How to help your kids express their emotions

Help your kids express themselves
Expressing emotions appropriately can be a challenge at any age. Young children especially can become overwhelmed by feelings they have not yet learned to control.  Learning to express and control emotions can be especially important in new social settings like school or daycare. Connecting facial expressions to different emotions can help young children learn to cope with their feelings. Here's an activity to try.

Activity: Feelings and faces collage
Materials:
1. Pieces of construction paper cut into shapes of faces; use different shades of paper for different skin tones

2. A variety of pictures of eyes, ears, mouths and noses cut out from magazines; choose pictures that reflect diversity in age and ethnicity

3. Strands of yarn in different colours reflecting hair colours: Brown, yellow, black, white, grey, red

4. Containers such as bowls or aluminum pie pans to sort the different facial features and yarn

5. Glue

6. Hand mirror (shatterproof)

How to do this activity 
1. Give your child some face shapes and the hand mirror. Ask, "Is your smile showing or hiding your teeth? Can you make a mad face? How does your face look when you are sad?" Explain that our faces can tell people a lot about what we are feeling.

2. Help your child create faces with different expressions by arranging and pasting each feature on a blank face. 

3. Talk about the emotions on the faces your child creates. This helps him learn the words to describe his different feelings. 

4. Encourage your child to talk about a time when he has felt these same emotions and what caused them. When you give your child the words to describe his feelings, similar situations can be dealt with differently, perhaps in a calmer and more constructive manner.

Using Comfort, Play & Teach to help your child cope with feelings
Comfort, Play & Teach: A Positive Approach to Parenting is Invest in Kids' research-based approach to parenting. (Invest in Kids is a national Canadian charity organization aimed at helping parents improve their parenting skills). It transforms everyday parent-child routines and activities into teachable moments that actively support a child's healthy social, emotional and intellectual development. It shows parents the developmental link between their actions and their child's responses.

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