Liam caught his finger in a lid of a Tupperware, and started to whine. Rather than dismissing him, I asked him lots of questions about the pain, one of which was whether it felt like a crab had pinched him.
The tears stopped instantly, as he was very intrigued by what a crab pinch felt like and he happily carried on a conversation about crabs, and their pinches and when they would pinch etc.
Although I know that this isn’t really acknowledging his emotions, I still did something different and it was better than what I was doing before!
Liam caught his finger in a lid of a Tupperware, and started to whine. Rather than dismissing him, I asked him lots of questions about the pain, one of which was whether it felt like a crab had pinched him. The tears stopped instantly, as he was very intrigued by what a crab pinch felt like and he happily carried on a conversation about crabs, and their pinches and when they would pinch etc. Although I know that this isn’t really acknowledging his feelings, I still did something different and it was better than what I was doing before!