“Recognising your emotions and learning to manage them is one of the most important skills you can have.”
Via BBC Teach, child mental health expert, Shahana Knight, shares her insight into why it’s important for both children and adults to understand and recognise their emotions.
She begins by saying:
“Recognising your emotions and learning to manage them is one of the most important skills you can have.” [Editor’s note: see Bad Education and the need to radically revise the National Curriculum (especially in primary school), placing centre-stage the teaching of a wide variety of age-appropriate, interpersonal and intrapersonal understandings and skills.]
And continues:
“In fact people who are good at noticing how they feel and can calm themselves down or adjust their behaviour are more likely to do well in life, have healthy relationships and manage difficulties and set backs.
Feelings are powerful and can become overwhelming at times. Both adults and children might struggle to manage their responses to their feelings and act in ways that feel very out of their control. For example, have you ever felt so angry that you said things you didn’t mean to someone you love? Then once you calmed down, you realised that your emotions got the better of you and you wish you handled it differently?
We have all behaved this way, but as children grow up, it is important that they are taught how to control these emotions so that they can deal with situations better.
Teaching children about their emotions and how to manage them will give them the strategies and life skills to navigate their way through tough situations and handle them in a more calm, purposeful way …”
To read more (including the 5 reasons why recognising your emotions is important) go here.
