Issue 25, Page 10: Building Emotional Awareness

Helping children to notice, recognise and begin to express how they are feeling allows them to develop key emotional literacy skills such as self-awareness and self-regulation, which are vital for emotional and social development.

Acknowledging that all emotions are valid and needed for us to be emotionally healthy, is a core element of the Hamish & Milo Wellbeing Programme. We recognise that whilst some emotions can feel uncomfortable, they are not negative – all feelings are valid and help us to recognise our experiences and communicate our needs.

All children need multiple, repeated experiences of empathic adults noticing, labelling and validating their emotions in a safe, relational way and these experiences reinforce and acknowledge to the child that all feelings are acceptable and safe to have.

Helping children to recognise and notice sensations is the first stage in building emotional awareness and these sensation and emotion cards are invaluable in enabling children to begin to apply language to their feelings, to help regulate their emotional world, increase self-confidence, enable aspiration and achievement and contribute to healthier social relationships. They support children’s emotional development by helping children to:

Recognise that there is a huge range of emotions
Notice what different emotions may look and feel like
Develop vocabulary for sensations as well as emotions
Talk about emotions, even those that are uncomfortable. This gives them permission to express a whole range of feelings and talk about their experiences
Think about the emotions that they often feel or seldom feel
Develop empathy and recognise the feelings of others
Understand how there is a range of feelings and intensities within a core emotion e.g., anger, irritated, frustrated, rage and furious

The Hamish & Milo Sensation & Emotion Cards help children to recognise, communicate and express their feelings by developing their emotional awareness and vocabulary. The cards can be used with individual children or with groups and help to open conversations, validate experiences and allow curiosity in exploring a range of feelings, and the context of experiences.

“This empathic engagement with a child enables a ‘felt’ sense of being understood and activates changes in the child’s neurological system allowing them to calm down, physiologically and psychologically.” – Clare Williams

Hamish & Milo Wellbeing Resources – An emotions curriculum and SEMH intervention programme for primary-aged children. Explicit session plans, impact measurement and guidance for pastoral staff.

We are offering a special discount for The Link readers – £30 inclusive of P&P. Go to the website, use the code ‘LINK’ at checkout.

https://hamishandmilo.org/sensation-emotion-cards/