Happy people are so much fun to be around and most people can tend to feel pressured to be happy all the time. Or at least, they want to appear happy. They may even divide their emotions into two camps; the positive emotions and the negative ones.

It’s actually natural for you to want to be in a good mood all the time. It just feels better and is the way to have more positive experiences in your life, but being happy every moment of every day isn’t realistic or possible.

Even though you know on an intellectual level that this isn’t possible, you may still try to suppress your feelings to protect your child’s sense of wellbeing. Kids will always sense this and know if your being truthful with them.

This can set up conflicting emotions in your kids because they’re very sensitive to your energy. Have you ever noticed this when you tell them you’re feeling good and you aren’t?They hear the words proclaiming that everything’s fine, but they feel the energy that clearly tells them it isn’t. This conflict can ultimately lead your kids to distrust their their own Internal Guidance System (IGS)because on this gut level they know the truth but are being told otherwise. Sharing what you’re authentically feeling will help your kids feel the consistency with their IGS.

Being authentic helps teach your children to be authentic. If you pretend that you’re happy all the time and have a smile on your face no matter how you’re feeling, you’re not being true to yourself or anyone else around you.

Let your kids know that everyone experiences a range of emotions and that it’s okay to feel and express them. This includes negative emotions like anger or sadness.

This doesn’t mean you want to teach them to wallow in their sadness and it doesn’t mean anyone wants to listen to constant temper tantrums.

It’s important that kids understand that it’s healthy to express their emotions so they can get it out of their system and work on feeling better again. When you try to bury your feelings, it’s literally like putting sand on top of them. You can’t bury a feeling forever. Unexpressed emotions will always surface over time. It takes energy to hold negative emotion in and when you do this, it’s really difficult to let positive energy in or out.

There’s always a positive spin on how to look at things, even your negative emotions. The good thing about feeling bad is that it helps you identify and clarify what you want. Being able to identify what feels bad is actually a good thing. You don’t have to linger on the bad feeling, but you can notice it and figure out what you need to do to feel better and restore your wellbeing.

Feeling and expressing all emotion is an important facet of life to teach your children so they can learn to express their authentic selves.

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© 2015. Sharon Ballantine. All Rights Reserved.