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Teaching emotions for kids is easy with these social-emotional learning ideas and activities for the classroom.
Social-emotional learning is a key component in teaching young children. You'll find that a good part of your day is spent educating your students about how to recognize, manage and express feelings. Because of this, below are engaging ways to teach emotions for kids in your classroom.

Everything You Must Know to Teach Emotions to Kids
Why do students need help learning how to express healthy emotions and feelings?
Students learn healthy emotional habits and ways of expressing their feelings in several ways. They learn at home as well as in their interactions with their family and friends. Children tend to pick these things up naturally. They learn by watching how others respond and mimicking their behavior. Many kids are active in their churches, community centers, sports, and hobbies. In those places, they learn how to interact with friends and neighbors as well.
But, what about the students who don't have such opportunities?
It's up to us, as educators, to model, teach, and encourage them to practice healthy emotional responses to everyday situations and events! Helping children to express their feelings and handle difficult situations with calm is our ultimate goal.

1. Helping Kids Identify Different Emotions

Children should be taught the language necessary to label and identify the different emotions they may experience. The reason is, we need to let them know that feeling different emotion is normal. By giving them the vocabulary needed to describe how they're feeling, you are encouraging them to express themselves productively.

Recognizing Facial Expressions and Body Language: Children need to learn how to identify their own emotions, as well as others. One way to do this is by learning to pay attention to their own body signals, such as a frown and queasy stomach when nervous, or balled fists and tight shoulders when angry. Once they can recognize it in themselves, they can pick up on facial expressions and body language of others and then learn to react accordingly. In your morning meetings, perhaps spend five minutes modeling and discussing different emotional states.

Clip Chart: One way to encourage recognition of feelings is to provide a visual reference for them to use. A clip chart helps students to recognize and identify how they are feeling. They simply place a clip on the chart in the space that shows how they are feeling.

2. Teaching Kids Healthy Expression of Emotions

We all feel the full range of emotions. Wherever they are on the happy or sad, engaged or bored, proud or embarrassed, ends of the spectrum, we can help them express those emotions in a safe and healthy way. The classroom is a great place to learn and practice!

"I Feel..." Statements: To learn how to express their feelings appropriately, students need to be taught how to use "I feel..." statements. Instead of screaming insults at another child who broke his crayon, little Johnny can say "I feel sad that you broke my crayon", opening up the communication between the two students. This allows for healthy conflict resolution.

Coping with Extreme Emotions: Sometimes we must step in and help kids deal with the emotional roller coasters they sometimes find themselves on. Their extreme emotions get out of control and they need help finding their way back to calmness. We must realize that addressing the whole brain is key to understanding how to help them best.

Teaching Emotional Rights: It's important for children to understand and assert their rights when it comes to emotions. This helps them maintain healthy boundaries with their friends and peers, and be respectful to teachers and adults.

3. Connecting Kids to Experiences with Emotions

Children learn to embrace their emotional state by realizing that it is normal and ok to feel the way they do. It's our job to give them opportunities to label their feelings correctly. Emotional memory is strong! We can harness that power by helping students connect their experiences in the classroom with their emotions. By recognizing and acknowledging their feelings during a learning activity or classroom event, we can increase the chances of it sticking in our students' long-term memory. You see, that's why emotions for kids is so important!

Journaling: Encouraging students to journal about their feelings is helpful. They express their feelings by writing about learning tasks, field trips, or school events. For one, we often use this learning method in our classrooms for improving handwriting, spelling, vocabulary, and of course writing skills.

Emotion Sort: Have students sort pictures of children with experiencing different emotions. By doing so, they will gain practice recognizing facial expressions and body language and therefore, feel more confident understanding their own and others feelings.

4. Teaching Kids about Brain Biology and Emotions

The human brain is a fascinating subject, even for the youngest learners. Teach them what the parts of the brain are called, and talk about how different parts of the brain control their emotions and feelings.

Upstairs and Downstairs: To try to explain how the parts of our brain work together, and how the emotions part can sometimes take over, try explaining it in terms they can understand, such as the "upstairs and downstairs."

5. Encouraging Kids to Have a Positive Mindset

Additionally, add in self-talk and self-motivation skills. Positive and encouraging self-talk will help your students succeed, and create a more positive classroom environment overall. For example, you can teach them ways to feel good and focus on positivity. Here are ways to influence them to have a good attitude at school and teach emotions for kids.

Create a Vision Board: Vision boards are used in all types of professions, from business to graphic design. They can be used in the classroom too! Help children visualize what they desire and what makes them happy. Precisely, when they have an image in their mind of what makes them thrive, they are more likely to reach their own goals, and ultimately succeed in the classroom.

My Heart Map: This creative activity encourages children to thoughtfully consider what makes them happy and depict it on paper. It's a great way to help them own and recognize their emotions and focus more on having a positive outlook.

Teach Growth Mindset: Any lesson about emotions and feelings can easily be integrated into a growth mindset curriculum plan. The two go together like peas and carrots!

Resources for Teaching Emotions with Kids

Emotions Self-Awareness Unit

The Emotions: Social Emotional Learning Unit includes 5 detailed, research-based lessons to teach emotions for kids. It is filled with hands-on and mindful activities. The curriculum teaches children about how their brain controls their emotions. It also teaches how to identify and express how they are feeling, and ways to encourage a positive mindset.

Emotions Book Companions

This emotional awareness resource includes 5 book companions on popular children's books that relate to feelings and emotions (The Color Monster; The Feelings Book; Glad Monster, Sad Monster; F is for Feelings; In My Heart).

Children will participate in classroom discussions and book chats, share their feelings in written form, and participate in fun, engaging activities that build emotional awareness and social skills.

This emotions book companion resource includes a detailed lesson plan, guided questions, anchor chart, writing response, and follow-up activities (printable and digital included) for all 5 books. Great for distance learning and remote teaching of social-emotional skills!

FREE Emotions Lesson & Feelings Journal

Help students learn to identify and process their feelings in an emotions journal.

Download a free lesson and activities on identifying and labeling emotions from the Emotions unit by clicking the image below and signing up.

Social-Emotional Learning Curriculum

The mind + heart Social Emotional Learning Curriculum includes 8 units with 5+ detailed, character education, research-based LESSONS filled with TONS of hands-on and mindful ACTIVITIES that encourage children to express themselves and build important emotional and social skills. It includes emotions for kids!

More About Teaching Emotions
Emotional Skills Books and Videos Self Regulation Strategies, Books & Videos Empathy Skills Books & Videos PIN for Later

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Teaching emotions for kids is easy with these social emotional learning ideas and activities that teach children about emotions in the classroom.

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3 Reasons Behind Attention-Seeking Behavior (& How to Respond)

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3 Reasons Behind Attention-Seeking Behavior (& How to Respond)

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We tend to think of "doing something for attention" as a bad thing- but what if it isn't?

Every single one of us needs attention. Attention- especially from those we love- is an essential ingredient for the attachments that empower us to grow as individuals, that supports mental health, and that develops our template for healthy relationships.

If attention is something we all need to thrive and even to survive, then attention-seeking behavior in children, teens, and adults becomes important communication (rather than just an irritation!).

What Attention-Seeking Behavior Might Be Telling Us

Seeking attention through behavior is never a person's first attempt to get that attention. When you perceive attention-seeking behavior in teens, kids, or adults, it's typically a sign of an unmet need.

People seek attention through behavior when attempts to get care by asking verbally have failed.

Humans are expressive and creative. It is a sign of a healthy brain that we creatively try different ways to get our needs met.

Three Reasons People Act Out for Attention:

They're a healthy human asking, in a creatively human way, for the connection and validation we all need. Occasional attention-seeking behavior- especially in adolescence- is part of normal development, identity formation, and finding our place in the world.

Long-term unmet needs have shaped a behavior pattern. This can happen when a person has spent formative years of their life in relationships where verbalizing their needs (example: "I need a hug") or healthy bids for connection (example: crawling into a parent's lap) were ignored, rejected, or even punished. As a result, when these individuals feel an attachment figure (parent, partner, or friend) is distant, they may default to attention-seeking behaviors instead of communicating.

Attention-seeking due to a short term breakdown of communication in a relationship. Attention-seeking behavior is a way of- well- getting attention! And it works! It's not uncommon for attention-seeking behavior to show up in otherwise healthy relationships when two partners are out of sync or when one partner is simply distracted. Attention-seeking is a result of a normal- and often healthy- escalation of communicating needs.

When Attention-Seeking Behavior is Healthy

Faced with a partner that is pulling away or distant in a relationship, a healthy response might flow through these escalating tiers:

1. Naming and communicating a need. Example: "You've felt distracted. I miss you. I need to know you care about us." Or, for kids, it may sound like: "You work too much."

2. Initiating connection Examples: initiating physical intimacy in a romantic relationship or inviting a friend out for a day spent one-on-one. For kids, it might be a toy plopped in your lap or a request for a bedtime story even though they're a little old for one.

3. Attention-seeking behavior. Attention-seeking behavior communicates needs that cannot be ignored any longer. Attention-seeking behavior takes many forms from fabricated drama to overly/uncharacteristically sexualized behavior, or from pranks, gags, and performative behavior to tantrums.

