Dwell in possibility.
– Emily Dickinson

“How to Express Emotions: 12 Ways to Communicate Feelings“is an article on PositivePsychology.com that makes the point that children who aren’t encouraged to express emotions in healthy ways as children, struggle as adults. Early educators can help children develop a life-long tool by supporting healthy emotional expression in the early years.

“Recognizing how a child might be feeling, and then giving her the language to describe that feeling can be a first step in helping her mature emotionally,”writes Laura Mickley in the Out of the Box Training, Building Bridges Through Words.

She describes a typical classroom experience:

“‘Sally, you look like you’re angry right now. Did Johnny take your toy?’ Sally has just swatted Johnny for indeed taking that toy and she is angry. If we go right into a negative response, we have missed a learning opportunity, the chance to help Sally understand what she is feeling, and to give that feeling a name or a label. Until we have laid that groundwork, we cannot possibly expect her to have a mental collection of possible reactions from which to choose.”

The Out of the Box Training offers multiple tools for supporting children in learning healthy emotional expression.