Many times, as adults, we do not know how to recognize and understand our emotions. One of the main reasons is because we didn’t learn how to do it. Now let’s put ourselves in the children’s place. They have an important brain plasticity, so it is at this stage where learning is especially important for the enrichment and proper development of both the cognitive and affective areas.
According to , “Giving emotional education to a child is teaching him to face the problems that arise throughout his life in an appropriate way.. Which will have benefits not only in childhood but also in adulthood, acquiring essential tools to live in society.”
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Let us remember that Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize our own feelings, as well as those of others, that is, being empathetic, and knowing how to manage emotions. Therefore, it is important to recognize that emotional intelligence is a large part of the development and acquisition of a balanced personality, especially to see the child as a whole (intellectual, physical, emotional and social).
Key points to develop children’s emotional intelligence:
The digital media El Confidential, from Spain, mentions in the article, the following keys that you can take into account to teach children to recognize emotions:
- Motivate him to solve his problems, reminding him that he can count on your support.
- Recognizes and values their efforts to learn and do things well.
- Take mistakes as an essential part of learning and highlight your abilities so you can try again.
- Help him know his likes, desires, needs, opinions and feelings.
- Teach him the importance of respecting the tastes and opinions of others.
- Help him put words to his emotions and encourage him to express those emotions and feelings.
For you:
Activities that you can take into account to teach children to recognize emotions:
- Dictionary of emotions: you can put the word and its explanation, in addition to decorating it with drawings, colors and images related to the emotion.
- Draw emotions: the idea is for children to develop their creativity while learning about them.
- Play to mimic emotions: one of you (the idea is that more than two people play) must recreate an emotion with mimicry, that is, with gestures and without speaking. The other must guess the emotion, understand how he or she and the person doing the miming may feel.
- Emotion box: you need a box that you choose or decorate together, and photos or drawings of faces with emotions. The game begins with a question to the child. For example, when your mother takes you to the park or tells you that something is wrong, how do you feel? Then the child must choose the face with which he feels reflected.
- The mirror game: in front of a mirror, an example of an emotion or feeling must be given so that the child can recreate it while looking in it and visually identify when any of these emotions occur.
- Music and emotions: In this activity choose different songs and genres of music: slow, fast, loud, etc. After listening to the different styles of music, they should think about what emotion each one generated in them, describe what they felt with the song and draw the emotion.
You can also practice other dynamics, such as reading stories where different emotions are mentioned, activities so that they can release the emotion, like a ball full of sand so that they can squeeze it a little when they feel stressed or an emotions board, in which with colors they express the emotion they are feeling at the moment.
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We must take care of mental health from childhood so that, when we reach an older age and face increasingly complex situations, we know how to express emotions in a healthy and empathetic way.