I touched on the idea of helping kids identify emotions during the post about teaching empathy. However, I feel like teaching kids to verbalize their emotions warranted its own post.
Kids often don’t have the words to know how they are feeling. This lack of understanding leads to great discouragement and an internal struggle that can often lead to a tantrum or angry outburst. In the book, “Brain Rules for Babies,” by John Medina, he says children’s bodies “can feel fear, disgust, and joy way before their brains can talk about them. This means that children will experience the physiological characteristics of emotional responses before they know what those responses are. That’s why large feelings are often scary for little people; tantrums often self-feed because of fear.” He goes on to describe what it means for a child to identify their feelings.
Kids often don’t have the words to know how they are feeling. This lack of understanding leads to great discouragement and an internal struggle that can often lead to a tantrum or angry outburst. In the book, “Brain Rules for Babies,” by John Medina, he says children’s bodies “can feel fear, disgust, and joy way before their brains can talk about them. This means that children will experience the physiological characteristics of emotional responses before they know what those responses are. That’s why large feelings are often scary for little people; tantrums often self-feed because of fear.” He goes on to describe what it means for a child to identify their feelings.
I am guest posting at 24/7 Mom, so please head on over there for the remainder of this post.
I thing there should be more stuff to know about verbalizing from these kinds of websites. I’m writing a research report and I need more stuff to write down.
I hope this post was helpful in your research. 🙂
I say “just talk, don’t whine” because I want the conversation about emotions to happen.
I love mom phrases like this. That’s a great one!