Relationships that consistently reach this third stage and rely on attention-seeking behavior to elicit a response that stabilizes the relationship tend to be exhausting, stress-filled relationships that cycle between extremes of drama and stability.

Ask What the Behavior is Saying

Because "attention-seeking behavior" is often an adult, child, or teen's way of reaching out, it is critical to avoid a shaming response. Invalidating their vulnerability in asking for care (even if we don't like how they asked) can increase problem behaviors.

A common response when we realize someone is doing something for attention is to "catch" them in the act, naming "you're just looking for attention," but this is rarely a constructive response. On the contrary- it pushes the person away instead of inviting them into the connection they are seeking.

Usually, we respond negatively to attention-seeking behavior because we were parented that way, or because we feel overwhelmed by trying to locate and meet our child's needs. It can be frustrating to be pushed away and simultaneously needed so deeply by adolescence, and many parents can use support navigating this time in their child's life..

Humans- children and teens especially- DO need attention in the form of being seen and noticed, listened to, and made to feel safe to be who they are.

Getting Help

The reality is we may not always (or even, often) have the capacity to understand what's not being spoken or the resources to provide what kids need from us- and that's ok. Parents don't have to meet every need, respond to every bid for connection, and resolve every issue: we just need to do our best and call in backup when we need it.

When children and teens ask for attention, the job of the parent, caregiver, counselor, or educator is to show up, affirm, and do our best. When our best isn't enough, it's time to reach out to outside resources- even if that means facing our own fears of having our limits seen by someone else.

Attention-Seeking Kids in Therapy

This is one reason why therapy, even short-term, can be helpful to families: The role of the therapist is often one of interpreter: helping both kids and parents understand what's really happening, so the family can work with the underlying challenges instead of the behavior.

Kids are often distressed by their own acting out.

When their behavior causes their parent's or caregiver's anxiety to increase, a child's distress is multiplied. This shared distress may seem to grow larger as focus directly on behavior management takes up more and more space in the parent-child relationship.

By interrupting the cycle in which (1) kids act out, (2) parents respond with their own distressed and anxious response, and (3) kids respond with increased impulsivity, the family can begin to recover. As a child learns to identify and verbalize their feelings and a parent learns to be more curious about behavior instead of reacting with fear that they've messed up, problem behaviors typically reduce or resolve.

Next time you think someone is doing something for attention, think about the role the behavior is serving. What might it be saying? How might it be an attempt to access the resources the person needs in order to function?

Dealing with Attention-Seeking Behavior When You Aren't the Parent

Often, for those of us on the outer edge of someone's life, it can be easy to take on a mindset of "that person doesn't have it so bad" or "aren't that troubled." These automatic judgments create less tolerance within us for empathically handling the attention-seeking behavior of a student, friend, etc.

You can balance support and self-care by offering only as much support as you can offer freely, and setting boundaries for when you are being asked for more than you are able to give (your irritation here is a clue: learn to pay attention to when irritation rises in order to locate your personal boundaries).

When you reach your limit, you can say something like, "It sounds like you are really struggling. I care about you, but I don't have the skills to help. You mentioned wanting to (use x resource/see a therapist/etc) and I think that's a great idea. Can I help you connect with that?" The crisis text line is a fantastic resource when you can't support someone but want them to have skilled support.

[Image Description] Negative attention looks like: Lecturing them (drawing of an arm with a green sleeve, with a finger pointing), Punishing them (drawing of a brown chair), Threats (drawing of two speech bubbles that read "If you don't..." and "I'm gonna..."), and Yelling at them (drawing of a female head with brown hair pulled into a bun and a light skin-tone, whose face is angry).

What is Negative Attention?

Negative attention in response to attention-seeking can take many forms.

Negative attention comes through lecturing, yelling, punishing, or threatening the person asking for attention. Our negative responses aren't always on purpose- often they are an automatic conditioned response shaped by how others have treated us in our neediest moments.

Example: Imagine being the parent of a toddler incessantly pulling on your leg in the middle of an important work-from-home meeting: a negative response to the child's bid for attention could be punishing the child or muting yourself long enough to yell "STOP!"

[Image Description] Positive attention looks like: Noticing them (drawing of eyes inside of a pair of glasses), Listening to them (drawing of text bubbles that read "!!!" and "heart !?"), Feeling and expressing empathy (drawing of two dark skin-tone hands hugging a pink heart), Playing with them at all ages (drawing of stacking blocks of different colors), Hugging them (drawing of light skin-tone hands hugging), and Spending time with them (drawing of a golden analog clock).

What is Positive Attention?

Alternatively, when a person of any age is seeking attention, we can respond mindfully and with positivity.

This can look like giving someone gentle physical contact, spending time with them, listening to them, expressing empathy, playing with them, or simply noticing them.

Let's revisit the tugging toddler example again: Instead of brushing them off or responding punitively, a positive response to their attention-seeking could include acknowledging they need something, holding their hand, or assure them that you will be available for them in (x) amount of minutes.

Taking a moment to notice the attention-seeking behavior and respond compassionately can interrupt the annoying escalation of increasingly dramatic attention-seeking behavior. Knowing they are seen and heard can make a difference.

[Image Description] Four comic-style vignette drawings depicting a child demonstrating attention-seeking behavior. The first drawing depicts the child asking the dad for attention, but the dad is distracted by reading materials. The second image depicts the child asking their mom for attention, but the mom is distracted by computer work. The third image depicts the child asking their teacher for attention, but the teacher is distracted by another student. The fourth image depicts the child, mother, father, and teacher sitting in the principal's office discussing behavioral problems.

The Importance of Noticing Attention-Seeking

As the comic above depicts: attention-seeking behavior typically does not escalate in one instance, but over many instances of not feeling responded to, seen, or heard by those around the person who is asking for attention.

Remember: every single one of us needs attention because attention is an essential ingredient for attachments, mental health, and healthy relationships - attention is something we need to survive and thrive. Attention-seeking behaviors are important pathways for communication, so if we mindfully tune-in to our child, teen, or partner's attention-seeking behavior, we may learn something important.

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3 Reasons Behind Attention-Seeking Behavior (& How to Respond) - LindsayBraman.com

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We tend to think of "doing something for attention" as a bad thing- but what if it isn't? Every single one of us needs attention. Attention- especially from those we love- is an essential ingredient for the attachments that empower us to grow as individuals, that supports mental health, and that develops our template for healthy relationships.

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The Emotion Wheel: What It Is and How to Use It

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The Emotion Wheel: What It Is and How to Use It

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The Emotion Wheel: What It Is and How to Use It

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Plutchik's "Wheel of Emotions" covers 8 fundamental emotions. We take a look at joy, sadness, acceptance, & other emotion wheel feelings.

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Where Emotions Are Felt In the Body, According to Research

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Where Emotions Are Felt In the Body, According to Research

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Have you ever said that you had "cold feet," "a gut reaction," or "a shiver down your spine"? You probably didn't think anything of it, but those cliches have more truth to them than you might think. Emotional body mapping can show you why.

In the same way anxiety and depression can cause physical symptoms, emotions can "feel" like they're gathering in one or more parts of your body. Feelings are our primary way of interacting with the world, yet many of us don't pause and unravel how they impact us.

If you've ever had trouble naming an emotion, understanding the concept of physical feelings and where they live may help you feel more in tune with your body.

Body mapping might not be a concrete solution for everyone, but if you've ever needed a little help deciphering your feelings, this could be a good place to start. Plus, we spoke to somatic therapists for tips on tuning in when you're ready to better connect with your body.

You may have heard of the emotion wheel, which can help you categorize emotions to better understand what you're feeling. Emotional body mapping is another option, and, as with the wheel, its efficacy depends on the person.

The research on body mapping is limited so far. Enrico Glerean, the computational and statistics expert for two studies on body mapping, says the researchers are "collecting some more data, but experiments are still in progress, so it is too early for preliminary results."

So think of the body map as a tool that, like medications, isn't one-size-fits-all. It's just one piece in a bigger kit for learning how to communicate with your body.

Based on a 2014 study by Glerean and his colleagues, these are the 13 emotions and the corresponding body parts they activate (or don't activate). Like on a heat map, increased activity corresponds with warmer colors (red, orange, yellow), while decreased responses correspond with cooler colors (blue, green, indigo).

If you find these maps to be accurate to your feelings, it may help you understand metaphysical changes and how emotions impact your well-being.

How did they test this?

To create these body maps, researchers hypothesized that different emotions correspond with different physical reactions. They asked 701 people to color in on a body silhouette the regions where they felt increasing or decreasing activity as they reacted to various stimuli.

The stimuli they were exposed to were much like what we encounter in real life: snippets of movies, conversations, and surprise facial expressions. The results showed that, for the participant pool, different emotions consistently impacted similar areas of the body.

A 2018 study conducted by the same researchers found that the intensity of emotions was directly linked with the intensity of mental and physical sensations. In other words, the stronger the feeling is in your body, the stronger the feeling is in your mind.

This led them to believe that feelings can be categorized as follows:

negative (unpleasant), such as anger, fear, anxiety, and shame

positive (pleasant), such as happiness, love, and pride

illnesses

homeostasis

cognition

Very few emotions, like surprise, are simply neutral.

