Thirty Feelings
Tracy Lamperti
Emotional Intelligence is when we can recognize our own emotions and those of others. It is when we can differentiate between things like when someone is feeling angry vs. frustrated. This helps us to be able to relate to others and adapt to different circumstances.
Most children enter Kindergarten able to recognize happy, mad and sad. In a deck of 30 “feelings” cards some children will cycle through the basic three emotion labels, while others have a whole basket of emotions labels to pull from.
“Horrified” may be expressed as “mad” when the child hasn’t learned “horrified.”
“Bored” may be expressed as “sad.” The solution to bored may look very different than the solution to sad.
8 Tips For Beyond Happy Mad Sad
- Keep a list of feelings on the fridge. Highlight one word every few days to talk about, recognize in self and other, look for examples in TV/Movie/Etc. characters. Talk about it.
- Buy a “Feelings” poster. When your child is having an emotion, ask them to point to the emotion on the poster and use the feelings word that fits best. Some parents will only trigger this activity for a negative emotion. It is really important to point out the positive emotions too.
- Get creative with your computer and printer. Find pictures of 20 feeling faces. Print them out in pairs on card stock. Use for a matching game. When the child gets a match, they tell of a time that they had a feeling like that.
- When asked about anger, most children will identify this emotion as “bad.” Remind your child that emotions aren’t bad, even the one called anger. The “bad” or “problem” part is the behavior. We can feel angry and act badly or we can feel angry and adapt, problem solve or talk it over with someone. Likewise, emotions like “embarrassed” can be ones that a child will shy away from, because they feel so bad. Teach them that everyone feels embarrassed from time to time and how they might be able to approach it. In some circumstances, the child needs to learn to laugh a little at themselves and know that everyone makes mistakes. In others, children might need to learn about humility and apologies. We can wish as hard as we want that our children don’t have to experience the “hard” emotions, but it is these hard emotions that when felt and addressed, build character in our children.
- Make a feelings collage with childrens’ magazines. Cut out faces and talk about what the child may be feeling.
- Ask your child(ren) to be like a news reporter or investigator. Note “Happy” on the top of the page and ask your child to interview Dad, Grandma and Grandpa, the next-door neighbor, “Tell me about a time you felt happy.” Have them do this for one week, keeping their memo pad in their pocket. Switch to a different feelings word the next week, or ask one child to do “happy” and their sibling to do “sad.” Let them present at the end of the week.
- Do you have a pet? Ask you child to notice for a week, what that pet might be feeling and why.
- Model your own good emotional intelligence. Let them know that adults have feelings just like children.
Resources
Do you get it that every time we seem to turn on the tv, news or in the movies these days the boys and men are getting terrible representation? Whether they are kowtowing to a bossy woman, making obscene gestures or noises, getting drunk or on drugs, committing some stupid crime, espousing the effeminate or acting like a pompus a__, or the countless other ways that they are being portrayed. What was wrong with Davy Crockett, or Huck Finn, Andy Griffith, Superman? Why have Sponge Bob and Homer Simpson and the many other “men” of today been selling by being so stupid? I am not up on any of today’s shows, but I get the point from the stories I hear, that it is not good. Even when an olympic star comes into the spotlight, all too often the story is tainted by some remark or behavior he made, not realizing everyone was watching. Where are the boys supposed to get their education? And what about the girls? Where are they supposed to learn who would make a good husband and father? What brought this on was my prepping for morning meeting tomorrow at the Lamperti Homeschool. I was looking for something good in The Children’s Book of Virtues , Edited by William J. Bennett, Illustrated by Michael Hague. I just happened to open to page 38, Boy Wanted , by Frank Crane. I won’t put the whole story here, but here is a sample.
Photo by Michelle Kaye
What are those? Are those beans? What are they for? Can I touch them? One can learn a lot about a child by watching them play. Play gives us a glimpse into the thought process, emotions, relationships and the way they organise and put things together. With beans, even a teenager or adult can “sort things out” with beans, sand and other materials. Beans make a good medium for tea parties, hide and seek, play ground play, imaginative water, etc. In fact, beans can bring comfort to all ages. Children who don’t feel like they have a voice or have trouble sharing their thoughts and feelings often find themselves running their hands through the field of beans. The same goes for teenagers. Little ones, of course want to play with the beans, which provides a great opportunity to evaluate self-control, adherance to limits and their depth of imagination or level of organization. Beans are awesome! The video shown here represents a variety of bean benefits! An older adolescent, actually, a young adult, worked out many complicated issues in her sessions week after week while sorting beans. This person successfully sorted out ALL of the kidney beans, sorting on many levels! It is so curious to children to come to their therapy session and notice that something has happened involving the beans. It gives children and teens a real sense of commonality with others as well as insight. They come to learn that some people think like they do and some think differently, and it’s all ok. They learn that, while I may share something about the “beans,” I won’t “spill the beans.” They can trust that I will keep their confidence, just like I keep the confidence of the last “bean worker.” As you see in the video, a young person is re-mixing the kidney beans. This young person, being someone who really struggles with self-control and had been held back for weeks from mixing the beans that had been sorted out. We shared such a delightful moment when she was finally permitted to “mix!” Timing is so important, but relationship is more! So the cycle will continue when many young people come in this week and discover the new state of the beans! Tracy Lamperti, Psychotherapist, Educator, Consultant
