This past week I did a unit on emotions and feelings with my group of 20 Kindergarten through 3rd graders who I work with in Language Development. In planning the unit I printed out some cards with facial expressions for the various emotions we were going to be discussing. On the first day as we talked about different "feeling words" using the cards, I was surprised to hear what the kids had to say. One of the cards which displayed someone biting their nails and gritting their teeth was intended to show worried or nervous but when I asked my students what the person was feeling one of them (a 1st grader) shouted "He looks stressed!" Surprised by this, I agreed that the person did look a little stressed and we then discussed what that meant. I asked my students how many had ever felt stressed and most of them raised their hands. I laughed inside thinking "Oh right you have so much to be stressed about." They I got to thinking and realized that children absolutely feel stressed by what is going on in their life. Heck I am sure that I even contribute to that stress sometimes. Compared with what we deal with as adults, it might seem like kids don't have that much to stress about. What they stressed about may seem small and inconsequential to us but it is important to them. Kids have their own concerns. Stresses can be just as overwhelming, particularly if they don't have effective coping strategies. So the next day I decided to talk about some relaxation techniques with the students. We came up with a little reminder of what you should do if you are stressed. Here it is :
Stop and close your eyes
Tell your self something positive like "It will be alright" or " I can do it"
Relax your muscles
Easy does it
Slow and deep breaths
Smile