Participants also saw that pleasant and controllable states were more frequent than unpleasant and uncontrollable ones. If you've ever felt anxiety or depression get the better of you, you might understand the feeling of not being in control.

"Sometimes they are so subtle that it takes time to form the vocabulary to describe them," says Tanmaya George, a certified somatic experiencing practitioner. To physically feel out an emotion and name it, you'll need to slow down. For this, she recommends a mindful body scan.

"Feelings, or fear, can be frozen so that we experience numbness instead of sensations," she says. "That is linked to shock, and as we start to heal, the shock melts and the underlying sensations do come to the surface."

Tuning in with your body and paying attention to where you feel heightened sensations is the best way to locate a feeling. George urges her clients to focus on grounding their bodies. If you find yourself falling into a black hole of despair, use her directions to get back on track:

1. Move your feet and hands gently and rub them against a surface to feel your extremities, and then connect to how that feels.

2. Look for comforting shapes or objects and allow yourself to take some time to absorb the experience of looking at them. How does it make you feel?

3. What sensations develop as you take in the smell, shape, color, and sound?

4. Gently orient yourself in the room and look at everything as if you were seeing it for the first time.

5. Take your focus away from the discomfort. You can also bring comforting self-touch to the area that is feeling discomfort and sense the warmth of your hand.

Hilary Jacobs Hendel, a licensed clinical social worker and the author of It's Not Always Depression, also has tips for when an emotion is dominating a certain part of your body, such as anxiety in your stomach. She suggests decreasing stimulation by going into a dark room (if possible) and tuning in to your stomach by doing deep belly breathing.

"Deep belly breathing stimulates the vagus nerve," says Hendel. "The vagus nerve is the nerve that emotions trigger that runs through every organ in the body. When we deep breathe, it stimulates the calming portion of the vagus nerve. By breath five or six, you start seeing the change."

"Once you are doing this deep breathing and approaching yourself with curiosity, compassion, and kindness, then you want to try to identify and name all the emotions that are coming up and to get a handle on what is triggering you."

Grounding yourself is another helpful tip for when you're feeling heightened emotions in your body. "Putting your feet on the floor lets your brain know that there is ground underneath you. This sounds so simple, but these are things that calm the brain down," Hendel says.

"The thing about emotions is that you have to experience them," says Hendel. "You cannot think your way out of an emotion."

Connecting your mind and body is integral to your overall well-being. In fact, according to Hendel, ignoring, burying, or blocking your emotions may contribute to more illnesses. For example, when your mind-body connection is weak, you may neglect your emotional and/or physical health.

Or you may feel shame surrounding emotions, such as depression. For this, Hendel wants to emphasize that there's nothing wrong with you. Sometimes your environment can be hurtful and cause you to internalize a "literal, bad physical feeling." Or, like anxiety, these sensations of not feeling good enough can manifest physically in your body.

Thankfully, Hendel also says that demystifying emotions can help people stop being overwhelmed by them. According to the previously mentioned 2014 study, identifying emotional changes can help us understand emotional processing and identify mood disorders such as anxiety and depression.

This body map should not be used in place of a mental health professional. Like an emotion wheel, the body map an innovative concept to help identify emotions, especially during difficult times. And as is the case with an emotion wheel, what sounds right to you may hold a slightly different meaning for someone else.

For example, you could be happy because you're feeling optimistic, which is very different from feeling content or relaxed. In the same way, anxiety might make you want to run or lie down under the covers.

Before building your mental health toolkit, it's best to talk to a professional. Even if you believe somatic therapy is right for you, a psychotherapist can help you gain a foundational understanding of your mental health first. They'll also help you use any of the tools, from breathing to body mapping, in tandem.

Once you lay the groundwork, finding a body-oriented or somatic therapist is key, according to George. "In somatic therapy, we take the focus away from analyzing feelings and emotions and instead encourage clients to sense them in the body. By moving away from naming the feeling and instead connecting it to a sensation, we give space for the perception that it is, in fact, an energy, and this in turn allows for that energy to be released through the body."
Juliana Ukiomogbe is a freelance writer who covers culture, wellness, books, and movies. You can follow her on Twitter.

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Where Emotions Are Felt In the Body, According to Research

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Have you ever said that you had "cold feet," "a gut reaction," or "a shiver down your spine"? You probably didn't think anything of it, but those cliches have more truth to them than you might think. Emotional body mapping can show you why.

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Tips for Helping Kids Handle Their Emotions

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Tips for Helping Kids Handle Their Emotions

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Author and humorist Erma Bombeck once wrote, "When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out." As parents, we all have moments when we would like to hide away, avoid confrontation, and wait for the quiet that follows the storm.

Parenting is an incredible challenge, full of foibles, fits, and frantic attempts to calm and soothe our children. In our efforts, we're frequently left to follow our instincts and try our best, sometimes reaching thrilling victories and other times falling foolishly off course.

Though it can seem like we are stumbling blindly through the web of challenges parenting presents, there are ways to better understand our child's rapidly developing mind and strategies to help our children through their own personal challenges and emotional lows. Some of the most valuable insights come from a new book by Dr. Dan Siegel and Dr. Tina Bryson, The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind, Survive Everyday Parenting Struggles, and Help Your Family Thrive. In this acclaimed text, parents are introduced to the science illustrating how a child's brain is wired and how it matures. With this understanding as a base, parents can implement techniques that help turn meltdowns into opportunities to integrate their child's brain.

Like all human beings, children are ruled by their emotional right brain and their logical left brain. Helping children to understand and integrate both sides of their brain equips them with an invaluable tool that enables them to lead a more balanced, emotionally stable, and mentally healthy life. Even though our goal is to raise calm and happy kids, very often we make mistakes in the moments when our children are at their most vulnerable. For example, when our kids throw tantrums, we may attempt to appeal to them through pure logic, instruction, or worse case scenario, by "losing it" ourselves. When we comprehend what is going on in our child's brain during these meltdowns, we learn a better way to relate to our children as well as a powerful method to teach them effective tools for coping with their own tumultuous emotions.

Use logic to make sense of feelings. Simply telling our children to "calm down" or "stop crying" is not an effective way to help them through what Dr. Bryson calls "emotional tsunamis."Demanding our kids be rational when they are operating under the influence of their irrational right brains is a misattuned effort often made in vain. Instead, offer your child empathy. Acknowledge that they are feeling bad, scared, or frustrated and express that you are sorry they're in pain. As they become calmer, ask them to explain what upset them and help guide them through their story, while investigating what triggered the meltdown.

Help kids tell their stories. Protective as we may be, our kids will all experience at least mildly traumatic events. Mean teachers who ridiculed them, scary moments when they got lost in the supermarket; instances that incited fear, anger, or sadness will arise. We can help our kids resolve these traumas when they occur by supporting their effort to make sense out of what happened to them.

This process starts with talking to them about it. Don't avoid stressful topics in hopes that your kids will forget all about the incident. Instead, gently guide your children, as they tell you their story. "When did you notice your mother wasn't around? How did you feel when you realized you were lost?" Talking may seem difficult at first, but the more a child can make sense of his or her story, the more integrated and calm he or she will become. Contrarily, any unresolved trauma can present problems later in life.

Teach your child that feelings go through us. When our child has calmed down, it is helpful to explain to them that feelings, even intense emotions, come and go. Our emotions pass through us like waves, building and building until finally they reach their peak, crash, and subside.We can't choose these feelings, but we can decide how we will behave when they arise. We can be curious about them and talk about them, all the while understanding that they won't last forever.

Rupture and repair. Parents are human. We mess up, we say the wrong thing, and sometimes we let our own emotions get in the way. When this happens, we can help our kids a great deal by talking to them about what happened and how we behaved. We shouldn't be afraid to say sorry when we make mistakes. Be open about your own story. Explain how you overreacted because you felt angry or afraid. By relaxing and acknowledging your reaction, you are demonstrating how to calm down, a lesson your children can apply when they find themselves in similar situations.

Keep calm and carry on. We've all either seen or been that mother who is getting into a full-on argument with their 2-year-old about putting a sweater on, or that father who is practically throwing his own tantrum as his kid cries over what he's served for lunch. No matter what the scenario, losing our temper is never the solution. Letting our emotions take over only teaches our kids to feel as out of control as we're behaving. Our own unresolved traumas and negative early experiences will constantly inform our reactions to our kids. Be aware of what triggers you, and be sure to separate the emotions these events stir up from your kids' independent experience.

By being more attuned to our kids, understanding their developing mind, and actively seeking out and implementing effective strategies to help them cope, we are doing them a great service in arming them with tools that will not only strengthen their own resilience but will be passed on to future generations.

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Tips for Helping Kids Handle Their Emotions

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Author and humorist Erma Bombeck once wrote, "When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they're finished, I climb out." As parents, we all have moments when we would like to hide away, avoid confrontation, and wait for the quiet that follows the storm.

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Looking for fun social skills activities to boost your kid's socio-emotional development?

Social skills are an important part of kids' socio-emotional development. Every day, we use our social skills to communicate and interact in society.

Children learn about norms and acceptable behaviors through their social interaction with parents, teachers and, later in childhood, peers. There are also a number of social skills activities for kids that will help us support this learning process.
(Disclosure: We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. You can also read our Disclosure & Disclaimer policy here)
Social Skills Activities for Kids

The following activities are not just fun family or classroom activities. They are also great tools to help you work with kids on their social skills.

I've organized them in broad categories (communication, listening, emotions, participating and caring - following this social skills checklist). For each social skill mentioned below, you will find a suggested activity.
VERBAL COMMUNICATION Skill: Starting, maintaining and finishing a conversation
Activity 1: Role-playing conversations

What is role-playing? It is acting out a particular person, character or situation. It is a technique used often when training new skills and in psychotherapy.

It works really well when you are training kids in social skills, as it allows them to practice a new skill in a safe environment before they expose themselves to real-life situations. Consequently, you will see it mentioned in several suggested social skills activities.

In this activity, you will be roleplaying with your kids or students different everyday communication situations like:

starting a conversation with the kid sitting next to you

wrapping up a conversation so the kid agrees on meeting/playing again.

Just a few examples that you can use:

Conversation startersGive them a few lines that they can use at school:

What did you do this weekend?

What games do you play at home?

What is your favorite (food, game, place)?

Finishing / Wrapping up a conversation
We should play this again sometime?

If you run out of ideas, or would like to make it a bit more fun, you can use these conversation cubes (foam cubes with 36 engaging questions and activity guide)
Skill: Giving and receiving compliments Activity 2: Role-playing giving and receiving compliments
In groups of two, each kid takes a turn saying something nice to the other person (e.g. I like your t-shirt, you did great today at maths), and the child that received the compliment responds "thank you very much"
Activity 3: Puppet show
This is just a variation of a role-playing situation. You may use the puppet show idea for any of the previous social situations that we have mentioned (conversation starters, giving and receiving compliments).

Just as an example. I sometimes use my kid's favorite soft toys (Puppy Dog Pals) and represent conversations in which Bingo is having problems controlling his emotions and Rolly helps him through some of the calming strategies that we use at home.

NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Skill: Respecting personal space Activity 4: The personal space circle
Draw a circle on a big sheet of paper. The inner circle will be the intimate space (1.5 feet radius), surrounded by personal space (4 feet radius) and the area outside is the social space.

Put that paper on the floor. Take turns to roleplay conversations where kids speak to each other without trespassing in their personal spaces. (You may also use a string to create the circle or a hula hoop)
NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION & EMOTIONS /FEELINGS Skill: Learning about facial expressions and body language
Activity 5: Identifying facial expression and body language in Emotion Cards

You can use emotion cards to work on emotion recognition. These ones here are great.

The set includes 80 cards. Half of them are faces on white background (different ages, genders, and ethnicities) showing five different emotions (happy, sad, angry, disgusted and scared). The other 40 cards are real-life emotion-provoking situations. It also includes an activities booklet that provides instructions and ideas on how to build emotional awareness and social skills.

This Emotions & Facial Expressions workbook can be a great activity for younger kids, too (we developed this one ❤️)
LISTENING Skill: Listening with complete attention
Activity 6: Continue my story

We love storytelling at home. I make up new stories every single day for my child.

Stories can also be used for a fun activity that involves listening attentively.

One person in the group starts a story, and at some point of time stops and chooses who will continue the plot. The next person will take the story from there and will pass it to another one afterward.

Everybody needs to listen with full attention because they don't know when their turn will come up.
EMOTIONS Skill: Expressing and recognizing feelings Activity 8: Drama workshop.
Write down different emotions on slips of paper and put them in a bag. Taking turns each of you will take a slip of paper and role-play the emotion written on it.

The person roleplaying practices the skill of expressing feelings

The people guessing are practicing emotion recognition.

Activity 9: Keeping a feelings journal

Some kids may find expressing their feelings a bit difficult. A good way to get comfortable reflecting about feeling could be writing a feelings journal. This one is a great one for girls. And this one could be a nice guided journal for teens, with prompts and fun design.
Skill: Expressing feelings
Activity 10: Emotion cards and real-life situations

With a set of cards portraying different situations, take turns to explain how would do you feel in when you are in that specific situation. The cards we mention in our activity 5 could be used for this activity.
PARTICIPATING Taking turns
The beauty of this skill is that it can be practiced with any game you have at home. But just to give you another idea:
Activity 11: Answer the question when you get the ball
Conversation balls are great tools to help kids know about each other. There are several ways to play with them. You usually toss the ball and check under your thumb the question you need to answer.

You can also choose one of the questions and toss the ball around so that the kids wait for their turn to answer that question.
CARING Making friends
Group Activity 12: Brainstorming what makes a good friend

Some ideas to mention: kind, helpful, talk nicely to people, don't exclude others, don't say ugly things about others
Skill: Showing interest for others
Activity 13: Ask questions about the other person.

Organize the kids in pairs, and ask them to take turns asking questions about each other.

If the kids run out of ideas you can use conversation cards like these ones ? (120 questions divided in three kids' theme topics)
Skill: Teach Empathy
Activity 14: Talk about different situations and ask your child how other people may feel.

Social Skills Activities for Kids with Autism

One of the diagnostic criteria in Autism Spectrum Disorder is persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts:

Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity

Deficits in nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction

Deficits in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships

As social skills deficit really comes with the diagnosis, helping our kids with autism develop social skills is an important part of our work as parents, educators and health professionals.

Apart from the activities that you have already gone through, you may also consider helping your kid with the following activities:
Activity 15: Joining a Social Skills Group run by professional therapists
Check out if this type of activity is available in your community. We were really happy to discover that this was an actual possibility for us
Activity 16: Joining a Social Club for Kids with Autism Activity 17: Organize Play Dates at Home (guided play if your kid needs help in social interactions)
If you are looking for lots of activities ideas, make sure you check this book below:

➡️ Recommended reading (FREE in Kindle Unlimited when I wrote this post!!):
Social Skills Handbook for Autism ( 50 fun and simple games and activities help the child on the spectrum with social skills like making friends, being part of a group, interacting with peers, expressing feelings or dealing with bullies)
➡️➡️Try Kindle Unlimited Free HERE

Social Skills Activities Ideas in Books

These books come with lots of ideas and activities to practice social skills at home, at school or in therapy setting:

A picture book with 64 scenarios that build social-emotional learning, critical thinking, mindfulness, self-confidence, empathy, executive function, and critical consciousness.

List of Social Skills for Kids

Just in case you missed my previous post, make sure to check out this comprehensive list of Social Skills for Kids ? and grab the FREE poster included in that post.

Other Coping Skills Activities in this Blog

17 Social Skills Activities for Kids (Young Children, Teens & Kids with Autism)

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17 Social Skills Activities for Kids (Young Children, Teens & Kids with Autism)

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Social skills are an important part of kids' socio-emotional development. Every day, we use our social skills to communicate and interact in society. Children learn about norms and acceptable behaviors through their social interaction with parents, teachers and, later in childhood, peers.

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Dr. Dan Siegel's Hand Model of the Brain

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How would you like to make learning all about emotions fun? Well now you can with this fun Feelings Bingo Game for kids. This interactive game helps kids identify feelings and emotions.

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Now that we've covered what's going on in your child's developing brain and how you influence that development, let's address your kid becomes capable of certain types of higher functioning. The goal is to help you identify when to provide your kids with the support to reach new, cognitive heights. If you haven't read the first two posts in this series, I recommend spending 12 minutes (they each take about 6 minutes to read) getting up to speed. You will get much more out of this post if you do.

In Western societies, we put a lot of focus on when a child reaches a certain milestone in relation to her peers. You often hear parents brag: "He was potty trained by two!" "She learned to read at 4!" More likely than not, an especially smart child will read earlier than an average child. Or, a child of average intelligence may be more interested in reading than another child. Another child of average intelligence is pushed by his parents and caregivers to read early. Yet another child develops a bit later than her peers, only to become the best reader in her class. Think of it as an intellectual growth spurt. If you look at a bunch of third graders - more often than not, the tallest kids will become the tallest adults, but it isn't a linear process - neither is brain development.

While reaching a stage earlier than most children can be celebrated, we should not focus on making sure that our children are "ahead" in certain areas. Instead, we should focus on encouraging horizontal integration of the current abilities that our children have at a certain age. To bring back the reading analogy: We want our kids to show good comprehension, not just speed. Said in Developmental Psychology speak, we want our children to have "integrated" brains.
What does "integrated" mean anyway?
The body (including the brain) is part of a complicated system. Internal inputs (like your heart rate) and external inputs (like the smile of a stranger) are processed by two very different hemispheres of the brain (right and left)...

...and across three different levels: the reptilian (hind brain), the limbic (midbrain), and the neocortex (front brain)).

As we grow, each of these components mature and integrate into an "integrated," adult brain.
OK, but what's so great about integration?
When you see an integrated person, you can sense it. What she's thinking, feeling and saying are fully aligned. He seems completely comfortable in his own skin. She can acknowledge an emotion, articulate how that emotion contradicts her moral stance on the same topic; and finally, act on her conviction while honoring her negative emotion without internalizing any shame. Do you want your kids to grow up to become integrated adults? Make sure they're hitting their developmental milestones, but spend the majority of your time helping them to integrate the capacities of their tri-level (called triune) and bi-hemispheric brains.

We could spend hours exploring the inner workings of the developing brain; but, in service of staying focused, here is what you need to know about the layers and the hemispheres of the brain as they pertain to becoming an integrated adult. Let's start with the three levels of the brain. As I mentioned in my first blog post on child development, the brain develops back-to-front, which makes sense. Humans need to birth our infants before their heads get too big to fit through the birth canal. So, we better make sure that all of our autonomic functions (like breathing and heart rate) are online before we exit the womb.

Once outside, we can take our time to develop sensory control, emotional regulation and rational thought. Plus, we can get help from our parents as these systems integrate and come online! So, what specific functions to each of these layers perform?

The reptilian (hindbrain): The hindbrain is called the reptilian brain because it resembles the brain of a reptile. If fact, your hindbrain looks a lot like a crocodile's entire brain. It regulates breathing, heart rate and other automatic functions. It is also responsible for reacting to threats. When you hear a loud bang, you flinch and duck reflexively, regardless of whether or not you are in actual danger. That's your hind brain reacting. Your hind brain is constantly asking "Am I safe now?" "How about now?" "And now?" When you're in crisis, your reptilian brain often takes over completely until the crisis passes and you settle down.

The limbic brain (midbrain): The limbic brain is the intermediary between our reptilian brain and our neocortex. The purpose of the midbrain is to make us care about other members of our species. It wields emotions to accomplish this goal. The joy of loving someone; the profound sadness of losing someone - that's the limbic system at work. Why do mammals have this system while reptiles don't? Laying an egg and leaving town doesn't require bonding with your little, lizard babies. Growing up to be a solo predator? You have no incentive to get along with your peers, either. In fact, the biggest threat to baby alligators is the likelihood that their mother will eat her eggs, or another crocodile will eat them once they hatch! Alternatively, if you're a mammal, you cannot survive on your own at birth. Thus, to survive, your parents have to care about you, protect you, and teach you how to survive as you grow. Grazing with your fellow Zebras when a pride of lions comes along? You better work with your equid buddies to hightail it to safety. That requires teamwork. Without emotion, there is no teamwork. For mammals, teamwork really does make the dream work.

Neocortex (Front Brain): Our centers of "rational thought" and reasoning develop last. This is the part of your brain that isn't' fully mature until you're 25 or 26. If your reptilian brain reacts to a stimulus and your limbic brain tells you how to feel about it, your neocortex helps you make sense of what just happened. The Constitution, Atheism, Creationism, NAFTA, Mein Kampf, The Golden Rule - all of these works of thought came from the front brains of their creators. While the neocortex makes us "human," be careful not to deify conscious thought. As the aforementioned examples betray, a lot of unconscious reacting and semi-conscious emoting influence the fully conscious explanations we provide to justify our behavior. As one of the most brilliant frontal lobes in human history put it: "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead; it can only serve." - Albert Einstein

As a caretaker, you have to help your children to integrate their triune brains while various components of each system are coming online. Not an easy task in-and-of-itself; but wait, there's more! Not only do our brains have three levels, they also have two hemispheres, which serve very different functions. For a succinct overview, check out this diagram:

The corpus callosum (a wide bundle of neural fibers that stretches between the two hemispheres) is responsible for managing and maintaining the integration of the left and right hemispheres. Your child's corpus callosum won't become fully insulated for quick functioning until she's 7 or 8, making whole brain behaviors challenging. Plus, the neocortex continues to develop until we're 26; consequently, the work of integration doesn't stop until your kid is a quarter century into life!
Age 0-1 Year: Developmental Overview:
As a result, when faced with a challenge, children have to respond with a 3-level, 2-hemisphere brain that is simultaneously developing and integrating new capacities on a regular basis. While all of this is going on, they have to go to school, do chores, play sports and make friends. It is really hard to be a kid. We can't change that for them; but, by knowing how developed and how integrated a child's brain is at certain ages, we can approach our struggling kiddos with empathetic, developmentally appropriate support.

Kudos to you for making it through that lengthy (but important) setup. Without further ado, here's an overview of some of the core, developmental tasks that children face at different life stages; what to expect as they grapple with these stages; and, some ways that you can support your kids in mastering these tasks. Your role is to understand what they're going through, to approach them with empathy, and to provide them with the "scaffolding" necessary to help them mastering the work of each developmental stage. Hopefully this will serve as a helpful reference for you!

The brain develops most rapidly during the first 2 years of life. While sight, hearing, smell, touch, sensitivity to pain and reaction to movement are all present at birth, stimulating the sensory motor pathways so that they "wire together" and myelinate (insulate) is super important. Newborns can see objects 8-10 inches away (the approximate distance of baby's eyes from her mother's gaze when baby is held in her arms). Significant visual growth occurs in the first 6 months. By age 4, a child's vision is 20/20. Children have fully developed hearing by 2. So, if you want them to be bilingual, expose them regularly to both languages while in the womb and throughout the first year.
Developmental Tasks:

1. Develop ability to regulate arousal and response to arousal

2. Orient to external world and gradually gain control over motor skills

Parental scaffolding:

1. Respond quickly to your infant's distress. Learn to identify the cause of their stress (most parents can discern between types of crying within 1-2 months). Work to alleviate their stress as quickly as possible. If your infant consistently experiences relief from distress through parental support, your child will become confident that help is on the way within a certain timeframe, thereby minimizing her distress. The less anxiety your child feels, the more adept he will become at learning to "wait" for relief. It is counterintuitive, but the more responsive you are to your infant's needs, the more she will grow up be capable of waiting for what she needs.

2. To further alleviate the anxiety associated with being helpless, be organized and create structure for your infant. Routine will help your child's nervous system to anticipate when a need will be met, which also enhances tolerance for discomfort and confidence in eventual relief.

3. Model soothing techniques to your children when they are upset. Through their little mirror neurons, your babies are learning your behaviors, even if they can't reflect them back to you until they're older. Consequently, know that by responding to your child's distress, you're taking advantage of another opportunity to teach him how to self regulate in the future.

4. Along those lines, sleep training may be necessary for your sanity; but, it will disrupt the consistency of the child's experience of relief from distress in a timely fashion. In attachment studies, children who's distress is ignored by parents will learn not to cry; however, they will still show physiological evidence of distress. Thus, while the cries for help may cease after they go unanswered for a few nights, do not assume that the child is no longer distressed. Instead, he may not be crying because he knows that he can't expect relief.

5. Engage with your child within her capacity for vision, hearing and motion. If he grimaces and turns his head away, he's overstimulated. By removing the stimulus from his sight, he's employing his most basic ability to self regulate. If she smiles and responds to your initiated play, continue to engage and encourage repetitive play behaviors until your child gets bored or moves on.

Your infant is capable of integrating senses (identifying associated sounds and images). When you provide them with multi-sensory inputs, you help them to make as connections across the senses. If they are overstimulated, they will grimace and turn away from the offending input. This is an infant's only way to self regulate - honor it!
Toddler (1-3 years): Developmental Overview:
Infants also develop the ability to discriminate between individuals quickly. At first, by smell, sound and hazy sight. Later, through multiple sensory inputs at the same time. Babies become capable of reacting to facial expressions and internalizing the moods of others very quickly. As such; in addition to developing significant sensory and motor development and integration, very young children are capable of internalizing the basic, self regulation skills modeled by their parents during the first year. Mastery surrounding self regulation will result in more regular day/night sleep patterns, eating patterns and basic abilities to down regulate when distressed.

If you are attentive in responding to your child's needs for arousal regulation and sensory stimulation over the first year, a secure attachment will emerge between you and your infant. Your kid will know that you are consistently present to help her feel better and to help her to develop her rapidly evolving sensory control. Only the relaxed brain is capable of learning and self regulating. In a low-stress environment, chock full of lessons, your kid has the best possible chance of internalizing your behavior to self regulate. The less consistent the soothing and the less frequent the sensory interaction, the more anxious your child will become when he has an unmet need. To exacerbate the issue, children who do not receive consistent support in self regulating will become more aroused when they have needs, because they are not sure their need will be met. Thus, even when a parent does respond, the child is less likely to internalize the message because she is already agitated - thereby perpetuating a vicious cycle of dysregulation.

While kids are taking their first steps at 1; by 3, the majority of toddlers will be running around, fully potty trained. Toddlers need to concentrate intently to maintain control of their bodies between ages 1-2, when development is still happening at a rapid pace. Between 2-3, it is all about integrating the new circuitry. A rapid period of myelination (neural pathway insulation) begins, linking the brainstem to the cerebral cortex and the frontal lobe. The result is integration of perceptual and cognitive functioning, the emergence of language, an acceleration in mental processing and basic, self-awareness.

Neurobiology studies show a burst in language learning between 16-24 months, enabled by a surge in cortical growth in the language center of the brain. Understanding words precedes the ability to speak them. While toddlers can understand 50 words between 13-16 months, they can't speak 50 words until 18-22 months. Thus, toddlers will often use symbolic gestures to fill in the gap.
Developmental tasks:

1. Balancing attachment and exploration, with increasing movement toward autonomy and individuation

2. Internalization of parental values and standards

3. Developing the ability to symbolize, through play and communication

Parental scaffolding:

1. While your infant used his mirror neurons to mimic your smile, your toddler will use his mirror neurons to mimic more advanced behaviors, mannerisms and words. If your toddler is securely attached to you, she will want to mimic what you do, especially household tasks. Play is practice for the future mastery of individual and group tasks, encourage it!

