Emotions can be big and scary to young children. They do not have any coping skills or life experience to draw on to put things in perspective. The caretakers in children’s lives have a responsibility to explore children’s feelings and teach them how to get a handle on them. Being able to deal appropriately with one’s emotions is key to success in school, relationships, and life in general. Here are some ideas on how to explore the world of feelings with your children.

Music

Music is an emotional experience, whether playing or listening. Try playing different CDs and ask your children what kind of emotion the music seems to be expressing. Using whatever instrument is available – piano, recorder, drums, harmonica, etc. – ask your child to play a song that represents a certain emotion. Make it a game – write down different emotions on slips of paper and let your child draw one at a time out of a hat.

Art

Putting your feelings onto paper or into clay can be very therapeutic. Encourage your child to tell you about his or her artwork – why pointed shapes? Why red or why green? You can ask your child to express a certain feeling with paints or crayons, or ask him or her to choose a feeling and illustrate it. Another artistic exercise is to have your children draw different facial expressions.

With “The Feelings Playing Cards” drawn by Pulitzer Prize- Winning Cartoonist Jim Borgman. Children become familiar with 30 different feelings as they play these fun card games

Role Playing

Sometimes, it’s easier to express yourself through another character – it feels safer. Putting on a play can be great fun; it won’t feel like emotional education! As you discuss the role, you can discuss the feelings the character is meant to portray, and how they can do that.

Kimochi is Japanese for feeling. Each interactive Kimochi has a pouch to store its feelings, felt cushions in bright colors with a facial expression on one side and the name of the emotion on the other side. Children learn by placing the cushion that best matches their feelings into their Kimochi and sharing the experience. The process calms, comforts and instills confidence.

Build Vocabulary

Give your young child the words to describe what he or she is feeling. After all, your child can’t talk about feelings if he or she doesn’t know what they are called! If your child hears you openly discussing your feelings, this will help build his or her emotional vocabulary. Very young children will need help in naming their feelings – it can actually help calm a child down when his or her feelings are explained. Feelings are much more manageable when they have names.

Mood Rings

These pretty pieces of jewelry have been around since the 1970s and maybe before. As the different mood colors come up on the ring, talk about them. You don’t need to be serious or heavy-handed; just casually talk about things like why the mood ring has a particular color for a particular feeling (“Does black seem like an angry color to you?”). You could discuss a time when your child felt a certain feeling and how you handled it.

Reading Books

Most children’s books involve some kind of emotional experience among the characters. As you read books together, talk about how the characters feel, why, and how the illustrator portrayed those emotions in the illustrations. Your child will then be able to relate to the character – and how the character handled his or her feelings – when emotional situations come up. Your child can write his or her own stories, too.

Be willing to learn better ways to handle your kids’ feelings. As you become more open to discussing emotions, your children will end up pointing out (perhaps inadvertently) some ways you’ve handled their emotional moments that did not help. Listen to your kids and, together, work toward handling big feelings effectively.

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Self-esteem is important throughout life, but it is in childhood when its foundation is laid.  It’s our job as parents to help our children build self-esteem.  We may do and say things that are bad for our kids’ self-esteem without even realizing it, so it is important to make a conscious effort to help them develop and maintain a positive opinion about themselves.

Listening to Your Child

One thing that parents often overlook is the fact that children need us to listen to what they have to say.  When we don’t, they feel unworthy of our attention.  And that can put a damper on their self-esteem.

Making it a point to listen fully to what your child has to say will let him know that you value his stories and opinions.  Sometimes we just don’t have the time to listen at the very moment they want to talk, but it’s important to let them know that it’s not because we don’t want to.  Set a time to sit down and talk if necessary, and stick with it.

When Your Child Misbehaves

When children are misbehaving, it is easy to forget about keeping their self-esteem intact.  But it is very important to make the distinction between bad behavior and a bad child.

By describing the specific behavior as bad rather than telling your child that he himself is bad, you can let him know that it is not him as a person that you disapprove of.  It is his actions.  Children who feel that their parents disapprove of them are not only more likely to develop low self-esteem, they also tend to misbehave more.

Give the Right Kinds of Compliments

Complementing your child when he does well is important, because it reinforces both self-esteem and good behavior.  But even complements can sometimes do damage.  Backhanded complements do nothing but cause hurt feelings.  Try to refrain from alluding to negative things your child has done when giving complements.  You can accomplish much more by keeping praise completely positive.

It’s also important not to overdo the praise.  While it is great to recognize the good things your child does, it is possible to put too much pressure on him.  Being specific with your praise, such as telling your child you are proud of him for bringing his math grade up from a C to an A, accomplishes more than telling him that he is the smartest kid in the class or the world.

It is important to start building a child’s self-esteem at a young age.  Doing so will encourage him to be the best that he can be and to resist peer pressure.  By listening to our children and keeping their self-esteem in mind at all times, we can raise them to be happy, confident people.