When children learn to talk about their feelings, it can make a big difference for the entire family. In this guest blog, we get some advice on creative ways to open the conversation about emotions from Kay Ziegler, MSW, LCSW, Social Worker, Shabonee Elementary School, Northbrook, IL.
When you sit down at dinner or in the car and ask your kids how their day was at school, you probably get a dismissive answer like “fine” or “I don’t know,” or you get a running list of the day’s events. How often do you hear your kids talk about how they felt during the day?
Sharing feelings is a cornerstone skill for social relationships and emotional regulation.
The first step is simply recognizing and naming feelings. This feeling vocabulary can be fun and easy to incorporate into your family’s daily routine and conversations. Model feelings words to your kids daily. When you talk about your day and experiences, talk about how things made you feel. Label feelings in movies, videos, or books that you share together. When naming an emotion, point out how it looks on someone’s face or in their body.
You can also use a visual to help prompt everyone to identify feelings. This could be a chart with feelings faces, a feelings thermometer that shows rising intensity in feelings, or a “Zones” chart that puts feelings into color categories by energy level. Everyone in the family can have a magnet or clip to move on the visual to show how they are feeling or just use it to point to your feelings.
If you love taking pictures on your phone, make your own feeling chart or flash cards by taking pictures of each other showing various feelings. Make finding feelings a game. You can play “I spy” with feelings, make a bingo card to cross off as emotions are seen, or try feelings charades.
Encourage your child to add feelings in their writing. A story is much stronger when emotions are described in their characters’ actions and expressions. There are also many children’s picture books that teach feelings which would be a great addition to your home library and are a positive tool to use when your child might be on time out or needing to cool down.
The more you practice identifying feelings on a daily basis the easier it will be for your child when they really need this skill in the middle of strong emotions.
As people learn accurate feelings identification, they can better explain what triggered the feeling and work on strategies to cope and calm.
Making this a shared experience within the family also increases your family’s ability to listen, understand each other’s feelings, and develop empathy, because they will become more aware and sensitive to everyone’s feelings.
So, how are you feeling?
Kay Ziegler, MSW, LCSW
Social Worker, Shabonee Elementary School, Northbrook, IL
