How to explain emotions to children?

As you have read and experienced, emotions are part of us and we cannot separate ourselves from them. Its function is vital for adaptation and survival. How to explain them to the little ones in the house?

Identifying them, understanding them and learning to manage them will allow us to achieve the well-being necessary for daily life; Furthermore, doing so will allow you to work on your emotional intelligence.

The ideal is that from childhood we learn to identify our emotions to understand ourselves. So explaining to children about these will be essential to regulate them without avoiding or exaggerating them.

What benefits are obtained when emotions are explained?

Experts from and of they consider that:

  • Allows the development of self-concept. The child can know himself, accept his emotional states and understand them as valid and respectable.
  • Increased perception of self-control and acquire security and confidence.
  • It is very important for your social development.
  • Reduces aggressive behaviors in the garden or school.
  • Reduces the chances of consuming addictive substancessuch as alcohol and tobacco.
  • Minimizes the percentage of antisocial behaviorself-destructive and avoids the serious damage caused by them.

What to explain to them?

You should start with the basics, because they are the easiest to understand and are the basis for other emotional states. neuropsychologist, shares a description to express it with boys and girls:

  1. Surprise: It is the feeling of wonder. It will help you understand new things and motivate you to look for answers and solutions.
  2. Gonna: It is that rage or anger that you experience when you don’t get what you want. If you are not able to control it, in a few years later you could face behavioral problems.
  3. Fear: It is about the insecurity you feel in the face of imaginary or real dangers. It generates positive behaviors because it motivates you to act with caution, but if it is not managed properly it can become excessive fear.
  4. Disgust: It is the displeasure you feel towards something or someone. It is normal if you have a dislike for some food, aroma or place.
  5. Sadness: It is what you feel when you are hurt by having lost a toy or pet, or when you want to cry about something that happened to you.
  6. Happiness: It is a feeling of pleasure caused by something good that happened to you, which is why you may feel like giving hugs and gratitude to others.
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How to explain to them?

  • Take advantage of real situations and explain to the child his or her emotion and help him or her accept it. give it the correct name to his emotion and tell him that it is normal to feel that way. Let him relax and talk about what he feels.
  • Use card games to identify emotions.
  • Use stories, music, movies, cartoon seriesamong others, and identifies with it the emotions that are talked about or those that are seen.
  • Give him a diary where you can write down or draw your emotions.
  • Define it and explain when it appears. For example: fear arises when we believe that something is dangerous, sadness when we lose something valuable, and anger when things do not go the way we want.
  • Show the corresponding emotional expression. You can print different faces that show the associated facial expressions (such as a frown in anger or a wide smile in joy), but also explain what we usually do when faced with these emotions (for example: scream out of anger, cry out of sadness, or run away from the danger).