Emotions and feelings

[Corinne]

Hi, sorry if this has been dealt with elsewhere, but

 

I have a 7 year old boy in year 3, on the lower end of the spectrum. He has plenty of speech although his language level is about 2 years behind his chronological age.

 

He seems to have a real problem expressing emotions and feelings, and this is becoming an issue in school and at home. He is prone to crying in situations where he can't express himself, and at school today he hurt himself somehow (they are not sure how and when) and he cried, pretended to throw up and refused to talk to them. We have similar problems at home, whether because of genuine pain, being annoyed by his sister, being upset over something etc

 

I am posting this thread in the hope that other people have some ideas about how we (and the school) can help him here.

 

Thanks in advance

Corinne

[summertime]

I've used photo emotion cards in the past, they show children in different situations showing different emotions, e.g. a child sitting on the floor rubbing his knee crying or a child opening a present smiling. by talking through how the child in the picture is feeling and what the situation was it can help him recognise those emotions in himself.

 

It could also be worth having some symbols of emotions, maybe all together on one poster, then he could point to the appropriate emotion rather than having to talk about it

[annie]

Hi Corinne,

 

There are some free picture cards here to download.

 

Annie

xx

[summertime]

quite a few here too but you'd need to sort through them to find ones that are appropriate

 

 

summer x

[Gavin Bollard]

In my experience, you can't do anything while the child is still overwrought. You can only find out about it later.

 

If the child isn't too overcome, you can try;

 

a. Happy face strategy - "I can't talk to you until you stop crying"

 

b. Ask him to draw what happened - it probably won't be detailed, but later he may explain it to you.

 

c. Yes/No Prompting - "Where did it happen inside or outside?", Did someone hit you?

If he can't answer, speak clearly and give him two choices only. Ask him to touch one of your hands for yes and the other for no. Sometimes they feel more comfortable with that.

[Karen A]

Hi.Ben has used a journal to write about his day and how he feels about things and he talks about it afterwards.The fact that he has time to sort through things in his head appears to help.Karen.

[Viper]

All I can sugest is you use social stories. Use everyday situations that might crop up in a school day and write a very basic story about what social rules can be used.

 

Others might have examples of social stories you could use.