Tools for finding Social/Emotional Success at home.
Reading books about Emotions
While they may not understand what you are talking about from birth, reading books about emotions will help them to later put the pieces of their feelings together. If you are able to read books with colors associated with emotions or demonstrate emotion as facial expressions, your child may be able to understand these feelings better.
Talk about Feelings
It’s important to acknowledge the feelings of your child and also yourself. If your child seems to by angry you can address that feeling and say that they seem happy, sad, angry, etc.
Expression Education
Many kids don’t know proper ways to express their emotions and it’s important to let them decide what ways they’d like to work through their problems while also giving them positive and negative ways to express how they are feeling. Giving them good examples and giving them the choice allow them to feel better. If they are angry you can offer them to take a few deep breaths or to have a moment by themselves.
Teach Feeling Words
If your child doesn’t know how to exactly describe how they are feeling then they may not be able to identify and tell you how they may be feeling. It’s important to use words like brave, safe, embarrassed, scared and put experiences to those words so they know how to better communicate in the future.