How to help your school child become emotionally aware

It is important for your child to be aware of their emotions. When your child understands how he or she feels, they will be able to relate to others a lot better and it can also give them and insight into themselves.

Developing emotional awareness skills isn’t easy for everyone. But with enough practice, anyone can learn how to become more in touch with their feelings.

Identify emotions

Have your child name their emotions as they feel them. For instance, if they did well in a school test, that might give them a sense of achievement so you can have them say, ‘I feel proud’. Noticing emotions and naming them is one of the first steps your child needs to take to start his path towards emotional awareness.

Pay attention to one emotion

Have your child pick one emotion – like happiness – and track it as the day progresses. Younger children can make a mental note of how often they felt happy and what they were doing when they felt the emotion. Older children can jot it down and rate the intensity of it at different times.

Write a list of emotions

See how many emotions your child can name. Go through the alphabet and think of one emotion for each letter. This will help your child build their emotional vocabulary and make them a few steps closer to emotional awareness.

As your child becomes more aware of their emotions, they will be better able to deal with them. For instance, if your child knows what makes them angry, they know when to calm down before having an emotional outburst. This is more common in older children, but if you help the younger ones develop these habits early on, you can help them stay level-headed.