Talking about emotions--a little success!!

[PeterPan]

So we've been working on interoception, but ds has been really slow moving from understanding his body to being able to talk about emotions. He would have issues any time the SLP, psych, anyone tried to talk with him about emotions. Finally I told the SLP give up, I'll work on it myself, lol. I found this articl https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/102/Supplement_E1/1272  that seemed to have some helpful points, including:

-emotional langauge develops in kids as they want to say what they are NOT feeling

-emotional language is useful when it has power

-the conflict/problem solving in narrative is driven by NEGATIVE emotions

I didn't really want to start with negative, even if that would help his narrative sooner, lol. So I got the most adorable cards Timberdoodle sells https://timberdoodle.com/products/feelings-flashcards  and we've been slowly working through them. I made up a little NOT game, where we describe something and say the wrong thing for what we're feeling. Then the other person says no you're not, you're feeling ______! 

It's pretty tricky for him, but it seems to be clicking because, drum roll, he used an affective emotion word today!!! He said he felt PROUD of himself when he did xyz.   Wild stuff, eh? Now it's only one time, the first time, but we'll take it! 

So that's pretty cool. That word was in the pile of cards we worked on this week and he actually used it. We're also doing body scan check ins and other things. We're going to keep pushing hard to get not only the emotional language developed but get it connected to his body awareness, full circuit, and able to be applied to narrative language. I thought that was so helpful to realize that at some point we have to focus on negative if we want to springboard the crisis/problem solving. 

Well anyways, that's it. Y'all who are good at reading research can scan that article and probably learn more than I did. It's a little dense, but it seemed actionable and on point for our situation where language development is a factor.