I am sure it comes as zero surprise to anyone who knows us well that we are big on “feelings” in our house.
We recently finished reading “The Giver” and then followed up by watching the movie (spoiler alert: the book is always better!), and throughout the whole thing my big kids would tease me about how much they talk about “feelings” throughout. Almost as much as we do, they said!
Seriously though, I want my kids to feel heard. I want them to feel validated, even if their feelings may seem a little silly sometimes to the big people in their lives (“I hear you’re upset that your brother has the purple cup. You wanted the purple cup. That’s disappointing.”). But it’s hard to feel validated if you can’t properly articulate what you are feeling.
Emotions are so much more diverse and complex outside of just “happy, sad, mad.” And when we just stick to those three basic terms for how we are feeling, we are missing out not just on some really great vocabulary, but we are often missing the entire essence of how we are feelings.
We’ve been very fortunate that all of our kiddos thus far have been pretty verbal early on; the girls even earlier than the boys. And if we are being completely honest, Bean is in a league of her own for only being 2 years old. That girl has a lot of opinions and sass, and the whole world can understand her, ha.
But one fun tool we have found in our home to help expose our kids to the different words for different feelings, and to help open up conversation about how they may have felt, or how they might feel in certain situations, have been with their Feelings Flashcards.
These flashcards are super fun and colorful. Each flashcard has a feeling on each side, almost always antonyms of one another such as “bored/busy.” They give so much to discuss and explore with each card.
They’re also very thick cardboard, so quite durable (though I will attest, they are not indestructible when you have toddlers…). They’re large enough for small hands to comfortably hold and use (and because they’re so colorful, Sweet M and Bean also like to point out all the colors on each card, too!).
I’ve been choosing a card, or letting one of the toddlers choose one, every few days. We investigate the card together, discuss the feelings vocabulary, and talk about times when they might have had those feelings, or when someone they knew might have. And they’re definitely incorporating the vocabulary into their daily language, as Sweet M declared “I’ve got ants in my pants!” the other day while dancing around the living room; a phrase he got straight from his Feelings Flashcards.
And while I’m certain that I could teach my kiddos about feelings without the help of aids, they certainly help! There are some I definitely would not have thought to discuss with my kids on my own as they’re just feelings I myself don’t think of specifically very often. Such as “carefree,” the opposite of “worried.” We’ve definitely talked about “worried” before, but “carefree” likely would have never come up in a conversation organically, or at least not for while.
So if you are looking for a way to delve deeper into the world of feelings with you kiddo(s), or maybe looking for a way to even start those conversations, I would unquestionably recommend Feelings Flashcards. They’re a fun way to get the whole family talking about how they’re feeling!
***I received a set of Feelings Flashcards for review by Timberdoodle, but the thoughts and opinions are genuine, and mine alone.***
