Are you feeling stuck helping your child recognize emotions in themselves and others? You are not alone if you are!
Kids with ASD often tend to struggle with identifying and labeling emotions. They lack understanding when it comes to knowing how they feel and how others feel. Kids also have difficulty interpreting non-verbal cues with feelings and emotions.
Today I’m going to share with you an easy emotion recognition activity. This activity is simple for you to teach your child and afterwards your kiddo will be able to recognize emotions and the visual cues that go with each feeling.
Emotion Recognition
Kids with autism respond very well with visuals. For this activity you will be creating emotion visual flash cards. These flash cards will help your child look at different facial expressions and associate the feelings with the faces to be able to understand emotion recognition.
Supplies Needed:
- Magazines
- Scissors
- Tape or glue
- 4×6 index cards
- Small mirror
Create Emotion Recognition Flashcards
- Go through different magazines and cut out pictures of people with different feelings. Look for simple emotions when first starting out like happy, sad, mad, tired.
- Tape the pictures onto 4×6 cards.
- Next to the picture write out the emotion that is being expressed in the picture.
Teaching Emotion Recognition
There are different phases to this activity that build off of one another. As your child becomes proficient with each step you can move on to the next phase.
Phase One: Learn Emotion Labels
- With your child go through each picture and label the emotions.
- Hold up a card and label the card for your child like “this card is happy.”
- As your child learns the cards remove your verbal cue and have them label the emotion for the card.
Phase Two: Emotion Recognition Visual Cues
After your child is able to label emotions it’s time to learn the visual cues associated with each emotion.
- Select a card. For example: “happy.”
- With simple verbal cues describe what you see in the picture. For example: “The person is smiling. He is happy.” “This person has tears. She is sad.”
- Review facial expressions with the emotion labels.
- As your child learns facial expressions have your child describe what they see in each picture.
Phase Three: Emotion Recognition In Self
Now it’s time for your child to learn how to recognize feelings and facial expressions in themselves.
- Have a child look at a flash card and label emotion.
- Hold up a mirror for your child to look into.
- Ask your child “how does your face look when you feel mad.”
- Have your child make the face. You might need to demonstrate for them.
- As your child learns the different expressions go through the flashcards and have them make a corresponding expression. For example: hold up the happy card and say “make a happy face”
Phase Four: Emotion Recognition Out In The World
This phase helps put it all together to see how people feel in different scenarios.
- One the back of each card make a list of situations that can make people feel a certain way.
- Ask your child to think of things for themselves and for others. For example: “What makes you happy? “What makes someone else happy?”
- Go through each flashcard and have your child say label the emotion and the reason behind it. For example: “This person feels happy because he is playing. I can feel happy when I am having fun.”
Adding to Emotion Recognition Activity
- As your child gets proficient at simple emotions you can add more complex feelings like excited, frustrated or bored.
- Role-play different emotions to help foster further understanding.
- If your child seems unsure or confused about feelings or what to say model the appropriate response until they learn.
- Stay away from words like always or never when labeling emotions. For example don’t say “people always cry when they are sad.” Try to keep it general like “people might cry when they are sad.”
- Every child learns at their own pace.
- You can pick and choose how many flashcards to do in a session depending on how your child is feeling. Keep it fun.
I’ve used this easy emotion recognition activity with many of my clients and it is so neat to see them figure out how to read their facial expression and visual cues in others. When kids start to understand their emotions it helps all involved learn to communicate and understand each other on a deeper level.
Elizabeth Purpero is a licensed school counselor and licensed professional counselor-in-training. She has her master’s in counseling psychology. Elizabeth has worked as an autism therapist with children and teens. During her career, she has worked in intensive at-home therapy programs utilizing ABA and play therapy along with OT and speech therapy techniques. She has also worked as a mental health therapist helping clients address their mental health issues as it relates to autism. Elizabeth’s background working with the autism community has greatly helped her work with students in schools too. She has helped teachers implement effective strategies, create goals for IEP’s and make classrooms more sensory-friendly. Mark Twain once said, “Write what you know about,” and Elizabeth enjoys writing about autism-related topics and providing additional resources to help those impacted by autism.