Creative ways to help your tween girl manage her emotions

Dear Carly, In the past month, I’ve seen my tween girl going through a lot of changes with her moods – it seriously seems like it happened over night! One day, she was cheerful and agreeable and now she’s happy one minute and devastated about something the next. She’ll be hugging her little sister and in the next breath, she’ll be yelling at her and running off to her room. What should I do?! ~ Dazed and Confused

The tween years are infamous for marking the beginning of the storm of emotions that can intensify as your daughter becomes a teen. It can often feel like it happens overnight. It can feel that way for your daughter too. As a tween girl, it can feel scary when these new experiences of emotion hit.

While your daughter feels her emotions, she doesn’t yet have the abstract thoughts to understand what’s happening. This is the perfect time to introduce her to some tools she can use to learn to handle all of the new things she’s experiencing.

A roadblock many parents I work with come up against is that their daughters don’t want to talk to them about challenging emotions. I’ve learned that the girls feel embarrassed. They want relief and to feel empowered so that they can handle these things. They don’t want to have to talk about it or be observed as they are exploring new territory.

Here are 3 tools to empower your daughter and help her to manage her emotions. These are things that give her the chance to explore on her own, bring her own personality to and experiment with.

1. Use music

Chances are your tween girl is interested in music and enjoys zoning out with her headphones. You can help her use this interest in a conscious way to help her balance her emotions. This is always a favorite activity with my tween girl students.

Challenge your daughter to create music playlists to help balance or inspire an emotion. To balance out angry feelings, you might make a playlist of songs that help you calm down and relax. To balance out feelings of sadness, create a playlist of songs that help you feel happy and cheerful. For times when you want to build your confidence and self-esteem, create a playlist that helps you feel powerful and strong.

2. Use positive affirmations

The inner critic you’re likely familiar with as an adult can emerge strongly for tween girls. This is when we can start to see negative self-talk developing in girls. They’re starting to compare themselves to others as a way of learning who they are.

Positive affirmations are such a good tool to introduce at this time! Girls can learn ways to counteract the negative thoughts that come up and balance the emotions that come along with them. Practice stating positive affirmations in the morning before school or at night before bed. Write them down and post them around the house as reminders.

Or, hang up a 108 Positive Affirmations Poster in your daughter’s room so she’ll constantly be surrounded by empowering language!

Here are some examples of affirmations you can share with your daughter: I am confident. I am loved. I can overcome my fears. I am calm. I am important. You and your daughter can use these examples as inspiration to create affirmations that are unique to her.

Related Post: 108 Positive Affirmations to Empower Tween Girls

3. Start a journal

Tween girls are starting to have a lot of new things on their minds- from dealing with friends, siblings and school, trying to handle conflict on their own, to dealing with their changing body and emotions. This is a perfect time to introduce the practice of writing in a journal.

Depending on her learning style, your daughter can write in a notebook or keep a journal on the computer, or maybe she wants to record her thoughts on video. What matters most is that she have a safe, private space to explore her inner world and release her emotions.

Your tween can free flow and write whatever comes to mind. It can also be helpful to use journal prompts as a way to spark inspiration. Journaling is an excellent tool for learning how to manage your emotions.

Related Post: Journaling with Tween Girls

When you give your daughter the gift of these tools now, you empower her with some valuable tools she can use to navigate the challenges of her teen years.

To help girls get started practicing things that will help them build a foundation of confidence that will last throughout their lives, I’ve created a list of 108 Ways to Balance your Emotions, Build Happiness and Be Your Best, True Self. You can access it by joining below: