5 Simple Activities To Talk About Big Feelings
I find myself reaching for creative ways to get the conversation going to help me to support my children through this time where I’m sure they’re wrestling with huge emotions – fear, disappointments, worry, uncertainty in all the changes, helplessness, out of control.
Written by Cathy Porter
Covid-19 has stirred up some big feelings. What is happening in our own communities and around the world is so very unexpected and unusual it is difficult to work through the emotions that have come along with all this change. Talking about feelings, naming them and acknowledging them together can be incredibly helpful at times like this. But where can we begin?
Knowing where something hurts, or what emotion is being felt doesn’t come instinctively to some members of my family and I find myself reaching for creative ways to get the conversation going to help me to support my children through this time where I’m sure they’re wrestling with huge emotions – fear, disappointments, worry, uncertainty in all the changes, helplessness, out of control. Talking together gives a chance to bring myself alongside and support more closely, and for us helps us to pray more specifically having talked about how we’re doing.
Here are 5 simple activities to help us talk about big feelings:
Out of control get a large piece of card or paper and draw a big circle in the middle. Using old magazines to tear out words and pictures, and pens to draw and write fill the circle with things you can control and outside the circle with things out of our control. Picking one of the things in our control that we could act on can even bring some relief to the big feelings.
Body mapping – make gingerbread cookies talking about what each part of your child’s body might be feeling like right now. While they’re cooking maybe draw round the cookie cutter and mark the parts of the body that feel different (like butterfly tummy, or aching head) and be detectives together to work out what emotion might be making our body feel that way.
Playdough faces – use Playdough to make faces with different expressions. Make one for how you are feeling today.
Color– Get out some paint and paint those feelings – what kind of character are they, what do they look like, what color are they?
·Charades– play emotion charades, taking turns to act out and guess emotions. Have a good laugh together and then chat about which one each of us have felt recently.
I hope these ideas are as useful to you as they have been to us. These are unsettling times for us and our children and anything that can help me to stay closely alongside, ready to help and support seems to be a worthwhile thing – I guess chatting with them about their big feelings is inside my circle of control!
Written by Cathy Porter
Cathy Porter is a disciple of Jesus, a mum, ordained and a vicar's wife (in the Church of England), a writer, a creative, a blogger.
Cathy and her husband, Andrew, have 3 children. Her two girls both a diagnosis of ASC. You can follow the ups and downs of family life & faith on her blog: www.clearlynurturing.wordpress.com.
It is Cathy’s heart to encourage families to share in the adventure of faith together, especially families beautifully shaped by ASC. She loves to write stories that make the reader think, ask questions about what we believe, and help the reader to discover what the Bible has to say about God and friendship with him.
"ETA Tonight?"
Do you ever get loving texts from your spouse at the end of a long day? Written by John Felageller
Do you ever get loving texts from your spouse at the end of a long day? I sure do, in fact, my wife is great about it, and many times they include truly heartfelt sentiments, such as “hope you had a great day”, “love you and grateful for you”, “thank you for all your help”. My favorite, however, is the most simple of all, and one I received the very night I’m writing this: “ETA tonight?”.
It just so happens to be a work night for me, which being a teacher during the school year, are both dreaded yet extremely needed, however it can put stress on my normally love texting spouse, especially since it means she’s the one taking our special needs child to one of a million therapies.
Of course, it always seems like there’s a million therapies on the calendar, and from the beginning of the school year there are always multiple competing calendars. There is one for my school year, one for my fellow teacher spouse, and one for my son, both for school, and for the million after school therapies. Just thinking about it makes me shiver, and I can’t help but wonder when my next legitimate break might be, but I can’t get too distracted, because I’ve gotten that most heartfelt of all texts... “ETA Tonight?”
Let’s be serious, we all treasure the moments of space and quiet we get in those select few times. Currently, as I sit in the relative solitude of our local public library, a comfortable chair and work table facing a window with a view of the local creek that meanders through our town, cup of coffee at the ready and wifi stream overflowing, I consider how wonderful this is...for me. But then, the loving text about ETA rolls in, and I’m reminded, first of all, of the reality of the time I have, which is not very long.
My focus then turns to my wife, who is at home tonight with our son. She is at this very moment helping to get him to bed. This means going through all of our nightly rituals, beginning to fight the good fight to help our son go to sleep, but without me. Then I begin to think, does she need some help, is my son not in a great mood tonight and is she taking the brunt of his anger and frustration. Is she at her wits end and needing me to come to her aid?
Slowly, I take a sip or three from my cup. I close the riveting binder of math curriculum I was excitedly working on. I stopped thinking of myself, and instead thought of my spouse, and my son, and how that simple two word phrase texted to me is enough to get me to move out of my comfort zone, and in doing so, bringing comfort to those I love.
Written by John Felageller
