Learning to express our emotions

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Expressing and understanding emotions is probably one of the most important aspects of wellbeing. When your child is growing up, emotions can be overwhelming for them at times and for us too! To help with this, we can teach children to understand emotions. Talking about them and learning to express them is the key.

Try these things to help your child:

• help them to develop the language of emotions - happy, sad, angry, frightened, worried, excited, surprised… you can help them to do this by modelling how you talk about emotions and commenting when you notice theirs: by using the language to describe and express emotions, you will be helping them to understand themselves and others

• be accepting of all emotions - if children are sad or upset, then try to empathise and listen to what they say - they will need to know that difficult emotions are a natural part of life and that they do not always have to feel happy - understanding difficult emotions is a key to positive wellbeing