We all know how important it is to remain physically safe and create a space where our loved ones can feel secure but have, we ever thought that it is not only about physical safety. We also need to provide an emotionally safe environment to the people around us.

Emotionally safe environments can be achieved by making social and emotional learning (SEL) an essential part of a child’s life. SEL is the process through which children and adults acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills they need to recognize and manage their emotions, feel and show empathy to others, establish positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.  SEL skills are promoted by providing a safe and supportive school environment, family, and community in which children feel valued, respected, and connected.

It is very difficult to create and provide a perfect environment for our children. But we can try our best to foster emotional safety, creating healthy boundaries and guidance where children can understand themselves. We all collectively need to make efforts at our levels to provide an emotionally safe space to our children.

Providing emotionally safe space at home

A child starts his/her life at home and the environment provided at home impacts his/her life the most. Some of the steps that can be taken at home to help children develop their emotional well-being are:  

Listen to your child first and then talk: Children feel that their parents are their ultimate protectors in life, so it is important that you listen to their fears and provide a space where they are free to share their all emotions.

Be available and open to talk about anything: Provide some quality time, attention, and affection to your children. The quality of time you spend together is likely more important than the quantity of your time in a child’s life. Make it a priority to spend time together every day, like eating a meal together.

Let them know it’s okay to fail: Do not put too much pressure on your child and keep realistic expectations from them. Teach them that it is okay to fail as long as they are learning something and ready to stand up again to work hard. 

Don’t judge, empathize with your child: Don’t judge your kids and place blame on them to cope with the situations around. Give your child the gift of empathy by working through the problem together and moving on. Teach them to empathize with others as well.

Express your own emotions in front of the child:  Parents tend to hide their own emotions from their kids. While kids don’t need to be involved in every problem but it’s okay for them to see you sad, troubled, or overwhelmed. When you label and talk about your own emotions, you show them that we all have big feelings to cope with and that you trust them just as they can trust you.

Providing emotionally safe space at school

After home school is the second place where children spend most of their time and learn about life. Hence, it becomes important for teachers to create a positive, emotionally safe classroom environment that could provide optimal learning to the students. Some of the steps that can be taken by the teachers to help children learn about socio-emotional well-being are:  

Laugh with your students often: Find out some time to laugh with your students. Learning doesn't have to be always so serious; you can add some fun elements to your teaching. Sometimes, when tensions are high, like during exams or when children are facing difficult situations we need to laugh together. 

Develop problem-solving skills: Kids must imbibe the skills like problem-solving, critical thinking from an early age. Provide opportunities to students to solve problems on their own. It's so much better when ideas and solutions come from the students.

Be an example for your students: For kids teachers are their role models. They imitate the behaviour shown by their teachers. Young children can be taught through modeling and coaching to recognize how they feel in different situations or how someone else might be feeling. They need to be taught how to tackle their emotions in different life situations.

Promote conflict resolution ideas: Prompting the conflict-resolution skill and using dialogues to guide students through the steps can be an effective approach to helping them apply a skill in a new situation. These solutions need to be presented in the classroom and students shall be able to practice such skills. 

Provide opportunities to learn socio-emotional skills: In class meetings, students can practice group decision-making and setting classroom rules. Students can learn cooperation and teamwork through participation in team sports and games. Such activities will increase the interaction among the students through which they’ll be able to develop their socio-emotional skills.

It is important to create an emotionally supportive home and school environment for the children as it benefits the whole society on a larger scale. When everyone will work together to provide a safe emotional space to the children, they will be able to build trust and understanding. This will strengthen relationships and show kids that they have a safe place to seek help, no matter what. This will provide an emotionally safe space to our future generation who’ll be able to understand their and others’ feelings.