Alvin Thomas, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, also emphasized the importance of talking about your emotions as a parent. This approach prevents your children from making up anxiety-based stories to explain why the adults around them are behaving differently.
“It is OK, for instance, to say to your child that dad is feeling a little sad or a little frustrated,” he explained. “It expands the child’s emotional vocabulary, teaches them to talk through their emotions, and models for them how to do this. Then you could go on to give age-appropriate reasoning. Dad is feeling frustrated because dad was really hoping for something, but it did not happen.”