Identifying & Understanding Feelings

Identifying and Naming Feelings

Although school-aged children usually have a pretty good grasp on basic emotions like happiness and sadness, it may be more difficult for them to identify complicated emotions like frustration, determination, and shame. Luckily, they have you! As a parent or caregiver, you can teach your growing child how to identify and name their feelings using some of the simple tips below. So have no fear – they’ve got this, and so do you!

What’s the Feeling?

From excitement at going to a friend’s birthday party to disappointment when losing a soccer game, your child likely experiences lots of emotions each day. While they’re probably able to identify and name most of them, they still have much to learn!

• Help your child identify and label new (and more complex) emotions, by incorporating them into your conversations.

• Big, bigger, biggest! Help your child identify different feeling words based on the “size” of their feelings. Turn it into a game to see how many different words your child can identify that mean “happy,” “sad,” or “angry.” For example, “angry” can be “upset,” “irritated,” “irked,” “furious” or “livid”!
  • If your kiddo is playing their favorite game, they may feel “happy,” but if they’re going to their favorite amusement park, they probably feel “ecstatic”!

Talk to your children about their emotions!

• Have frequent and unscheduled conversations with your child about the feelings they have and what made them feel that way.  Be open and accepting.
• Your children have their own, unique triggers for feelings and it is important not to minimize, dismiss, or reject their ways of responding.
• Help them think through their experiences and explore their feelings – looking for ways to make their feelings productive and useful.
• Use age-appropriate language to help label your kids’ emotions.

• • “I noticed that your head is down, your arms are crossed, and your eyes look watery. I am wondering if you might be feeling sad. Would you like to talk?”

Teach them about why emotions exist.

Let them know it is okay to have negative emotions and that these emotions can sometimes be useful. This will help your child learn that all emotions – even ones that feel yucky – are important.

• Explain how anxiety can help motivate us, anger tells us to defend ourselves, and sadness can remind us to appreciate the good things in our lives.
• Make sure that your child doesn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed for having negative emotions by encouraging them to talk about it.
• Although we want our children to be happy, experiencing negative emotions can help them understand and learn from these feelings. Knowing how to recover and endure periods of sadness, anger, or loneliness can help them to handle negative emotions in the future.

The next step for your child is figuring out how to manage these feelings. Click here to learn some ways to help your child handle strong emotions.