A guide to: Mental Health Awareness week
A key part of supporting children’s development is encouraging them to recognise, understand, and express their feelings and emotions, particularly during Mental Health Awareness Week. This can have a positive impact on their mental health, behaviour, academic success, and motivation to learn throughout their life.
In this blog, we will outline the behaviours you can expect from a child who is still learning to express their feelings appropriately, as well as explain why a child may struggle to communicate the way they feel and provide strategies for helping children to do so.
Ideas for helping children to express their feelings
Teaching children about emotions and encouraging them to express their feelings can have a positive impact on their behaviour, as it gives them the words to talk about how they feel.
Role-playing
Role-playing different emotions and how to talk about them – come up with a scenario, explain or ask them to guess what you’re each feeling (talking about the reactions in your body, such as tears or butterflies in your stomach), and work together to find a constructive way of handling it.
Label emotions
Labelling emotions for them until they can do it themselves, creating a link between the feeling and the word – research has shown that simply labelling a feeling reduces the negative effects it is having on you. Use picture books, photos, and videos to talk about other people’s facial expressions and think about what they might be feeling. In the classroom, you could choose books that spark discussion about emotions during literacy. You could also provide posters for a visual representation of emotions that can be displayed clearly in the classroom.
Arts and crafts
Drawing, painting, and colouring – some children might benefit from drawing what they think their emotion looks like. This can help them to process it, as well as helping you understand how they’re feeling, reducing frustration on both sides.
Be a role model
Modelling positive behaviours shows them how to handle challenging situations and disappointment appropriately by doing it yourself. You might tell them how you feel and why, then model coping strategies such as listening to music or sitting in a calm, quiet area such as a sensory pod.
Tips for improving a child’s emotional development
To help you during Mental Health Awareness Week, we have collated five tips you can use to improve a child’s emotional development and encourage them to express their feelings.
Respond to their emotional cues
Recognising and responding to emotions is a two-way process – if you want to teach children how to do it, read the cues they are sending out and respond as soon as you can. Remember not to invalidate or dismiss their feelings.
Help them express feelings in a positive way
While we’ve discussed how important it is to express feelings verbally, sometimes this won’t be possible. In these cases, there are other ways that children can express themselves positively, such as having an outlet for the emotional energy – dancing, running, singing, or star jumps can be great for this, as can taking some deep breaths, or having time out to relax. Brainstorm strategies with your pupils when you can – what do they think might help? You can also provide games to help children express their feelings such as our giant emotions fishing game. Pupils can fish for the emotions they are feeling to let you know.
Positively reinforce them
When the child expresses their feelings in an appropriate way, praise them. This shows them that feelings are normal and it’s OK to express them, but also reinforces that there is an appropriate way of doing so. The child will then be more likely to repeat the appropriate behaviour in the future.
Be approachable
Use open body language, friendly facial expressions, and kind words to show your pupils that you’re there for them and open to what they have to say. Listen actively throughout conversations about feelings – don’t get distracted. Often, children only need to be heard and understood, and then they can move past the problem.
Draw their attention to other children’s feelings
Young children aren’t aware of other people’s feelings in the same way that adults are – by drawing their attention to the fact that their actions can affect others, you can help them to make steps in their emotional development. If two children have an argument, listen to both perspectives and discuss how both of them have needs and feelings that need to be resolved.
Emotional development is important to children’s outcomes later on, and there are plenty of strategies that you can use to be supportive and encouraging. Remember to be a good role model and use everyday situations as teaching points – building children’s abilities to understand, recognise, and express feelings reduces the likelihood of challenging behaviour.
For more information to help your class, check out our previous post – 10 expert tips for children’s mental health.
