How to Control Emotions in Pre Teen Girls
Your preteen daughter is a raging mess of hormones, which means she might be overly sensitive, dramatic and moody.
Your preteen daughter is a raging mess of hormones, which means she might be overly sensitive, dramatic and moody. While it may feel like these less-than-desirable personality traits will last a lifetime, you can rest assured that this is only her body's way of dealing with puberty and the rush of estrogen and other hormones changing her from a girl into a woman, according to KidsHealth. Her emotional state may be fragile at the moment, but you can help her control her emotions rather than allowing them to get the best of her during the preteen years.
Step 1
Help your daughter become self-aware. According to TeensHealth, she is now at an age where she is able to recognize and identify her emotions. She knows the difference between being angry and sad, happy and mad and everything in between. You can help her learn to control her emotions by using her self-awareness to identify what emotions she is feeling and how to handle that specific emotion. By taking a few minutes to use her self-awareness to point out that her current emotion is anger, she can count to 100 or do whatever it is that helps her to calm down and control her emotions.
Step 2
Explain to your daughter that other girls her age are going through the same thing. According to Girls Health, an information portal for teen and preteen girls created by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, your daughter needs to know that she is not alone in experiencing such overwhelming emotional feelings. It relieves a little bit of the emotional stress in your daughter's life to know that the girls at school who she thinks have it all together are struggling with the same emotions.
Step 3
Point out that the things she views as tragic are probably not even noticeable to anyone else. According to the United States Department of Education, your preteen daughter is prone to exaggerating her emotions out of self-consciousness. Your job is to point out her exaggerations to help her control her emotions. If she refuses to go to her school dance because she has a pimple on her forehead, she might tell you that it's so big that everyone will be staring at it all night long and she will be humiliated. Reassure her that everyone else will be so busy dancing, worrying about their friends and crushes and their own pimples, to even notice hers. Helping her remember that other people are just as self-conscious as she is may help her deal with her emotional breakdown.