2. Over-index on explaining and clarifying every experiences to your toddler. When possible, give your kid advanced notice if a new experience is coming his way. Toddlers use their newly minted ability to anticipate future events to prepare themselves for overstimulation. If your kid asks a question, answer her honestly. You are helping her to see patterns and solidify cause/effect relationships in the world around her. In fact, lying to your child about what is about to happen is a very bad idea. If caught by surprise, a toddler will become anxious and fearful of new experiences. It will also put your child's trust at risk. A good example of a situation that will test your desire to lie is a doctors visit. If your kid is going to get a shot, prepare him. If he can watch you calmly get a shot beforehand, even better! Be honest that she'll feel a pinch. Have her pinch her arm for a few seconds to practice. Explain to your child that the discomfort will be temporary. Show your child that it isn't a big deal to get a shot by modeling calm behavior when you talk about it and practice it. These steps will ensure that the experience is just unpleasant, not traumatic.

3. Encourage your toddler to use language to communicate. Remember, before toddlers use words, they use actions to explore their environment and raise questions about what they're experiencing. Help your toddler construct an understanding of the world by "filling in" missing words or connections, asking questions and adding details to your child's narrative of the world around him.

4. Provide your child with transitional objects (like blankets, stuffed animals and dolls) to use as symbols of their attachment to you. Toddlers will cling to these objects for comfort as they experiment with longer separations from caregivers. Autonomy is a new (and scary) concept, which may lead to ambivalent behavior about attachment figures. Meaning, your child may demand that you release her one minute, and crawl back into your arms for comfort the next. Give your toddler as much space as you can (while keeping her safe). Respond positively when he needs comfort and affection. If you are comfortable with the transitions between togetherness and autonomy, your toddler will be, too.

5. Along similar lines, toddlers are just starting to understand that they are separate from other people. Combined with a sporadic command of cause-and-effect relationships; toddlers are horrible at choosing effective ways to get their increasing list of needs met. Just like you don't blame an infant for crying, you shouldn't blame a 3-year-old for hitting you to get your attention. Calmly disavow the behavior in a caring and non-punitive voice. Work to identify "unacceptable" behaviors; but, do not tie those behaviors to your child's character. If you do, he will internalize that he is bad, not that he did a bad thing. As you might imagine, this has catastrophic consequences for self esteem and future behavior.

6. While advanced empathy isn't in a toddler's wheelhouse, she can begin to grasp that she "should" and "shouldn't" do certain things. This is the first moral thread you can pull on to help combat the terrible 2's. Set clear rules and reinforce them, without becoming angry or shaming your child. Add some cause and effect explanations to your 'should' and 'shouldn't' behaviors, to provide toddler-level explanations for the rules they're trying to internalize. For example: "We don't go in the broom closet because there are lots of sharp and heavy objects that could fall on you. Mommy loves you very much and I don't want you to get hurt." Eventually, older toddlers will begin to internalize rules (and the reasons for them).

Around 18-months, toddlers begin to understand that they are "self" and everyone else is an "other." Around 2, possessive behavior will emerge as a result. This possessive behavior will begin to subside around 3, when toddlers begin to grasp the concept of empathy.
Preschool (3-6 years): Developmental Overview:
Before the age of 3, toddlers also start to understand how things work, including basic cause-and-effect relationships. Anxiety and fear emerge, as children begin to anticipate that something will happen, but they don't know what will happen. Sequential reasoning leads to goal setting behaviors, which makes children less distractible and more focused on purposeful play.

A securely attached toddler will try something he thinks might be bad, then look at your response to confirm or deny his hypothesis. Through consistently enforced rules, a successful toddler will begin to internalize the rules you set. When toddlers behave poorly, parents of securely attached children explain why the behavior is bad, but they do not imply that the child is bad. This is critical, because a toddler is building a sense of self through the way that you treat him. In addition, toddlers are still very shaky with the cause-and-effect concept. If you attack a child's character when she hits another toddler, she will internalize that she is bad. She will also be unable to accurately contain the impact of her "badness" to the temporarily hurt feelings of a daycare buddy. If you tell her that you love her, but you have to let her know that hitting is never ok, she's more likely to internalize that she is a good person, and that good people don't hit other people.

Good news, parents: self regulation, impulse control and interpersonal coping skills improve significantly between 3 and 6. While the toddler relied on external approval, the preschooler begins to internalize the lessons he's learned and synthesize them into his own value system. These values are upheld by the preschooler's developing conscience. If parents successfully addressed bad behavior (without making their children feel inherently bad); older preschoolers will have the courage to judge and correct their own bad behavior.

In addition, a 4-year-old has the ability to track sequential events and gage time in a manner that a toddler cannot. Because a preschooler can anticipate when her mother will return, she can manage her separation anxiety more productively. If securely attached, a preschooler will increasingly turn to peers for social stimulation; however, if he becomes distressed, anxious or upset, he will still run to a parent for support. This is not a regression; instead, it is a sign that a preschoolers autonomy is precarious. She will attempt to solve a problem on her own, but will turn to an adult when her resources are exhausted.

But wait, there's more good news! The corpus callosum (which connects the two hemispheres of the brain) begins to myelinate during the preschool years. Once insulated, the corpus callosum allows a preschooler leverage her left brain more quickly and efficiently. Consequently, while a toddler relies on magical thinking, preschoolers are more logical and realistic. An insulated corpus callosum also enables a preschooler to connect another child's words (left brain) with the emotional nuances behind those words (right brain); thereby increasing her capacity for empathy. As a result, the preschooler discovers the joy of friendship. Preschoolers love taking their newly integrated brain hemispheres for a spin, repeatedly playing sequential, "make believe" games with peers.
Developmental Tasks:

1. Development of play as a vehicle for exploring reality

2. Making the transition from an egocentric (me, me, me) worldview and magical thinking (it won't rain because I want to keep playing) to a more logical based world view (I don't control the weather and there are other stakeholders on this planet)

Parental Scaffolding:

1. As your kid begins to speak more fluently, ask questions, probe for details and encourage him to analyze his experiences by putting them in the broader context of his life experiences. Now that your child is capable of constructing complex sentences, aid his narrative and analytical development by modeling advanced communication and reasoning.

2. Preschoolers are increasingly aware that others have different thoughts and experiences, which fuels their desire to share their experience with friends and caregivers. This is the beginning of wanting to feel understood. Validate and repeat back the emotions that your children convey, so they feel understood. This will decrease the loneliness and anxiety associated with increasing autonomy. Finally, help your children connect their feelings with the sequential events that elicited them. Memory and emotion are deeply intertwined. Make sure your kids remember what happened, how they felt and why they felt that way.

3. Delineating between fantasy and reality is a big part of surviving the preschool years. At 3, a child is simultaneously learning what the word "ghost" means, and whether ghosts actually exist. While trivial to you, a preschooler's fears and anxieties are very real to him. Help your kid articulate her understanding of ghosts and put them in the "not real" category through imaginative, narrative play.

4. Voicing, addressing and conquering anxieties through play can be used to process traumatic events as well, like a minor car crash, a trip to the doctor or a scary encounter with an aggressive dog. Even if these events happened before a child is able to recollect it (with explicit memory); the emotions associated with implicit memories can lead to generalized anxiety later on.

5. Cause-and-effect relationships, logic, sequential reasoning and empathy are both nascent and fragile in the preschooler's brain. When even slightly agitated, these cognitive abilities go offline. Thus, your preschooler is at risk of jumping to false, egocentric conclusions. As a result, it is imperative to talk through stressful and emotionally painful experiences with your children when they are ready. This will ensure that they don't internalize blame for extraneous situations. For example, young girl's father left suddenly when she was 3 years old. She came to her mother a year later, tearfully confessing through her sobs: "Daddy left because he was mad that I was jumping on the bed!" Make sure your children aren't making false associations that could traumatize them.

6. While it is important for your child to learn to coexist with peers, in preschool, you must also begin to help him to identify and fortify himself against the poor behavior of others. Ask your preschooler: "what was the most fun thing you did today?" Then, "what was the least fun thing that happened today?" By uncovering potentially troubling experiences with your preschooler, you can help him to process the behavior of others, his reaction to it, and how he might handle a similar situation in the future.

While the aforementioned cognitive capacities increase drastically from 3-6, physical development continues to play a central role as well. Significant synaptic pruning and insulating (within hemispheres and between hemispheres) translates into improved perceptual abilities and motor skills. As a result, preschool play should remain very physical, allowing kiddos to become fully integrated (and coordinated) adults. Because the brain is still "pruning" (a.k.a. killing off) synaptic connections that aren't used; if your preschooler isn't big on physical play, encourage him to make art, to build a fort, or to play interactive video games. It is important for your preschooler to get practice using both sides of the brain to engage in complex motor activities at this age.
Middle School (6-12 years): Developmental Overview:
Finally, between 3 and 4, a preschooler's language abilities begin to take off. Preschoolers increasingly arrange words according to syntactical rules, switch between tenses and insert connecting words, like "and," "so," "then," and "because." These words reflect a preschooler's ability to understand the relationship between things, the sequence of events and causality. While toddlers struggle with a large gap between what they can understand and what they can express, preschoolers begin to close that gap, allowing them to more accurately represent their needs, their feelings and their thoughts to caretakers and to peers.

