Your Parenting Mojo - Respectful, Research-based Parenting Ideas To Help Kids Thrive

Understanding Emotions: Insights from Dr. Lisa Feldman BarrettHave you ever wondered where our emotions come from?Do you think that if you look at a person’s face, you can have a pretty good idea of how they’re feeling?But at the same time, do your child’s feelings seem mysterious to you, like you can’t figure them out?Listener Akiko introduced me to Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett's theory of where our emotions come from, and I found it fascinating. It presents compelling evidence that the ways we've thought about emotions up to now may be entirely wrong.We might think we can match a specific arrangement of facial features (like a scowl) with a particular emotion (like anger), but not everyone scowls when they're angry and people also scowl when they aren't angry.We tend to infer characteristics about our child from things like their tone, so we might hear a 'snarky' tone and think: "My child doesn't respect me," when actually they're feeling hurt because their need for consideration hasn't been met.And sometimes t