How to Help a Child Express Feelings

Helping a child express feelings can be a challenge. A young child often does not understand the scope of their feelings and that can be a disturbing experience. By helping a child identify and express feelings, you are helping them deal with emotions in a healthy way. Read on to learn how to help a child express feelings.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

1. Name the feeling. Help the child name the feeling that they might be experiencing. This will teach them what a particular feeling feels like. For example, you can say "That puzzle looks like it is frustrating you" or "Getting teased would make me angry too."

2. Have them draw their feelings. By drawing what they are feeling on paper, they can go through the thought process of the feeling and really explore their emotions. This also puts an image in their mind with the feeling and helps them recognize it when it comes up again.

3. Let them act out the feeling with dolls or action figures. Sometimes children are more comfortable using "imaginary" characters to act out the big scary feeling that they are feeling such as anger.

4. Read books about feelings. Children love books and when they are listening to stories about feelings they are also learning how to express them.

5. Talk about feelings. At bedtime, play the "feelings game." For young children you can ask them to remember a time that day when they felt happy, sad, angry, frustrated or surprised. Older children can do those plus some more sophisticated feelings such as nervous, embarrassed, bad about themselves or good about themselves.