How to teach kids to name their feelings

Children feel big feelings long before they have words for them. A three-year-old who is furious that the tower fell over has two options: show it, usually loudly, or say it. Saying it is only possible if they have the word. Teaching feelings words is one of the most practical parts of what US schools now call social-emotional learning — and most of it happens at home, in small moments, without a lesson plan.

Start with the feelings you can see

The first feelings to name are the ones that show plainly on a face:

• Happy — a smile, bright eyes.
• Sad — a frown, tears, a quiet voice.
• Angry — a scrunched face, tight fists.
• Scared — wide eyes, holding on to you.

Then add surprised and tired, and later the ones children feel every day but rarely have words for: frustrated, worried, proud, excited, disappointed, embarrassed. A child who can tell "angry" from "frustrated" can tell you what kind of help they need.

Lifehack: be the narrator. When you see a feeling, name it in one short sentence, without fixing anything yet: "You're frustrated — the puzzle piece won't fit." It takes three seconds, and it's how most feelings vocabulary is learned.

Name your own feelings, too

Children learn feelings words the way they learn every other word: by hearing them used. Say yours out loud, with the reason: "I'm feeling impatient because we're late. I'm going to take a big breath." You're teaching the word, and showing that grown-ups have feelings and do something about them.

Make faces together

Feelings live on faces, and children learn to read them by making them.

Lifehack: play the mirror game. Stand at a mirror and take turns: "Show me surprised! Now show me worried." Then ask how they knew what each face was — the eyebrows, the mouth. It's silly, and it teaches exactly what to look for on other people's faces.

Lifehack: when reading a picture book, pause on a character's face and ask "How do you think she feels? How can you tell?" Books are full of feelings, and the pictures do half the teaching.

Drawing feelings

Drawing a feeling is recognizing it in reverse: to draw "surprised," a child has to picture round eyes and an open mouth. That's why feelings drawing pages are a staple of US preschool and kindergarten classrooms.

Our Feelings Faces sheets work that way: a key of colored faces — green is happy, blue is sad, pink is surprised — and a page of blank colored circles to draw the right face on. The harder level puts sad and worried side by side, two feelings that look a lot alike.

A daily feelings check-in

A check-in is a simple routine many classrooms use: once a day, everyone says how they feel.

1. Pick a time — breakfast, the car ride home, bedtime.
2. Ask one question: "What feeling was biggest today?"
3. Ask one follow-up: "What made you feel that way?"
4. Share yours, too. It shows them it's normal and safe.

Lifehack: draw four faces on a sticky note on the fridge — happy, sad, angry, worried — and let your child point to one when words are hard. Pointing counts. The words come later.

What not to do

• Don't rush to fix it. "You're sad your friend left" first; solutions after.
• Don't argue with the feeling. "You're not really mad" teaches a child that their feelings are wrong, not how to handle them.
• Don't save feelings talk for bad moments. Name happy, proud and excited just as often, or "let's talk about feelings" starts to mean "you're in trouble."

For what to do when a feeling is already too big, see calm-down strategies that actually work for kids. For the bigger picture, see social-emotional learning at home.