As the Staples commercial has sung at the end of so many summers, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!” The kids are going back to school. Let the routines begin! These routines evolve into traditions that involve shopping for new clothes, shoes, supplies, and backpacks. They also include the buying or making of lunches, homework, projects, bedtimes, and alarms for getting up on time, so the whole routine can begin again.
The hope is that these habits will produce a successful school year, which is most often characterized by excellent grades and good citizenship. However, I want to remind you that even though there is a lot to be said for outstanding marks and positive behavior, there is more to your precious child than just academic excellence and being well-behaved. Our beautiful offspring has a world of emotions that have coursed through their minds and bodies all through the day and these feelings need to be accessed by us, their parent/guardian. How? How does one make time to talk about feelings? We build it into our routine.
In my home, when my children were growing up, I bought a simple feeling chart from the local teacher supply store. It had the basic faces to match feelings on it. I put it up in my daughter’s room, where she and her brother could reach it. Before bedtime stories, I would go first and model for her and my son (who was two-and-a-half years younger) what events happened in my day and how I felt when they happened. (I was helping them build emotional literacy.) Of course, I chose things from my day that were appropriate for children to hear and nothing that would upset or burden them. I would always end my turn by stating that I currently felt happy because I was with them. Then, it was their turn.
Even if your your child (regardless of their age) does not realize that they need to share the events of the day, and connect their feelings to those events, they do. This is how we keep close to our children throughout their childhood. We continue having this type of conversation even as they become preteens, teens, and young adults, even though they will no longer need the chart. They talk. We listen. We do not judge. We guide. This simple life-long routine sends them into adulthood with an immediate awareness of how they feel in any given moment and a deeper sense of knowing who they are.