Play is important work for preschoolers. Much of that work will be constructing and maintaining fantasy games with peers. While preschoolers have a nascent ability to consider the feelings of others, when agitated or exhausted, they revert to the egocentric state of the toddler. This will result in possessiveness over toys, over fantasy play narratives and over their "best friends." The less securely attached a child is, the more easily she will become agitated; and thus, the more likely she'll be to revert to a possessive state. That said, it is important to understand that ALL preschoolers will revert to toddler behavior A LOT. Again, the insulation of the corpus callosum is just beginning to integrate the two hemispheres of the brain, all while the midbrain and forebrain continue to grow at a fast clip. The entire system goes offline A LOT for preschool, and even grammar school children. You're not failing as a parent when your kid has a meltdown. You're succeeding as a parent if you approach him with empathy, because a meltdown means he's exhausted his capacities to master his developing brain that day. Throwing logic at your preschooler before she's calmed down is futile, as her left brain is offline. Once you've soothed her enough that her left brain comes back online, then you can talk about how to handle her frustration differently in the future.

From age 6 to the onset of puberty, children come to see the world as a place with rules that must be followed and systems that must be joined. They understand that the world does not revolve around them; but instead, that they must find their place in it. School kids learn that success comes with practice. The prefrontal cortex undergoes a big growth spurt between 5 and 8, which results in vast improvements in working memory, planning, selective attention and inhibition. Like the preschooler will frequently revert to toddler behavior; the middle school child may still dissolve into egocentric and magical thinking. While your middle school child becomes capable of reasoning, learning and perceiving reality accurately, she won't always be able to employ these skills, so be patient.

Along the same lines, the developing conscience is also shaky for school aged children. They still have volatile impulses; but, they also have an internal voice, warning them against bad behaviors. Coming to terms with the self-regulating voice in our heads can be very anxiety producing for kids. Until it becomes an integrated part of the self, it kind of feels like an adult moved in to their heads!

The transition to school is a challenging one for both parents and children. By simply going to school to "learn," your kid becomes aware that he is expected to develop capacities that he doesn't yet possess. This realization can be motivating or intimidating. Your reaction to school will help shape your kid's reaction to it. Learning, striving (and sometimes failing) should be modeled as exciting and fun! While school can be a blast, know that it is exhausting. No matter how independent she behaves, even your 12-year-old relies on you to help her to alleviate stress and combat fear. Newly developed psychic defenses allow your kids to act cool and collected all day long at school, even if they don't feel OK inside. This is exhausting and your middle schooler will need to unwind (and sometimes melt down) at home after holding that stress all day.

By 6, most children can acknowledge another person's point of view. At 8, most kids can describe others in terms of their psychological characteristics. By 10 or 12, kids can hold opposing viewpoints in mind at the same time. They can also feel multiple ways about something. As such, your 12-year-old begins to get that "it's complicated." Consequently, rules about behavior are organized into moral standards. Proactive altruism is now possible, because middle schoolers begin to understand how their friends will think and feel about a given outcome. Consequently, friendships begin to shift from opportunistic alliances based on shared interests, to relationships built on common values, mutual support, reciprocity and loyalty. Unfortunately, with the capacity to evaluate friendships based on personal characteristics, middle school children form clicks, negotiate social status and begin to exclude others in sophisticated and damaging ways.

Between 6 and 8, kids can reverse their own thinking, which makes syntax manipulation possible. They can also begin to distinguish between comparative words, like tiny, small and little. By 7 or 8, kids begin to use metaphors. Between 8 and 10, they enjoy jokes that include wordplay. By 10, kids can begin to guess what words mean by looking at their roots. By 4th grade, most kids can write fluently. With increased language skills, physical aggression decreases and verbal aggression increases. Teasing, insults and gossip are the unfortunate result.

As the outside world becomes increasingly logical, fantasy play is increasingly internalized, or shared solely with a middle schooler's "best friend." In groups, middle school children increasingly play games with firm rules, winners and losers. Breaking the rules becomes more and more unacceptable in middle school play and cheaters are often ostracized. A desire to collect and categorize objects also fills the void left by internalized fantasy play. Hobbies are half-way between work and play, and middle schoolers love them!

1. Develop and utilize a sense of calm, educability and self control

2. Develop real-world skills and a sense of competence

3. Establish oneself in a world of peers

Advancements in spatial recognition, time orientation, sequential reasoning, memory and auditory processing allow school-aged children to approach tasks strategically and creatively. They can play out multiple scenarios in their heads, zooming in on details, then zooming out again to look at the big picture. When a developmentally normative middle schooler doesn't have all of the information she needs, she'll know to ask for help. Once all of the necessary information compiled, a middle schooler can also make a plan and execute it. With a developing capacity to hold mental images and communicate thoughts, school age children can increasingly work together to complete tasks, too. All of this advanced functioning relies on the ability to focus for extended periods of time. By age 8, children can consciously will themselves to maintain attention; however, this requires constantly inhibiting competing impulses.

1. Because middle schoolers can organize, verbalize and analyze their experiences, they gain relief by talking through difficult experiences. Let your kids recount stressful events. Listen with empathy. When appropriate, point out and praise the steps your child took to handle a tough situation. Increasingly, middle schoolers become aware that the world will throw things at them that they cannot anticipate or control. Thus, it is your job to help them to develop the confidence that they'll be able to handle whatever curveballs life throws at them.

2. Your child will use her ability to "put up a front" to control her behavior in front of her teachers and around her peers. By the time she comes home from school, she may be plum out of the capacity to manage her emotions. Thus, she may handle criticism from a teacher with grace, but dissolve into tears when recounting the story to you over dinner. Encouraging the release of pent up, negative emotion is healthy. Not only will this allow your kids to "get it out," process it and approach a new day with new resolve, it will teach them that their newfound ability to manage emotion does not mean that they will eventually banish emotions all-together. Instead, feelings are an inevitable, real part of being human. They can be denied temporarily, but they will eventually need to be released in a healthy and productive way. This will help your child stay in touch with her limbic brain as her neocortex gets stronger.

3. School age children can delay gratification more than younger kids. They are also more aware that increased effort will yield better outcomes. That said, your middle school age child will increasingly assess himself based on his relative performance to his peers. Continue to praise your child's focus and effort, not the outcomes that she achieves. With only so much time in each day, help your child manage his time in a manner that will allow him to meet his obligations and further develop his hobbies, while saving time for relaxation and rejuvenation. Unfortunately, regardless of what you espouse to your kids, they will pick up on the pressures and the expectations of the world around them. Talk openly with your kids about their struggles. Empathize by saying "I remember how hard it was to your age." Don't belittle their anxiety, but gently reassure them that it will get easier as they get older. Help them play out "what if" scenarios associated with their anxieties, so they can help put the peer pressure of their environment in perspective

4. While even the younger school-aged kid has an internalized conscience, her relationship with it can be new and scary. When she ignores her internalized conscience and does something that she knows is "bad," she may be very hard on herself. Thus, instead of scolding your child, let her know that we all mess up sometimes. Since messing up feels "yucky" and often has negative consequences, offer to help your child figure out why he made a poor choice and how he might avoid making a poor choice next time. Deliver whatever "punishment" you've applied her behavior with compassion, but do not yield to her attempt to wiggle out of the consequences of her behavior. Let your child know that you have faith in him, and that you know he'll be able to avoid mess-ups with more practice.

5. "Do as I say, not as a I do" does not work for middle school children. Parental modeling continues to be the most powerful determinant of the morality that children internalize. Walk the walk.

6. Young middle schoolers are all about fairness. 9 year olds begin to understand the concept of merit - a.k.a. a kid who has done a good thing or worked harder than everyone else deserves more rewards. By 10 or 11, kids can conceptualize the idea of benevolence; specifically, that those who are coping with disadvantages deserve extra support. Watch for these changes in moral conceptualization. During the "fair" stage, honor the powerful, negative emotions that result when things are not fair. As soon as your kid calms down, focus on what can be done to minimize the disappointment resulting from the unfair occurence. During the merit stage, reward hard work in the pursuit of goals. During the benevolence stage, praise your child's empathy toward those who are struggling. When your kid sees another kid struggling, ask her to think about an area where she struggles, showing her that we all have different strengths and weaknesses. Along the same lines, when something comes easily to your kid, point out that it doesn't come as easily to others. Encourage your kid to acknowledge his strengths, and remember those strengths when faced with a task that may be challenging or demoralizing for him. Help your child decouple her ability in one area from her entire self worth.

