Having an emotional vocabulary is essential for children to grow into adults with good emotional intelligence. Understanding your own emotions and those of others is essential to be able to be successful in the future, in any area of life, both professionally and personally. An emotional vocabulary is a collection of words that a child uses to express his feelings and reactions to things that happen to him. Even before children learn to speak, they are able to develop an emotional vocabulary.
It is very important that both parents and adults around children have a daily vocabulary that is emotional so that in this way, they learn through modeling what those words are and why they are so important. For example, something like: "Your toy has broken, I understand that you are angry and sad."
The importance of emotional vocabulary
Many parents provide the words for children's emotions, such as happiness, sadness, anger, or frustration. But in addition to primary emotions, children need to know more words to understand more emotions, such as secondary emotions. This way they will begin to understand their own emotions and those of others. They will be able to feel and understand what others feel, essential for good social development.
This is not achieved innately and children must learn it from the adults they refer to. Children who have difficulty socializing like children with autism spectrum disorder will need much more extensive instruction.
Activities for children to increase emotional vocabulary
Children learn through teaching and their experiences. You have to give them the opportunity to be able to express their own emotions and feelings by naming the emotions they feel at all times. For example, if you get angry because the computer is not working, instead of getting angry you can say things like: "I feel very frustrated because the computer does not work and I am worried that I will not be able to finish my work on time."
The objective of the activities is to help children to be able to recognize and name the emotions experienced by themselves and others, in this way they can increase their emotional intelligence, vocabulary and social skills.
List of feelings
Grab a large piece of paper and sit down with your child to brainstorm feelings he can imagine. The list should include emotions that the child recognizes and next to it, draw a face with the feeling and explain situations in which that emotion may appear.
Feeling noises
In the list made in the previous exercise, it is a good idea to make noises to associate it because children cannot always identify the word with the emotion, but they can recognize the sounds that accompany it. For example, for worried it may be the sound "ohh" or for sadness the sound of crying.
Readings
There are many books and stories that are ideal to work on emotions and to better understand the feelings and emotions that the characters experience. When you read it with your children Ask your child to help you figure out how the main character feels in different situations.
Game of emotions
It consists of transmitting emotions using the body and the face. If your child has trouble making faces, have a mirror nearby so they can make the same face and look in the mirror. They may better identify the sensation and emotion on their face better than yours.
Collage of feelings
With papers, scissors, glue and old magazines it will be more than enough. Write a list of emotions that you can understand and look for faces in the magazines to cut them out and paste them in the corresponding emotions.
Emotions Diary
A journal of emotions or feelings is a good way for your child to keep track of what he feels and what kinds of situations make him feel this way. In this way, You can also reflect on what to do to feel better.
With these games, children will learn to identify emotions more easily, so it should not be an isolated job, but should be done every day to enhance that identification.