5 easy steps to help your child identify conflicting emotions.

We are constantly told that learning to recognize and label feelings, is an important part of a child's development. But what about conflicting emotions? What happens when they are both happy AND sad? Happy to be going back home to see their friends after a long holiday, but sad to leave nana.

What about that first day at school? They might feel proud, happy, scared, sad... We know how conflicting emotions can be hard to deal with as adults, what about when you are 5?

Here's a tool you can use with your kids in order to teach them that sometimes we can feel several, sometimes conflicting, emotions at the same time.

Step 1: Print this diagram of incomplete "smiley faces".

Step 2: Get your little ones to complete each face by assigning a different emotion, such as happy, sad, angry, scared or jealous to each face. Encourage them to add a mouth, nose, ears, eyebrows etc, to characterize each emotion. You can be as creative as you like and use stickers, glitter etc, but ask them to pick ONE colour to assign to each emotion. While decorating each face, talk to them about that particular emotion. When do they feel it? What does it feel like? When else have they felt that way? Adapt the questions to their age of course.

Step 3: Print the hot air balloon picture.

Step 4: Identify a particular situation that may elicit mixed feelings, such as the first day at school, or the arrival of a new baby. Using the smiley faces, ask them to identify what they are feeling in relation to the event.

Step 5: Transfer the colours of each emotion they have picked to a different strip of the hot air balloon. If for instance they pick 'red' for happy and 'blue' for sad and identify those two emotions, then paint the strips red and blue.

There you have it.

It's a good visual cue to explain to kids that sometimes we feel different emotions at the same time.

I'd love some feedback!

On Crying

I have a confession: I like to cry. No wait. I luuuuuuve to cry.

Crying makes me feel so good! Having said that. I don't cry all that much. I used to cry more but these days I'm just too tired to cry!

I watch soppy movies just to cry.
I cry when I want something from my husband (and it works everytime ;) - he melts with my first tear).
Sometimes I imagine something happening to one of my kids and I cry (I know, crazy right? but I did say I'd 'bare it all').
Oh, and I cry when I'm happy too.

I actually think that I'm healthier BECAUSE I cry.
Crying is good for you. It lets some of those emotions out. They say "People who don't cry are full of tears" and I think there is some truth to that. People who don't cry are not happier. They are just not showing how sad or unhappy they are.

People who don't express their emotions through crying or writing or singing at the top of their voices (whatever works for you - if I sang it'd only make others cry!) are left to carry those emotions for as long as they will not express them. So isn't it better to get rid of it now?

(Perhaps I should remember that next time my kids are having a "crying day"!)

I had a patient say to me once that if she leaves my office without having cried, she feels like she hasn't got her money's worth. So if I have a patient who is clearly trying to hold back tears, I will push them to cry, because I know that when they cry, they leave a little of the hurt behind.

So CRY I say! You may not feel very good while you are crying, but trust me, in the long run, you'll thank me. Sit down, have a good cry, but don't wallow in it. After you've had a good cry, pick yourself up and get going again.

I love crying. I only wish I could have a beautiful Demi-Moore-in-Ghost kinda cry. Mine is more of a blotchy face, sobbing kind of cry.

It might sound like I'm a blubbering mess half the time, but I actually can't remember the last time I cried, so it can't be happening all that often.

So help me out! Recommend a sad movie! And lets all cry and make the world a healthier place!