I have a few scenarios that I would like you to consider:

You have just tidied your three-year-old's bedroom and leave for a few minutes to answer the phone ? when you return you find that he has emptied the entire contents of his chest of drawers on to the floor.

You have spent time cooking a meal but when it is served up at least one family member pronounces it as "disgusting".

You have finally found the time and energy to enter your pre-teen's bedroom and found a bit of carpet to vacuum. When you return a few hours later, you find he has decided to carve a boat out of Styrofoam and small bits of plastic are floating everywhere.

You have spent time cleaning the bathroom, only to find when you need to use it yourself, that there are small, coloured bits of toilet paper adorning the floor and sink as your 10-year-old has been experimenting with her lip gloss collection.

It probably won't surprise you to learn that these are all situations that have happened to me in the last month or so and the list could have been a lot longer! You might imagine how I felt in each of them: Hurt, angry, frustrated, ignored, exasperated! While those feelings might be entirely justified, I have been reflecting on the fact that the way I choose to deal with them is very important ? and not only for myself, because it has consequences for my children and, in fact, the whole family.

Today's column looks at ways of helping our children (and perhaps ourselves) to learn to deal with the feelings that are a product of living in relationships with other people and to help us see that some misbehaviour (in both children and adults!) is a direct result of unexpressed hurts and distress. Knowing this might help us all cope better and find better ways to deal with family life and all that that means.

Feelings are important because when they can't be expressed or are not accepted and have to be repressed you often get bad behaviour. (Think about yourself and how if you don't feel heard or if you feel taken for granted, it can affect what you say, how you say it or even what you feeling like doing for that person.)

Sometimes, in the case of children they can be desperate for a chance to off load their distress and they can demand your attention with all kinds of disruptive or aggressive behaviour ? or in some cases by becoming extremely withdrawn and mistrustful of people. As one parent put it: "When I come in from work, it's a constant demand for attention. Almost like something that can't be satisfied, she would seem to annoy me on purpose. So this week,

"I sat her up on the kitchen table, got down to her level and gave her full attention to tell me about her day. After about two minutes, she was satisfied. She was happy to go off and play again".

It seems that when parents and carers recognise feelings and allow them to be expressed, children learn that they can deal with their feelings without misbehaving.

Not surprisingly, part of that recognition process involves listening to the children, giving them the opportunity to bring these feelings out into the open, so that they can be talked out instead of being acted out. Recent studies show that children (and adults) who express feelings tend to think more clearly and make better decisions.

Let's look at some situations that can arise everyday in our children's lives:

You have told your child it is time to leave his friend's house and he hides or is very rude to you, before you have to drag him screaming into the car where he takes it out on his younger brother by hitting him.

Someone promises to save you a place at the lunch table but when you arrive she has given it to someone else and there is no room for you.

You are in the middle of a really good bit in your movie/book/game and it's dinner time and you have to stop.

You have recently started at a new nursery and are overwhelmed by the bigger children, having to use a strange bathroom and a new routine.

As with my own true situations above, here I have described a whole range of scenarios that would bring out in our children feelings of sadness, anger, frustration, hurt ? so how do they deal with them? Perhaps by coming home and picking fights with a sibling, perhaps by choosing to be defiant about a task you have asked of them, perhaps by whining constantly and being very clingy?the list goes on.

Taking the time to find out what is going on behind the bad behaviour can make all the difference. Asking: "Have you had a tough day at school today?" might give your daughter the opportunity to tell you about how hurt she is.

Sometimes it might even help to 'name' the feeling yourself: "It seems you are sad because your friends aren't including you" or "You're angry with me because I made you come home earlier than you wanted to and you were having fun".

Anger is a particularly powerful emotion and can influence the whole atmosphere in a household. If necessary you can say: " It's OK to feel angry, I can understand that ? and you can say you are angry, but I can't let you hit your younger brother or be rude to me."

We feel anger from a very early age and how we learn to deal with it is very important and has implications for the rest of our lives, as events on the news demonstrate every day! When it comes to violence such as throwing things or hitting it is really important to deal with it straightaway. Confront this directly, give a negative consequence for each and every hitting instance.

It's important to note that sometimes anger can come out in tears of frustration, particularly in young children who are unable to process their feelings, let alone talk about them to you, and whose worlds are constantly constrained and patterned by those around them.

Unfortunately one of the ways in which children, particularly boys, are cut off from their feelings is through not being allowed to cry. Parents want their children to "feel better" and they mean well when they say "don't cry" or "don't upset yourself". But crying releases angry, upset feelings. When we cry we release pain and hurt.

Children (and adults) need to feel safe to cry and release their hurt. They need people who are not afraid of tears and will allow them to cry.

This is why it is so important to know our children, to spend time with them, to talk to them, to find out what is going on in their lives because it is when we are sensitive to what is going on, we can make it safer and easier for our children to express their feelings, to cry, or to thump a pillow or roar like a lion, or even draw their feelings with crayons.

That brings us to thinking about ourselves. If children are often driven by blocked feelings that prevent them from acting freely or thinking clearly, so are adults.

We can convince ourselves we are acting logically, but that is often because we are out of touch with our own feelings ? feelings like guilt about how we are bringing up our children (welcome to parenthood), fear of what people will think if the house is not tidy (why I get so cross when my children mess up after I have tidied), or hurt with a partner or family member.

Confronting these feelings and perhaps even sharing them with your partner or close friend can go someway to helping you feel in control again.

As I have said earlier on, dealing with our own anger is important too. Shouting, hitting out, resorting to threats (all of which I have done) is no good to anyone. So if you feel yourself getting angry perhaps doing one of the following may help: when you are annoyed, leave the room, or count to ten before you act; ask someone for help ? even a short break so you can take a rest; go and scream where the children can't hear you, it that's possible ? or thump a pillow or cushion; sit down, close your eyes and think of a peaceful scene for a few minutes; say 'no' to guilt by doing something you enjoy ? swim, read, walk ? and you might also find it helpful to have a good cry yourself!

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