Page 15 - 101 SEL Activities

1 Emotion Commotion
Activities targeted to help teach your child how to self-soothe and regulate their emotions.
Talk About Your Feelings Out Loud (all ages)
Time: 1-3minutes
Purpose: This helps build your child’s emotional vocabulary. The more they hear about emotions, the better they will be at identifying them and communicating them. Additionally, they will start to read other’s emotions, another valuable life skill.
Instructions: Throughout the day talk out loud about what you are feeling and why. Do this with both comfortable and uncomfortable emotions. For instance, “I am so frustrated. I had a really hard day at work.”
Young children are egocentric (meaning they think the world revolves around them). If you come home in a bad mood, they will likely internalize that and think you are upset with them because that is all they know. Help them out and tell them why you are upset. This also helps them learn that parents can be vulnerable too. You don’t need to share too much information, just a sentence or two. Make sure to also share when you feel proud of yourself, happy, excited, curious, etc.
Let Them Be Upset (all ages) Time: Variable
Purpose: To help your child learn to self soothe and regulate their emotions. This also serves to communicate (directly or indirectly) that you are not overwhelmed by their big emotions.
Instructions: When your child gets upset or expresses/experiences an uncomfortable emotion, address the emotion and provide some comfort. If they remain upset, just sit with them or let them sit with the emotion. As long as the emotion is not leading to poor behavioral choices, they do not need to snap out of it quickly.
Once your child is calm, discuss how they felt and ways they might deal with it the next time it happens. Also, ask them what they want/need from you.
Or don’t. Not every emotion warrants a conversation. There is no need to give more attention to a situation than is necessary. Trust your judgment and parent intuition.
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