Expressing Thoughts and Feelings in Appropriate Ways
Helping children express thoughts, feelings, and opinions verbally and in writing can begin in the early preschool years. At Helen Gordon Child Development Center in Portland, Oregon, children are encouraged to express their thoughts and feelings-in letters to friends and parents, in poems, and in stories. Supported by teachers who write children's dictated words just as they are spoken, children write about rejection, fears of abandonment, and injustice. As Steve Franzel, a teacher of three-through six-year-olds, explains, "Language becomes a way to support children's power - their ability to deal with a peer, with conflict, with sad or scary feelings. Words empower them to express themselves - to handle life." Franzel explains:
I usually use writing as a means to a goal, to validate children's feelings about separation, to help resolve conflict--as crisis prevention. I hear someone screaming and I go over to help them use their words to express their needs and feelings. Then I ask the child, 'Do you want to write it down, write a letter?'The process is such an integral part of the day's activities, that the children explain it to new adults in the classroom and expect them to take dictation, just as they might expect their shoes to be tied. Frequently throughout the day, children use writing to sort out their feelings and at times to come to terms with their own behavior. For example, the following letter was written after four-year-old Tony watched his classmate leave for the doctor to have stitches in his forehead, following an altercation involving a broom. As Tony thought about what to write to Mark, anger was replaced by a sense of responsibility:
I'm sorry Mark. I hit you with the broom. Why did you want to take my broom? I was just about to color with the chalk and you were trying to take my broom. I was coloring in 5 seconds. I wanted to give him a hug before he left.Four-year-old Aaron expressed her complex thoughts on friendship and rejection in a prose poem written about and to her friend Olivia:
Olivia is a good friend.
Sometimes she doesn't play with me.
Today she said, "Don't follow me."
I was upset.
Then I was angry.
Then I said, "Bad Olivia."
Then I walked away.
Just like Olivia
Read this note and then you will
Find out about me
And your friend Aaron,
Love Aaron
To Olivia Using books and stories can also help children examine feelings. In a Northwest Head Start classroom, teachers read aloud Hans Christian Anderson's story of The Ugly Duckling and the whole class talks about how the ugly duckling must have felt when everyone made fun of him. When a child uses a word that hurts another child's feelings, children are encouraged to call it "an Ugly Duckling word." "Ugly Duckling words are those that hurt your heart. Ugly Duckling actions are those that hurt your body," explains their teacher.
At four years of age, these children are learning important lessons in empathy and are learning to stand up for themselves and each other against teasing and bullying. Vivian Paley contends that although each child comes into the world with an instinct for kindness, it is a lesson that must be reinforced at every turn (Paley, 1999). "Caring and compassion," says author and educator Deborah Meier, "are not soft, mushy goals. They are part of the core of subjects we are responsible for teaching."
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This document's URL is: © 2001 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
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