How to Encourage Your Child to Express Feelings

There are cases when children are shy and they face difficulties in expressing their feelings. Helping them with this particular problem might be a challenge for the parents, especially if the child is still very young. Most of the times failing with the help in this matter may be quite disturbing. It is healthy for the child to identify his or her feelings and express them clearly.

Instructions

1. The first step you need to do is to name the feelings. It is a thing that will teach him or her what a particular feeling is. Frustration, anger and joy are the most common feelings children have to experience. Teach him how to discern the feelings and after that, the child will have no more problems with identifying emotions.

2. Next, encourage your child to draw the things he or she feels on a sheet of paper. The image that is drawn on the paper will remain in the memory and next time the child will have that feeling again, he or she will associate it with the painting.

3. If your child feels better with imaginary characters and they are not that shy and interiorized when playing with the dolls, let he or she do so. Feelings that might scary them at first might be understood better with the help of some imaginary characters.

4. The next step is to read your child some books that are related to feelings. All children love stories books and by hearing the stories, they will learn how to deal with their own particular feelings and they will express them easier.

5. The last step is to talk about the feelings every time you have the opportunity. You can ask the child to identify a situation he or she felt surprised, angry, happy or frustrated. You can expand the range of feelings if the child is older, including things like embarrassment or self-esteem.