Then you're ready to see the situation from his perspective, and you can reflect his emotions back to him in soothing, non-critical words. But as you draw out your children, you can better assess their emotional situations. By listening carefully, you also have refrained from jumping in with a ready-made solution. Instead, you have given your children a chance to express their emotions and, in the process, search for their own solutions to the problems at hand. Help your children find words to name their emotions .
Words have power.
When you help your children label their feelings, you give them some control of those feelings. Naming emotions helps a child transform a scary or vague feeling into something real that can be defined and is normal. The child knows he doesn't like the fact that other children are being called on in school. But he hasn't yet reached the developmental milestone of abstract thinking, so he cannot identify his uncomfortable feeling. If we use the term, jealousy to name it, he learns that the amorphous feeling he has whenever other children are given special attention in class is acceptable.