Lesson Four in English

Lesson Four: Teach Me What To Do!

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How did your detective work go? As you observed one of your child’s behaviors over the last week, what did you learn about your child? What did you think your child was trying to communicate? What did your child do? What did you do? Was it hard for you to determine what your child was trying to communicate?  Keep practicing trying to understand what your child is trying to communicate with their behavior; the more you practice the easier it is to understand the meaning of their behavior.

Now let’s get started with today’s topic – Teach Me What to Do! 

You have probably heard a lot about the importance of vocabulary skills for young children—teaching children to read and write. There has also been a lot of talk about the importance of emotional vocabulary. Emotional vocabulary is the ability to recognize, label, and understand feelings in one’s self and others. It is a foundation for children’s ability to control their emotions, develop relationships, interact with others, and become effective problem solvers. It is one of the most important areas of development during a child’s early years. 

In order for children to become effective at controlling their emotions, they need the words to describe their own and other’s emotions. When young children are asked how they are feeling, they often respond with “good or bad” and miss all the subtle gradations in between. 

You can help your children enhance and expand their emotional vocabulary by helping them learn words for different feelings and use these words to label their own feelings and the feelings of others. You can also help them understand that their feelings can change. They may wake up grumpy, but they don’t have to stay grumpy all day! You can help them learn that they can have more than one feeling about something. They can feel differently from someone else about the same thing. And all feelings are valid. It’s what we do with them that counts! 

Look at Handout 14, Feeling Words and review the Feeling Words list. This is a list of complex feeling words that typically developing children ages 3-5 should know. Quite a list, isn’t it? You can help your child develop increased emotional vocabulary by talking about feeling words in everyday life. One of the best ways to teach feeling words is for parents to label their own and their child’s emotions as they happen throughout the day. You might say to your child, “You look surprised; your mouth is open and your eyes are wide. What happened? What surprised you?” You can also describe your feelings: “I feel sad. It makes me happy when Grandma visits, but I feel sad when she leaves. I miss her!” 

As children’s emotional vocabularies grow, their ability to accurately read their own and other’s emotions grows, too! This gives your child more tools to use instead of challenging behavior! It is sort of like building a house. You are going to get really frustrated if you don’t have the tools you need to be successful. 

Slides 6, 7 and 8 give you additional activities you can do with your children to help teach them about feelings and emotions.  The Activities Workbook gives detailed information on additional activities and books.  I have included the book Glad Monster, Sad Monster below.

As you read the book, use different voices, ask questions (What makes you scared? Show me your scared face? What does your body do when you are scared? What does it feel like? Can you tell me about a time when you felt scared?), and have parents point out things about the pictures. 

Now let’s move on to a new topic: Controlling Anger and Impulse!

We have been talking about helping our children learn to recognize and name their own emotions and feelings. This is an important step for children in learning how to control their emotions. A child has to recognize that he/she feels angry before he/she can learn how to control that emotion. Having a label for what a child feels helps him/her to vocalize this feeling (“I’m mad”) instead of acting out. 

Have you ever told your child to calm down and he/she just kept doing what he/she was doing? Ever wonder why? Young children are often told to “calm down”—but what does that really mean? We have to make sure that the child understands what we are asking him/her to do (remember in our last session, we talked about being clear about our expectations)! How can children be successful at responding if they do not know what we are asking? What we mean by “calm down”? 

Children feel anger in different ways—just as we do. The school of hard knocks, our life experiences, may have taught most of us by now when to walk away, cool down, be cautious, or get help. But young children haven’t learned these skills yet. We can help them learn this by intentionally teaching them the skills they need. 

Turtle Tuck is a technique originally developed to teach adults anger management skills. It has been successfully adapted and integrated into social skills programs for preschoolers. It’s called the “turtle tuck.” Here’s how you can teach your child about the secret of the turtle and how the turtle uses his shell to help him calm down! 

The basic steps of the turtle technique are: 

Step 1: Recognize that you feel angry. 

Step 2: Think “stop.” 

Step 3: Go into your “shell,” take three deep breaths and think calming thoughts: “It was an accident. I can calm down and think of good solutions. I am a good problem solver.” 

Step 4: Come out of your “shell” when you are calm and try some of your solutions 

Handling Disappointment 

We can also help our children practice ways to handle disappointment before a potentially disappointing incident occurs. For example, you know that your child will be very disappointed if someone else is on his or her favorite swing at the playground. Before you leave for the playground, you could say, “When we go to playground, someone else might be on your favorite swing. And you might feel disappointed. What could you do to stay calm?” You could remind your child of the “turtle tuck,” and help him/her think of some solutions such as asking for a turn, saying “please,” or finding something else to do while the other child is on the swing. 

Another way to help children learn to problem solve is to use these 4 steps. 

Step 1: What is my problem? (Define the problem). 

Step 2: Think of some solutions (Generate multiple solutions). 

Step 3: What would happen next if I used that solution? (Evaluating consequences—Is this a good choice? Is it a safe choice? What might happen if we tried that solution?). 

Step 4: Try out the best solution. 

Help Your Child Think of Possible Solutions. It is also important that you support your child in learning what some possible solutions might be. Remember that we will need to teach children to problem solve. They will not “just know” how to come up with solutions! 

Things to Try at Home activities for this week. 

The first one is to pick some of the strategies or ideas that we have talked about during this session and write 3 ideas that they can do with their child to strengthen his/her emotional vocabulary skills. Take a few minutes to brainstorm some ideas. How can you teach your child new social skills? What skills do you think your child would benefit from? Is it the turtle technique? What about reading a book to your child, and talking about emotions and feelings? Think about some of the behaviors you want to see less of. This could be a great opportunity to “teach” your child a new skill so he/she doesn’t have to use that behavior! 

See the handout below for more information.