Developmental tasks:

Parental Scaffolding:

The middle school aged child is increasingly proficient at delaying gratification, thinking ahead, acting based on an internalized moral compasses, creative problem solving, narrative explanation, emotional management and empathy. All of these skills are imperative, as the middle school child kid is asked to do a lot of individual and group learning and performing. The nascent ability to control one's behavior in front of peers and teachers can be exhausting. As a result, your school-aged kids will often need to unwind at home. The introduction of peer pressure, teasing and social hierarchies can be really tough on school age children. At about 10 or 11, kids begin to feel as though they've mastered this whole school thing, only to be catapulted back into cognitive disarray, with the onset of the hormonal and physical growth changes of puberty. But, that's for another blog post :)

This was quite a long post. Thank you for making it through! If you are interested in even more detail, the majority of its content was synthesized from Douglas Davie's book Child Development: A Practitioner's Guide, Third Edition. If you are interested in a lighter read, with a lot of digestible brain science, awesome anecdotes and great tips for how to handle some of the challenges you'll face as a parent, I recommend The Whole-Brain Child by Daniel Siegel, M.D. and Tina Payne Bryson, Ph.D.

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A brief overview of the developing brain: How you can help your kids thrive as they grow.

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Now that we've covered what's going on in your child's developing brain and how you influence that development, let's address your kid becomes capable of certain types of higher functioning. The goal is to help you identify when to provide your kids with the support to reach new, cognitive heights.

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Bouncy Balls – Manage classroom noise with bouncing balls!

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A free classroom noise level meter, monitor and management tool. Perfect if your school kids are too noisy! Bouncing balls react to sounds from the microphone.

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Understanding pupils' behaviour | Resources

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Practical activities for school staff to use with pupils to help recognise and understand their behaviours as an expression of their wellbeing needs.

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There are so many ways to use a set of emotions cards with children, at home and school. These activities are particularly valuable as children are learning to recognise and regulate their own feelings and emotions, as well as learning to recognise and empathise with the emotions of others.

Today I am sharing a free set of 12 printable emotions cards and eight fun game suggestions you can play with them. These are great to play with preschoolers right through to school aged children.

8 Ways to Play & Learn With Emotions Cards

1. Making Faces
Place a set of cards face down on a stack. Turn over the top card. Have your child name the emotion and make a face to match.

2. Guess the Emotion
Spread out a set of cards face up. Take turns to choose a card but don't tell the other players which you have chosen. Make a face and see if the other players can guess which card you chose.

3. The Way I Feel Story Game
Spread out a set of cards face up. Take turns to choose a card but don't tell the other players which you have chosen. Tell a short story about a time you felt like that and see if the other players can guess which card you chose.

4. Matching Emotions
Print two sets of the cards (complete with the backing pattern on the reverse side) to make your own Concentration style matching game. To play, spread out all cards face down. Take turns turning over two cards at a time. If you find a match, you keep that pair of cards.

RELATED: Check out the other handy resources in our Feelings & Emotions Resource Library.

5. Story Emotions
Lay out 3-4 cards. Using a small figurine, tell a short story about the toy. For example - "Peppa's balloon popped." Ask your child to put the figurine on the card that shows how Peppa would feel if this happened.

6. Positives and Negatives
Sort a set of cards into positive and negative emotions. Discuss why each emotion is in the nominated group.

7. Supporting Our Friend's Emotions
Choose an negative emotion and talk about ways to speak to and support someone who we can see feels this way. Practice saying these words by role playing being a friend who supports the emotions of others.

8. Emotions Snap
Print multiple copies of the cards (complete with the backing pattern on the reverse side) to make your own Snap game card pack - you'll need at least four sets. Shuffle the cards for a game of Snap.

To print your Emotions Cards

Download the Emotions Cards PDF here: Feelings and Emotions Matching Cards. The PDF includes 12 emotions cards and a backing sheet to be printed on the back of the cards. Print the cards onto matte photo paper or lightweight cardstock. Re-insert the card sheets into the printer and print the backing paper on to the reverse side of these pages. Cut out the cards and laminate for durability.

Having trouble accessing or downloading the file? Please try a different internet browser.
Please note: All Childhood 101 printables are for personal use only, you may not use any part of this content for commercial purposes-that includes selling the document, giving it away to promote your business or website, or printing the file to sell. You may not share, loan or redistribute these documents. Teachers may use multiple copies for students in their own classroom.

More from our Feelings & Emotions Resource Library:

Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.

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Printable Emotions Cards with Emotions Games Ideas

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There are so many ways to use a set of emotions cards with children, at home and school. These activities are particularly valuable as children are learning to recognise and regulate their own feelings and emotions, as well as learning to recognise and empathise with the emotions of others.

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL)

Teachers can merge social and emotional learning and student choice to guide students to better understand themselves.

monkeybusinessimages / iStock

Emotional intelligence includes the capacity to recognize and manage moods and emotions in real-world situations. Considered the starting point of social and emotional skill development, emotional intelligence can also predict future academic success.

Many educational technology tools can support emotional intelligence development. For instance, Pear Deck's guided slide show tool features social and emotional learning (SEL) templates for Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint. In my teaching, I have used the interactive Stress Check thermometer, which students can use to check in along a range indicating whether they are in a good space to focus or if they're having difficulty managing emotions today.

Other slides are open-ended, asking students what fills-or what drains-their metaphorical buckets. When I did this activity with my students during remote instruction, answers varied widely. Some expressed gratitude for friends and family, while others shared uncertainties. In fact, tAfter students checked in, a discussion around self-care strategies took place.

In addition to Pear Deck, Nearpod and Microsoft Teams offer SEL tool sets. Some teachers also use surveys, like Google Forms, to check in with students. These may also include reflective activities, as well as mood boards-images of emotive faces along with feelings words (happy, calm, sad) that children click on that match their feelings. Some mood boards adapt Gloria Willcox's 1982 Feelings Wheel, a visual taxonomy of emotions built around core emotions of sad, mad, scared, joyful, powerful, and peaceful. From these, spokes fan out, listing related emotions.

As with many classrooms, the Feelings Wheel hangs in my son's fifth-grade class. Students use it to recognize and label how they feel at any given moment.

Children Can Become 'Emotion Scientists'

The Mood Meter is an emotion check-in tool similar to the Feelings Wheel but slightly different in intent. The goal here is for people-not just children-to become what Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence founder Marc Brackett calls "emotion scientists." In his popular book Permission to Feel, Brackett wrote, "An emotion scientist has the ability to pause even at the most stressful moments and ask: What am I reacting to? We can learn to identify and understand all our feelings, integral and incidental, and then respond in helpful, proportionate ways- once we acquire emotional skills."

The Mood Meter is not a wheel; rather, it presents emotions in four color-specific quadrants connecting moods to energy levels. Along the numbered x- and y-axes, the red quadrant describes high-energy unpleasant moods, while yellow is where pleasant but high-energy emotions reside. The blue zone contains unpleasant, low-energy moods, and green represents pleasant but low-energy moods.

Use Mood-Aligned Choice Boards

Students' moods and energy levels can impact how they learn, as well as their behaviors in the classroom. For instance, students who self-report being in the yellow quadrant may be in the mindset to take part in creative problem-solving activities. Conversely, children who have high-energy, unpleasant moods can be led to harness their emotions in classroom debates or Socratic seminars.

In my new book, , I share gameful strategies to help students develop as emotion scientists in learner-driven environments. More than student-centered, "learner-driven" implies that students feel a sense of control over their education. Learner agency, or autonomy, along with feelings of competence and relatedness, describe three factors of self-determination theory. Self-determination is a basic human need, and sometimes people find other outlets to achieve it when they cannot in their everyday lives. This concept is one of the reasons so many of us play video games outside of work and school.

Choice boards are a strategy that some teachers use as a step toward supporting self-determination. Typically written as a menu of options that students can take to demonstrate learning, choice boards vary. Sometimes resembling a tic-tac-toe board, they can be made digitally using hyperlinks on shared Google or Microsoft Word documents. There are many free templates online, too, including options from SlidesMania. Choice can manifest in physical classrooms as well, with learning centers or stations geared toward specific learning outcomes.

As this video suggests, teachers can create SEL-aligned choice boards that match students' moods to learning activities, thereby deepening emotional intelligence skills while also engendering feelings of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In a gamified classroom, choice boards can become quests. Teachers can use tools like Classcraft to wrap student learning as a choose-your-own-adventure hero's journey.

To level up, students can participate in brainstorming activities on a Google Jamboard if they are in the yellow quadrant or inquiry-based activities if they are in the blue. In project-based classrooms, teachers can align role-play to driving questions, boosting meaning to choices that students make. In a math class, students can approach authentic problems as architects; social students can become archaeologists.

In addition to mood-aligned choice boards, the activities themselves can embed SEL in the curriculum. Consider how students can work together to learn goal setting and team building as skills. Perhaps there are opportunities for learners to cultivate empathy and perspective-taking in lessons, particularly as students reconnect with one another in person, back in physical classrooms.

Self-determination can also be actualized using student choice and voice-a component of project-based learning where passions can drive experiences. If a child loves Minecraft or poetry writing or fan fiction writing and is in the mood to learn, the possibilities are endless.

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A Path to Improving Students' Emotional Intelligence

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Teachers can merge social and emotional learning and student choice to guide students to better understand themselves. monkeybusinessimages / iStock Emotional intelligence includes the capacity to recognize and manage moods and emotions in real-world situations. Considered the starting point of social and emotional skill development, emotional intelligence can also predict future academic success.

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Snack Attack (Andrew Cadelago, 2012)
Suitable for all age groups

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