By admin 
However, children with disabilities or developmental disorders have greater difficulty expressing and identifying their feelings and emotions. In general, we are taught about emotions indirectly, and typical children learn by association.
So, how can we work with the feelings of children with intellectual disabilities?
Emotional intelligence in neurodivergent children needs to happen in a clearer, more specific way, and with a lot of empathy. In this article, we will better understand how this can happen. Come with us!
Why do atypical children have difficulty with feelings?
Firstly, the ability to identify and understand feelings is already a challenge in itself. There are several factors that lead a person with a disability to face greater difficulties in learning to manage emotions.
One of them is associated with understanding existence in general. Often, feelings of loneliness and abandonment can be experienced when your support network is not prepared to provide the necessary support for your particularities. Affective absence, that is, feeling distant and not receiving affection and attention from the people around you, also interferes in this process.
The fear of independence is another problem that has a big influence on how these kids handle their emotions. They start to realize that they do not have the same level of autonomy as their classmates as they become more aware of their environment. They can therefore believe that their options are restricted. It’s crucial to remember that kids experience this constantly, even if they don’t always articulate it.
The difficulty of atypical children communicating, whether due to delays in speaking, making eye contact, developing social skills, cognitive rigidity or any other barrier, does not invalidate the presence of feeling or emotion, and can manifest itself in different ways.
They feel it too!
Even though they may not be able to express everything they feel and think correctly, it is important to know that atypical children also have a great desire for emotional appreciation. Like anyone else, they want their emotions to be valued and recognized. Therefore, it is essential to work on the emotional intelligence and feelings of children with intellectual disabilities.
Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage emotions, adjust behaviors, and improve interpersonal relationships. The good news is that it can be learned at any time. Here are some ways to help our children develop this skill:
- Observation and naming: to create the so-called emotional vocabulary, it is necessary to look at our own feelings and analyze them. Encourage the child to observe and name their emotions and those of others. You can start with characters from a book that the child is interested in, cartoons or classic stories. Draw parallels between the actions of the characters and their emotions. Why did they do that? What was they feeling? Start by working with basic feelings such as joy, sadness, anger and then move on to more complex ones.
- Emotional regulation: to help children regulate their emotions on their own, it is important to first have a good conversation about positive and negative emotions. One method to begin creating skills to deal with these sentiments is to discuss how important it is to comprehend where they originate. Children must learn how to handle setbacks and frustrations if they are to become emotionally resilient. To assist children with intellectual impairments (or any youngster!) realize that their feelings are real, it’s critical to validate and embrace their sentiments.
Recognizing emotions
Maybe you already know all of the above and are wondering how it is possible to work on these skills in practice, since we do not receive this type of training at any point in our student or adult life. So, let’s look at the tools:
Create a visual routine
To start working on basic emotions, you can use images from the internet with expressions such as happy, sad, etc. (search for face masks). The fewer details the image has, the better. Focus only on facial expressions. Choose an image for each emotion. At first, show them one by one to the child and ask if they know which feeling that expression is related to. Try to remind them of a moment associated with a certain emotion. You can hang them on the wall of their room or regularly show the images to the child and ask how they are feeling.
Play mirror of emotions
With the help of a mirror, encourage your child to explore the facial expressions of the feelings they are learning about. Make faces at your child too and ask them what they see on their face. Have their eyebrows changed? And what about the shape of their mouth?! Does their nose look different? And their cheeks? The more fun and light-hearted the game can be, the greater the learning.
Make an emotions calendar
This is a resource used even in companies, the famous: how am I feeling today?! Setting aside a moment of the day for the child to think about their feelings and know how to choose an image that is appropriate to their feeling can help strengthen this understanding. You can make a variety of cut-out faces that the children must place on top of the date on the calendar and that correspond to their feeling at that moment.
Valuable resources
As a parent or guardian of a child with a disability, it is important that you know some tools to deal with little ones.
Using simple language is one of them. Children with disabilities may have greater difficulty with language and recognizing very sophisticated vocabulary. Therefore, give preference to clear and simple terms.
Avoid using metaphors and very complex expressions. Short sentences and in direct order also help a lot. “Where did this come from?” for example, is a very complex idea. Prefer “Where did you find this?”
Another resource is modeling . Children learn a lot by seeing what other people do.
So make it very clear what you are feeling. Smile when you are happy, frown when you are sad, etc.
Positive reinforcement is another powerful tool. Remember that when your child is away from you, they may not feel as comfortable and secure. Therefore, always make it very clear that they are doing a good job when they correctly identify an emotion or feeling.
It is always good to remember that each person is unique, as is the way they deal with their disability. Therefore, we must always have strategies at hand to deal with adversity and prevent moments of crisis from happening.
Establish a routine. Predictability is very important for people with cognitive rigidity. Knowing what will happen on the day, where they are going, or even what the routine will be for the outing, makes them feel more secure. When we get there, we’ll have lunch first and then we’ll go on the outing, okay?” – this is a way to bring predictability to the child. But you can also draw on a piece of paper or make a calendar, depending on the idea you are trying to convey. This is an excellent method for dealing with anxiety in children.
Use sensory experiences. Sensory and soft objects such as pillows and stuffed animals, stress balls, pop-its, modeling clay and other objects that help the person calm down and focus on a certain activity can be very helpful. Try to talk to the child beforehand about which objects/toys can help them in a moment of crisis. You can create a box with these objects or even create a corner in the room or in the house for this situation.
Resources to use anywhere. You won’t always have physical resources at hand when your child is having a crisis. So, try out and keep in mind some strategies that you can use anywhere, such as: taking slow, deep breaths, counting slowly from 10 to 1, or playing memory games or music that will make your child happy and distract their mind with other things.
Always remember the quote ” talking is the best way .”. Every child should be seen and heard, regardless of his or her mental and intellectual condition. That is why a patient approach and trying various approaches until one works out with a child is important.
From the perspective of Nonviolent Communication , human communication only occurs when the individual needs to express a need that is not being met. When this mechanism is not clear, we tend to express our feelings in the wrong way. Working with children on emotions and trying to understand the real reason behind each feeling they demonstrate is a fascinating journey to develop our own emotional maturity.