be. “As parents, we typically ignore these so-called negative emotions and sometimes incorrectly label children as ‘difficult’ or ‘snobbish’. As a result they may become aloof, unable to process this surge of myriad emotions and seemingly no one understands,” she says.
So how does one go about talking about these big feelings with the little ones?
Books and films can be good starting points, says Agarwal, sharing her experience of discussing peer pressure and self-acceptance with her six-year-old after reading, Giraffes can’t dance. “Share your day and your feelings with your child at the end of the day and encourage them to share theirs too,” Narang adds. “If a child does not learn how to share their feelings appropriately, they would start internalising it. That can lead to pent up emotions for years and undue stress.”
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