Learning to calm our mind when we feel anxious or overwhelmed, allows us to move from our amygdala (fight/flight/freeze/fawn) into our prefrontal cortex (logic/reasoning/regulation). Often, we can catch ourselves asking children hundreds of questions about ‘what is wrong?’ ‘what is the matter?’ ‘how do you feel?’ and notice their anxiety escalating as we draw more […]
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Feelings A step of emotional literacy development is being able to recognise what our emotions are. Many children can find it challenging to be able to recognise, identify and respond to their emotions, particularly the more subtle feelings. A great first step, is to encourage children to reflect on their feelings, so that they can
Children’s Activity: Find the feelings Read More »
How do you feel? We often ask children how they feel, however many children have a small stock of responses that they can give us. Something we can commonly see, is the difficulty pulling apart the differences. Such as, the difference between sad and bored, excited and anxious, happy and content. Many feel that they
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Empathy It is thought that children develop empathy around 2 years old. At this stage, children begin to show an understanding of how other people feel and recognise that they don’t feel the same way themselves. However, empathy continues to develop throughout life and as children’s brains continue to develop until around 25 years old,
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Sometimes, we can all get caught in spirals of thoughts surrounding things that are not in our control. So, how do we support children to begin conversations about what they are in control of, versus what they are not? Anxiety frequently exists where we attempt to control things that are uncontrollable. Ever noticed that we
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Since the 2020 pandemic, there has been an increasing gap in the emotional literacy of children. One of my greatest observations from the last three years in my therapy and coaching work, is that whilst children are catching up academically: Behaviour issues are increasing Dysregulation is happening more frequently Expressing feelings is less comfortable There
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When it comes to feelings, we need to be able to recognise the differences between the different sensations that they create, as well as recognise what our unique triggers are. So, this week we have a simple activity to start the dialogue around feelings. What’s the feeling? Download the worksheet and use the emoji’s to
Children’s Activity: What’s the feeling? Read More »
Feelings A step of emotional literacy development is being able to recognise what our emotions are. Many children can find it challenging to be able to recognise, identify and respond to their emotions, particularly differentiating between emotions such as disappointment, embarrassment and anger. A great first step, is to encourage children to reflect on their
Children’s Activities: Making Feelings Fingers Read More »
When we have big feelings, or uncomfortable feelings, knowing how to respond to our own needs is important. Learning what our preferred coping skills are can help us to respond to our feelings effectively. So, this week, we are sharing a downloadable coping skills sheet, so that you can start conversations with children about how
Children’s Activity: Coping Skills Download Read More »
Feelings So often, children struggle to explain how they feel because, they either: Do not have the vocabulary for the feeling They have the vocabulary, but do not understand what it means Therefore, spending time exploring feelings, to consider: Their names The way they affect our bodies The thoughts that they are associated with The
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