For parents / carers

Emotional Literacy –is the term used to describe the ability to understand and express emotions. Having self-awareness of your feelings allows you to to recognise and manage your own feelings and consequent behaviours; for example, the ability to remain calm when feeling angry.

Of course, emotional literacy can be impacted upon by many things including age, disability, individual life experiences, modelling from those around us etc. Therefore all children will develop their emotional literacy at slightly varied rates and will in turn have different methods to express their feelings. Children will often use their behaviour as a means to communicate with others when for whatever reason they can't, or aren't ready to, say verbally what they are experiencing and feeling.

There is lots of support available for you and your child online to help with developing emotional literacy and finding strategies to cope with challenging emotions. If you feel that your child requires additional support to further develop these skills there are a number of services available in the local area that you may be able to access. Information on this can be found below.