The Vocabulary of Emotions

Language skills support the required social-emotional by promoting the ability to comprehend and comply with behavioral demands, cope actively with learning challenges 

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Emotional Vocabulary - Overview

An emotional vocabulary is the set of words our children use to express their feelings and reaction to various events. It can easily be noticed that even before learning to talk they find ways to build emotional vocabulary. Language plays a critical role in social - emotional skill development. With the months when they started rolling and couldn't do it properly and cry then our response could be "Oh no no baby" etc. When they break their toys and cry , we may tell them "Oh baby , don't cry I will give another one " etc. Like these things go on.

When children enter school they face increased demand to sustain comfortably regulated and goal-oriented activities, inhibit negative behaviors and comply with rules. Language skills support the required social-emotional by promoting the ability to comprehend and comply with behavioral demands, cope actively with learning challenges and relate positively to teachers and peers as children learn to interpret their environment through language. Primarily through interaction with adults who model language and vocabulary and subsequently through self-talk, they begin to capture and internalize language and incorporate rules to guide their behavior. As children learn to use self-talk, they are both strengthening and using language to regulate their emotional and behavioral responses. Hence language and social-emotional skill development provide essential fundamental support for effective school management.  

Importance of Emotional Vocabulary

Parents use words for the strong and common emotions, children feel like happiness, anger and sadness, but we sometimes overlook the fact that there is a large and varied vocabulary of emotion. Children need a larger pool of words to draw on to be able to express all their emotions as well as to be able to read the cues that indicate other people feelings.

In the Research Article -  Developing Social-emotional Vocabulary to support Self-regulation for Young Children at Risk for Emotional and Behavioral Problems published in the International Journal of School and Cognitive Psychology emphasize that

self-regulation, essential to social-emotional development, refers to processes related to the regulation of emotion, attention focus and behavior. For typically developing children in literacy-rich environments cognition, language, meta-cognition and self-regulation develop together, as children use language for a variety of functions, including labeling and defining feelings. Children who have the vocabulary to express their feelings accurately can develop emotional literacy which is a key component of social competence.

children living in poverty use language less frequently to direct their behavior or talk about what others may be thinking and feeling. Pic from the movie Lion

Unfortunately, children living in poverty have limited language experiences and are likely to have smaller vocabularies; and teachers in high poverty schools tend to provide significantly lower quality vocabulary instruction than teachers in economically advantaged schools. Consequently children living in poverty use language less frequently to direct their behavior or talk about what others may be thinking and feeling. and they enter school with significant delays in social-emotional readiness.

Being able to sense and understand the emotions of others is very important for a child's social development and social success. Children with these abilities can connect and respond with peers easily. This is the foundation on which the ability to create and maintain friendships is built upon.       

Emotional Vocabulary is a component of emotional literacy, which is necessary for children to regulate their emotions and engage in social interactions .Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning (CSEFEL) states that

A large and more complex feeling vocabulary allows children to make finer discrimination between feelings; to better communicate with others about their internal affective states; and to engage in discussions about their personal experiences with the world

American Psychiatric Association states in their research paper that  children's social and emotional competence can impact future relationships and overall mental health.

Why we need to increase our Emotional Vocabulary 

Knowing what we are feeling at any given moment is a huge gateway to emotional health. First part of this is developing an extensive emotional vocabulary. If we see across our surrounding, we can easily find that the majority of humans have a pretty limited emotional vocabulary consisting of about ten or eleven emotions. For example bad, mad, sad, good, fine, upset, anxious, happy, stressed, tired etc. Although good, bad, fine are not really emotions but people use them anyway; and because of this reason we limit ourselves to express how we are feeling.

Our emotional health works the same way. We have to get an accurate, detailed picture of what we’re feeling if we want to be able to do anything about it

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There is a huge difference between feeling sad and hurt or feeling disappointed and rejected or devastated and bummed. It is the nuances in emotions that really make the difference.

Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace states in their paper Managing Mental Health Matters

Describing your emotional experiences can help you identify the sources of your feelings and determine how to make positive changes. Having a wide vocabulary of emotional words is a great start. Knowing a range of words that express varying levels of a particular feeling can also be useful in separating serious problems from not-so-serious problems. Because our thoughts impact the way we feel, the words we choose to label our experiences can impact the intensity of our feelings. For example, try saying to yourself, “I’m terrified about the meeting”. Now try, “I’m worried about the meeting”. Feel the difference? Having a large emotional vocabulary at your disposal helps prevent you from over-reacting to stressful events.

 

The ways Children learn Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence or emotional literacy makes up the ability to understand our own emotions; the ability to listen to others, empathize with their emotions and the ability to express emotions productively. Claude Michele Steiner, a French born psychotherapist breaks emotional literacy into five parts :

• Knowing our feelings 

• Having a sense of empathy

• Learning to manage our emotions

• Repairing emotional problems

• Putting it all together emotional interactivity

Of-course it is good if the ability to read signals and to respond in an appropriate manner was innate

Children develop emotional intelligence by social interactions and the ways they are taught

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but in reality it does not happen. Children develop emotional intelligence by social interactions and the ways they are taught. Few of them are challenged due to some mental conditions such as Autistic Spectrum Disorders, Dyslexia and other learning problems may require special care and extensive teaching.

In her Instagram post Mariana Plata placed emotions like

feelings aren't good or bad, all of them matter.

Kids catch very quickly when their parents react when they win an award at school or do good in extracurricular activities.       

In the other way around how their parents react when they got hurt while playing outside. or when they are having a tantrum or when they are sad because of a fight they may have with siblings or friends.

All that matter in kids mind and stored in the form of emotional literacy.  

Usually parents respond to behaviors and situations the best way they can. We know how to manage pleasant feelings such as happiness or excitement, much better than unpleasant ones. However, when somethings happen to their children they're unable to control, parents quickly enter an alert mode. Dr Dan Siegel calls it flipping the lid

This an analogy he uses to explain what happens when our rational brain disconnect from emotional brain.

In this situation, our brain can't function properly. Consequently, when we can't think clearly, parents react defensively to unpleasant things - those we normally call 'bad feelings'.

As a matter of fact, it is not surprising that kids are conditioned to see those emotions we dislike feeling as "bad". 

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And the scenario becomes even worse when we receive remarks like "don't feel bad"  when we finally get the courage to express these unpleasant things.   
       

Activities to develop Emotional Vocabulary

Teaching emotional vocabulary is often misunderstood and overlooked by parents and teachers. It is thought of as secondary teaching other language, literacy, and academic skills. This practice may have an overall impact on a child's development. Children learn from teaching, but they also absorb the lessons from the experience of the surroundings.

To develop the foundation of emotional literacy like any other vocabulary words, emotional vocabulary can be taught. Educators and parents can use a number of evidence-based strategies. Some of them are :

• Listing of words of feelings - share and brainstorm with our children

• Add various sounds that may be related to certain feeling like "Oh God" for a unfulfilled wish

• Reading story book for our children and interact with them

• Playing fun game with our children and share various emotions during play.

• Sing songs with them (a regular prayer song is very helpful)

• Directing/telling children few certain words to a given situation

• Role-playing and reviewing in a certain situation or a character

     

Conclusion

It's important to develop an emotional vocabulary because it helps us have more answers than good or bad feelings when we are asked how are we doing. Gibing a moral value like good or bad to our feelings only reinforces shame and guilt, which handicaps our ability to identify and recognize our feelings. When we allow shame and guilt into our state of expression, we have a higher risk of repressing our feelings and limiting our emotional expressions.

With kids parents and teachers can grow their own emotional vocabulary and vice versa

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The earlier we develop an emotional vocabulary  - and it's never too early or too late to start - the better our chances of cultivating emotional maturity and inner strength.

With kids parents and teachers can grow their own emotional vocabulary and vice versa.. The more extensive our emotional vocabulary., the more attuned we can become with other people's needs and feelings.           
   
         

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