Where a feeling sits

The activity

On a plain outline of a body, your child marks where they first notice anger, worry and sadness.

What it is for. Our bodies often notice a feeling before our heads do. If your child knows where a feeling starts in their body, they get a little more warning, and a way to tell you, before it gets too big.

• The first step. Choose a time when nothing much is wrong. This is practice for harder days; do not reach for it in the middle of one.

When to get help. If strong feelings are lasting for several weeks, getting worse, or starting to affect sleep, eating, friendships or school, talk to your child’s school and your GP. If what your child marks or says suggests that someone has hurt them, or touched them in a way that worried them, stay calm, thank your child, and do not ask them to show or tell you more. Do not promise to keep it secret. Write down your child’s own words, and act that day, using the routes under “If you need help right now”, at the foot of every page; if the person who hurt your child lives in your home or your child’s other home, go straight to children’s social care or the police. If what your child marks or says suggests that they are hurting themselves, or that they do not want to be alive, stay calm, thank them for telling you, and ask them gently what they mean. Do not promise to keep it secret, and act that day: help them ask the surgery for an urgent appointment, and if it is closed, use the same routes. If your child is badly hurt, or may have taken too much of a medicine, get medical help straight away, even if they seem well.

The other four steps, and your part in it, are in the library.

The sheet that goes with it comes with a subscription: Where a feeling sits.

It goes with

• Big Feelings and Co-Regulation. For parents whose child has just had a meltdown, on how to help them through it.
• Anxiety, by Age. For parents of a child whose worry has started to make decisions for them, with what helps at each age and when to ask for help.

The first chapter you open here is free to read in full.

Free on this subject

• Emotional regulation. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.
• Anxiety. What to do first, what helps, and who else can help. Free to read and to print.