Last week I told you about my theory on preteens and teens and the all-caps YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND (if you missed it, the short version: they usually mean I don’t understand, not you). Naming what you feel matters – it’s the whole reason The Feelings Field Guide exists. But naming a feeling and knowing what to do with it are two completely different skills, and nobody handed either of my kids a manual for either one.
This week’s pages in the guide are the “now what” pages – what to actually do once you’ve figured out you’re frustrated, or overwhelmed, or something you can’t quite name yet. If last week was about noticing the weather, this week is about knowing where to find an umbrella.
Here’s what’s inside, and why I built it the way I did.
Naming It Was Only Half the Job
For a while I genuinely thought if my kids could identify what they were feeling, the rest would sort itself out. Name it to tame it, right? Mostly right. But naming a feeling without a next step is a little like correctly diagnosing a flat tire and then just standing next to the car, nodding at it.
Maybe a child can now tell you she’s disappointed instead of just dissolving into a puddle on the kitchen floor (real, measurable progress). But “disappointed” still needs somewhere to go. It needs an actual option – something to try, something to do with her hands or her breath or her next five minutes – or the feeling just sits there, getting bigger.
That’s the gap this week’s four pages are built to close. Not just “here’s what you feel,” which we covered last week, but “here’s an actual menu of things you can try when you feel it.” A feelings chart tells you where you are. A calm-down page tells you where the door is.
Naming the feeling out loud (even just internally) took the edge off the initial explosion, but they still needed somewhere productive to put the leftover energy. Knowing you’re anxious doesn’t make the anxious feeling go away. It just means you’re now anxious and aware of it, which honestly can make things worse for about ninety seconds before it gets better.
The Calm Down Menu: 24 Ways to Reset
The “Things I Can Do to Calm Down” page is exactly what it sounds like: 24 concrete, low-effort options a kid can pick from when their brain is too loud to think straight. Deep breaths. Draw something. Go outside and look for bugs. Squeeze a pillow. Count backward from twenty. Ask for a hug. Get a drink of water. Some of them sound almost too simple to work, and that’s kind of the point – simple things you’ll actually do beat elaborate things you won’t.
The chart makes it so when your child is upset, it’s easy to pick a de-escalation strategy.
None of these are groundbreaking on their own. What’s different is having a printed list a kid can actually see and point to, which is a completely different experience than a parent yelling “just calm down” from across the room (which, statistically, has never once calmed anyone down, ever, in the recorded history of parenting).
The point of a menu instead of a script is choice. A kid who’s overwhelmed doesn’t need a lecture on why they’re overwhelmed. They need options, quickly, that don’t require them to explain themselves first. That’s true for a six-year-old melting down over a broken crayon and a sixteen-year-old who just got a text they didn’t want.
Solve It Step by Step (Because Feelings Aren’t Facts)
Once the big feeling has settled even a little, there’s usually an actual problem sitting underneath it – a fight with a sibling, a hard math page, a friend who said something unkind, a plan that didn’t go the way it was supposed to. The “Solve It Step by Step” page walks kids through a simple process: what happened, how you feel about it, what you actually want, and what you could try.
This is the page I use the most, honestly, because it slows everyone down – myself included. A feeling wants to be the whole story. It wants to stand in for the facts, the plan, and the apology all at once. This page insists on separating “I’m mad” from “here’s what I could actually do about being mad,” which is a distinction most adults haven’t fully mastered either (raising my own hand here).
I’ve watched this page turn what would have been a twenty-minute standoff into about four minutes of actual problem-solving, mostly because it gives everyone a shared structure instead of two people talking past each other at increasing volume.
Growing My Mindset and the Words We Repeat
The last two pages this week – Growing My Mindset and the affirmation cards, paired with an “I Am…” list – are about what kids tell themselves after the moment has passed. Growth mindset language (“I can’t do this yet” instead of “I can’t do this”) paired with a short list of true, steady things about who they are.
I built the affirmation cards to sound like something Fred Rogers might have said – simple, kind, unhurried. Things like “I am capable of handling challenges” and “mistakes help me learn and grow.” Not hype. Not empty positivity dressed up in glitter. I also have 16 scripture affirmation cards for good measure! Just steady, repeatable truth, the kind that holds up on a hard Tuesday when nothing else does.
The “I Am…” list works the same way, just shorter and punchier – a handful of identity statements a kid can say out loud or just read silently when they need to remember who they are underneath whatever just happened. It’s a small thing. It also happens to be one of the pages my own kids reach for the most, which tells me something about how much a person – of any age – just wants a reminder that they’re more than their worst five minutes.
What to Do With All of This
Last week’s pages helped kids notice and name what they feel. This week’s pages give them somewhere to put it – a menu of calm-down options, a way to solve the actual problem underneath the feeling, and a few steady words to hold onto once the storm has passed.
Grab the full 16-page Feelings Field Guide free in the Resource Library – it includes everything from this week and last, plus a few pages we haven’t talked about yet. If you missed last week’s post on naming feelings, that’s the place to start.
