By Tracy Cardoz
At an elocution competition held at school, seven-year-old Rahul earned the third place and his best friend took the first. When the presenter announced the winners, instead of being a sport and cheering his friend on, Rahul broke into tears. The feeling of taking third place didn’t sit well with him. He felt many emotions at once – jealousy, sadness, anger; and all of it without him being aware of how intensely he was reacting to his friend who had won the first place.
This is indeed a crucial moment for Rahul to either recognize or disregard his own emotions. It’s imperative that Rahul receives help at this point in understanding why he is feeling the way he is. The required support can come from a parent, teacher or a guardian to help become more aware of his emotions and enable Rahul to have some sense of control over his emotions.
There are many children like Rahul who have a hard time understanding their emotions, let alone knowing how to conceal them. That said, it is important to support children’s emotional learning starting as early as possible. The first years of life facilitate rapid brain development, making it the best time to build a future foundation for emotional health and well-being.
The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) emphasises on the importance of social and emotional learning to incorporate the holistic development of children. NEP 2020 states that the education system must aim to groom individuals capable of rational thinking and action, and must also possess compassion and empathy.
Emotional literacy not only helps children express their emotions in a healthy way, but it also prevents many issues such as low self-esteem, bullying, anger-issues, depression, and anxiety. Teachers, parents, and guardians need to make a conscious effort to identify and address the early signs of emotional-imbalance, to shield children from potential behavioural problems that could arise in adulthood. Incorporating emotional literacy into the school curriculum helps improve relationships and facilitates the feeling of communal belongingness.
What is Emotional Literacy?
Our ability to express our emotions and feelings is crucial. Emotional literacy is about understanding how to communicate our feelings and how to read others’ emotions. It’s an essential part of emotional intelligence, which refers to our overall ability to deal with emotions.
By fostering emotional literacy in children, we can help them understand and manage their emotions better. It helps to develop strong emotional intelligence skills such as empathy, self-control, and self-awareness that will benefit them throughout their lives. It is something that should often be emphasized in early grades.
Like every child is different, so are their needs. A few will need more encouragement than others to develop their emotional literacy skills and understand the domains associated with it.
Here are some simple things that adults can incorporate to support emotional literacy skills:
- Encourage talking about emotions often; one can rely on books and movies.
- Help children identify and understand their own emotions by talking about how they are feeling, modelling calm coping strategies, and providing opportunities for practice.
- Support children in understanding the emotions of others by teaching empathy, providing opportunities to practice perspective-taking, and modelling respectful behaviour towards others.
Domains associated with Emotional Literacy
Self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness are the three important domains related to emotional literacy. Self-awareness is our ability to recognise our own thoughts and feelings. It also involves understanding our emotional state and being aware of how our moods and reactions can affect others.
Self-management involves being able to control our emotions and impulses. Social awareness refers to our ability to develop connections with others, keeping in mind the social expectations, and norms. It allows us to make independent decisions about how we want to interact with the world around us.
Introducing these domains to children at an early stage is vital, and educators play a major role in imbibing the same.
Fostering Emotional Literacy through the classroom
When determining what to teach, it is important to take into account the skills and interests the child already possesses. This helps build confidence about recognising and labelling their emotions.
-The use of common language, clear words, and pictures of emotions that can help teach emotional literacy to a child.
-Acknowledge their feelings and emotions and maintain positive body language. Along with this, practice self-calming techniques, like deep breathing. Teach them by example.
-Practice emotions through real-life stories, tales, games, books, among others.
-Emotionally available parents build strong family bonds with their children, contributing to healthy communication at home.
Benefits of Emotional Literacy
ECCE plays an important role in social and emotional development of children. Providing opportunities for children to practice emotional literacy helps them develop skills like conflict resolution, rational thinking, decision making, problem solving, and encourages them to be a good team player. Emotional learning thus increases social awareness and helps develop stronger bonds with others. It also encourages them to appreciate both similarities and differences within the community, strengthens communal values, and promotes a sense of belonging in society.
The author of this article is Director of Education, Square Panda India. Views expressed are personal.
Also Read: Over 60 caste groups not under any quota, says Vanathi Srinivasan on EWS reservation
Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
