Happy to Furious in Four Seconds: When the Switch Flips Over Nothing

Snack time. Your toddler is giggling at the dog. You set down the cup, and it is the blue cup, and the giggle turns into a scream so fast you check whether they are hurt. They are not hurt. They wanted the green cup. You are holding the blue cup in one hand and the green cup is right there in the cupboard, and somehow that does not help at all.

At two and three, feelings often come at full size. Slowing a feeling down is a skill that comes with years, so the space between happy and furious can be thin, and a cup is enough to cross it. The scream is not about the cup. It is a feeling with no words around it, and the cup was standing closest. The people I have spent more than 20 years with, the ones who make new things for a living, mostly go quiet for a minute when a thing fails on them. The feeling is not the problem. A name for it, later, can help.

What Kit does

In Kit Has Feelings, the cup of a little girl named Mia goes "TIP. SPLASH. 'WAAAAH!'" and she will not stop. Kit grabs his fix-it box. He gives her a new cup. "Is Mia happy? NO!" He does a silly dance. NO! He puts his beanie on her head. "NO! WAAAAAAAAH!" Then his friend Bao, a boy with a heart on his vest, asks one question. "How does Mia FEEL?" Kit does not know. When he finally looks, really looks, her mouth turns down and her eyes are wet. "...SAD." Kit does not fix anything. He sits down next to Mia and makes a sad face too, and Mia stops crying. The child listening cries like Mia, covers both ears with Sparks, and makes the sad face along with Kit.

What you can try

• Try one word, after the storm: "That was mad." Not during. The book's parent note says a word offered at the peak usually does not land, and in my experience it is right. Name it later, in two words, and move on.
• Try a face before a word, once things have eased. A small mad face, "this one?", and see if theirs answers. Sometimes it does. Sometimes they scream louder, and you have lost nothing but a face.
• When the switch flips in the store aisle and strangers are looking, stay close and say almost nothing. "I'm here." Pick them up if you need to go. The naming can wait for the car, or for tomorrow.

Where the coloring page fits

The free pack has four coloring pages, the cup going TIP. SPLASH., Here comes Bao, Kit and Mia sitting side by side, and Kit shouting "I feel EXCITED!", plus two games: Feeling Faces and Where Do You Feel It? On the afternoon after the blue-cup scream, the page is a calm place to color one face and ask, "How does Mia feel?" One word, and then crayons.

The cup is still tippy. That puzzle can wait.

More for this book

• The book: Kit Has Feelings (Book 4)
• All 20 STEM picture books for toddlers and preschoolers
• Free coloring pages for all 20 books
• Blog: More parent moments

Sources

• Kit Has Feelings: How Does That Make You Feel?, Book 4 of Kit's Little Sparks.
• Free coloring and activity pack for Book 4 (8 pages, PDF, no sign-up).

Chris Kuczynski is an engineer turned registered patent attorney, a preschool co-founder, and a dad. He is the author of Kit's Little Sparks, a 20-book STEM series that gives children ages 2 to 4 the social and emotional foundations of the inventor's mindset. It is the first of four age-tiered series for readers ages 2 to 12.