How to tell your child about emotions

It also happens that the child seems to accumulate experiences in himself, but cannot share them with someone, even the closest. This happens not so much because of closeness or embarrassment, but because of the inability to correctly identify your feelings and tell about them to another. Not all parents know how to tell the baby about what emotions are, why they come, what they are called and what to do with them. How to explain this to children is our article today.

Why children need information about emotions

For some reason, many mothers and fathers believe that it is not necessary to talk about emotions with a child. It is believed that as the child grows older, he will independently begin to “juggle” various abstract concepts and will be able to easily understand when he feels joy, and when he feels sadness or irritation. But is it? Unfortunately no.

It is important and necessary for a child to talk about a rich range of human feelings — without this, the emotional sphere of the baby will not be fully revealed.

There are many benefits to helping your child develop emotional intelligence (a term coined by Peter Salava and John Mayer). For example:

• learn to control and regulate their emotions (for example, let off steam in a socially acceptable way);
• develop the ability to sympathize, empathize;
• form and strengthen stress resistance;
• develop the ability to establish contacts in any team;
• develop skills and traits that will help achieve goals;
• collect a lot of information that will help in self-knowledge (“Who am I?”, “What do I feel?”, “What mood do I have?”).

How to tell children about different emotions

The question arises: how to properly introduce a child to different emotions and how to develop children’s emotional intelligence? There are several methods.

1. Create an emotional atmosphere at home. This is quite logical: if parents and grandparents calmly discuss their feelings without difficulty, then the child will adopt this behavior pattern. Watching adults, it will be easier for him to show his anger, to rejoice, to cry. Think about the family in which emotional intelligence will be more developed: in the one where the baby is told from childhood “Don’t cry! Enough to dissolve the nurses! ”, Or in the one where they gently blow on the wound with the words “Cry — you can, I know that you are hurt and offended”?
2. Lots of listening and hearing. It happens that parents focus more on actions than on the emotions that caused them. Why did the child call his grandmother or deliberately broke a vase? It turns out that this is only a consequence, and the cause can be resentment, anger, indignation, indignation. Therefore, to begin with, try to build a dialogue with the child and talk to him so that he opens up. Analyze his actions based on his own feelings. And do not forget to explain this to the baby himself. Perhaps he doesn’t even know what emotion made him want to act like a hooligan: “I know you were upset because your grandmother didn’t want to buy you a new car.”
3. Express feelings through appropriate vocabulary. Experts assure that the development of emotional intelligence is impossible without the appropriate vocabulary. Indeed, how can a child explain what he feels if he does not even know the name of the corresponding emotion? Try to use words that are synonyms for different emotions more often in speech. In the context of certain actions, the child will remember them himself. Practice on everyday situations. How does grandma feel when she sees that all her pies are eaten? How did Alyosha cope with fear in kindergarten today? How would you feel in Alina’s place if you also received a railway as a gift? What other words can describe this feeling?
4. Read and discuss. The ability to empathize (that is, understand the feelings of other people, animals) a child can develop thanks to books. This is especially successful through fiction and poetry, where lyrical characters experience a huge palette of feelings. It is very useful for moms and dads to read books with different plots and different characters with their children and discuss their actions (“Why did the hero do this?”, “What feelings made him do this?”, “What did he feel then?”, “How did you Would you feel like you were in his place?»
5. Prompt. Help your child to understand himself with the help of prompts. For example, you can ask him leading questions: “Are you offended? Do you feel angry?» In addition, you can help your child develop primary reflection skills: “What do you think you need to do now to make you have fun? Maybe play hide and seek? You can also help the baby to understand himself with the help of various mobile, creative games, bodily studies: it is always useful to know how anger gets into clenched fists, where it pricks in the side from fear, where resentment accumulates, and where curiosity tickles the stomach.

Emotion Literature

The development of the emotional intelligence of a child is a very popular topic. In the modern book market, most of the literature is devoted to it — both for parents and for kids. A small list of useful publications will allow not only to talk in detail with children about emotions, experiences, their manifestation and control, but also to expand their general horizons.

• «ABC of emotions» (Natalia Kedrova);
• «Monsiki. What are emotions and how to be friends with them” (Victoria and Gleb Shimansky);
• «Hint Tales. Emotional stories. Conversations with children about feelings and emotions” (Elena Alyabyeva);
• «The ABC of feelings and emotions» (Ekaterina Kes);
• How to make friends with emotions. Tips from a «lazy mom» (Anna Bykova);
• “Magic of emotions. Emotional intelligence for children” (Sergey Parkhomenko);
• «Inspector Kroc’s Emotionometer: Learning to identify, measure and control emotions» (Suzanne Isern);
• «I conquer fears: an encyclopedia for kids in fairy tales» (Elena Ul’eva).

Games to develop the ability to recognize emotions

Several interesting games will help to expand the emotional sphere of the baby in a fun and original way:

• invite the child to portray different emotions with facial expressions, setting a specific topic: when he licks a lemon slice, eats his favorite candy, meets a scary dog ​​on the street, does not want to go to the blackboard, met his best friend;
• ask your child to draw emoticons with different emotions;
• study paintings by famous artists depicting people: try to reason with your child what kind of emotions the characters experience, judging by their facial expressions;
• look at photographs of people together and try to think (more precisely, think out) what events caused their emotions;
• play out different situations with the children (it suddenly started raining, the store ran out of favorite eclairs, dad came home from work, go to the country tomorrow): let them show them not only with facial expressions, but also with movements and words;
• use cards printed on the Internet with different emotions, ask the child to divide them into those that they like and those that they don’t like, and explain their choice;
• name two words — emotion and any character (joy and Baba Yaga, anger and hippopotamus). The task of the child is to walk around the room, depicting this character with the named emotion;
• ask the child to find words of support for different people (hitting the bedside table, arguing with grandfather, forgot homework at home, broke his arm, etc.).