A few months ago my girls were always telling me they were scared. At first, I thought it was my approach with them – was I being too overbearing and short tempered? After an entire weekend of being extremely gentle they continued to express themselves as being scared when I addressed bad behavior or put them in a time out or it was time to go to bed. Every time they were faced with one of these situations, they told me they were scared. Could it be they were not expressing themselves correctly? Maybe and I decided to take a different approach.
I went to Wal-Mart and purchased paper plates, a glue stick, tape, markers and wooden paint stir sticks (wooden sticks were free courtesy of the paint department, thanks again). Arts and crafts are not my strong point but, my emoticon plates were simple to assemble. I placed two paper plates together with glue and tape (I placed the rims of the plates together with dabs of glue and taped the sides); I took the paint sticks and glued my handles to the back of the plates; after everything had dried I drew the emoticon faces and labeled the plates with the markers.
I drew and labeled six emotions – sad, excited, happy, confused, angry and scared. We went over them every day and after two weeks they were correctly relating their feeling to me and each other. My girls were crossing up scared, angry and confused with each other.
We sat down in a circle and I explained to them what each emotion meant and I shared with them my feelings that correlated with each emotion and then they shared. The entire session took ten minutes each day. Sharing emotions and letting children know that it is alright to express themselves leads to less frustration for them and you.
Please leave a comment if this post was helpful or you want to add an experience or if you just disagree. Thank you for your time.
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Very interesting, I heard of something like this from my wife. She said she saw it on Nanny 911, your pictures are more graphic though. We are going to give it a try and see how it works.
Interesting idea. Reminds me of puppet play.
My kids are older, and masters of facial innuendo. Ah, the joys of parenting teens.
dadshouse’s last blog post..Giving Back Starts Young
i love this idea!!!!!
i think i’m going to have to copy you.
my oldest clams up completely when it comes time to talk about her emotions. usually she writes me notes and leaves them for me when she’s having difficulty.
you are a brilliant craftmaster!
Let me know how it turns out……