Ideas to help our Children Identify their Feelings

Learning How to Identify and Communicate Feelings

Feelings are neither “good” nor “bad”.  Feelings just “are”.  Many feelings serve important functions.  For example, anger can keep us safe by keeping people at a distance and fear can keep us safe by helping us leave or avoid dangerous situations.  The difficulties with feelings come up when people have trouble identifying what they are feeling and communicating what they are feeling in appropriate ways.  If we can identify our feelings and other people’s feelings and communicate with each other appropriately about our feelings then many problems can be either avoided or reduced.  The following are some ideas about how to teach and learn about feelings together with your child.

1.      Help your child learn how to put feelings into words.  There are many “feelings posters” on the market that put feeling words to various faces.  However, often children benefit from practicing feelings faces and the words that go with them with their parents through games and activities or through picking out feelings from magazine pictures and making their own “feelings poster”.

2.      Model appropriate expression of feelings for your child.  Pay special attention to times when you are experiencing a feeling of some kind (i.e., happy, joyous, sad, depressed, anxious, scared, angry, frustrated, irritated, embarrassed, etc.) and then use that experience as a “teaching moment” for your child.  Express your feeling out loud so that your child can see how you look and hear the name for the feeling.  Try using “I-feel” statements for your child at these times.  For example, if you are happy about something then you might point this out to your child by saying, “I feel happy because you followed my direction so quickly”.  Another example might be saying, “I feel frustrated because dinner is taking longer to fix than I thought it would”.

3.      Coach your child in identifying and expressing their feelings.  When you see your child experiencing a positive or negative emotion you might ask them, “What are you feeling right now?” or “How are you feeling about that?” or you might be more directive if needed and help them to label their feelings by saying something like, “You look frustrated right now.  Is that what you are feeling?”. 

4.      Encourage your child to keep a feelings journal/record each day.  Your child might write out the top 3 positive and negative things that happened that day and the feelings they had about them or they might draw pictures of something they felt happy, sad, or angry about that day.

5.      Discuss feelings and their events as a family each day.  Find a time of the day when family members are together and have each family member talk about the high point of their day and the low point of their day along with the feelings that they experienced during the event.  Times that might work well for this are dinnertime, bedtime, or driving in the car from school.

Some Games & Activities to Teach and Learn about Feelings

Act As-If
Try to behave as though you and your child are “happy” or “sad” or “angry” or “scared” or “ashamed”, etc. while you and your child play a game, make dinner, do the laundry. It allows modeling of feelings and practicing feelings in a fun way, makes it clear that feelings are a normal part of life, and teaches that we can control our feelings.  For example, have the child stomp around the room as if they were mad. Then have them act out other feelings.

Feelings Charades

Using only facial expressions and body language, take turns showing and then guessing what feelings you and your child are expressing.

Feelings Collage
Provide the child with magazines with people and children in them. Have the child cut out the pictures and glue them to a piece of paper. Have the child tell you how each person feels.  You and your child can then also label each picture with a variety of feelings words and make their own feelings poster.
Feelings Art
Ask the child to create a sculpture with clay, paper, cups, cardboard, paint, etc. that shows "angry" "happy", “scared”, "sad" or some other emotion.
Feelings Faces
Provide the child with a variety of precut facial features from magazines. Have the child glue the features on paper plates to create a face.
Feelings Match
Create a feelings memory game with index cards and stickers.

Feelings Song:  If You're Happy and You Know it
If You're Happy and You Know it, Clap your Hands
If You're Happy and You Know it, Clap your Hands
If You're Happy and You Know it, then your face will surely show it
If You're Happy and You Know it, Clap your Hands

Variations:
Angry: Stomp your Feet
Sad: say boo hoo
Tired: go to sleep

Drawing Feelings Faces
Have the child draw happy, sad, angry, scared faces or any other feeling face.

Feelings Vocabulary List:

Aggressive

Angry

Anxious

Arrogant

Ashamed

Bored

Cautious

Confident

Confused

Curious

Disappointed

Disgusted

Elated

Embarrassed

Enraged

Envious

Frustrated

Guilty

Happy

Hurt

Jealous

Joyful

Lonely

Miserable

Nervous

Optimistic

Sad

Satisfied

Scared

Shocked

Stubborn

Surprised

Suspicious

Terrified

Worried