GUIDE FOR CAREGIVERS
Emotional Awareness
1. Emotional Awareness (Self-Awareness): Recognising and Naming Emotions
What Is Emotional Awareness (Self-Awareness)?
Emotional awareness is the ability to notice an emotion as it arises, and it forms a foundation of emotional intelligence. Instead of saying only “I feel bad”, the aim is to be able to say, for example, “I feel disappointed” or “I feel jealous”.
Let’s Get to Know the Basic Emotions
- Anger — Helps us protect our boundaries.
- Sadness — Helps us adapt to losses and gather our energy.
- Fear — Keeps us alert to danger.
- Joy / Enjoyment — Helps us experience satisfaction and pleasure in life.
- Love — Supports us in forming secure bonds.
- Surprise — Focuses our attention on new situations.
- Disgust — Helps us keep away from harmful things.
- Shame — Gives feedback about social adjustment and personal boundaries.
Five Core Skills for Emotional Intelligence
The RULER method, developed by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, offers a five-part framework for emotional skills.
01 Recognising — Being able to read and recognise emotions in ourselves and others through facial expressions, body language and other cues.
02 Understanding — Being able to understand where an emotion comes from, including its causes and possible consequences.
03 Labelling — Going beyond broad words such as “angry” or “bad” and naming feelings more precisely, using a richer emotional vocabulary such as “frustrated”, “irritated” or “furious”.
04 Expressing — Learning how to express feelings without harming others. The core rule is: “All emotions are allowed to be felt, but not every behaviour is allowed.”
05 Regulating — Developing the ability to pause and think before acting on an emotion. For young children, calming down may involve deep “belly breaths”, moving to a quiet space or receiving a comforting hug. As children grow, they gradually develop more independent strategies for motivation and problem-solving.
A Practical Tool: The Mood Meter
The Mood Meter is a visual way to help children name emotions. It places feelings in four colour zones along two axes: Energy (high/low) and Pleasantness (pleasant/unpleasant).
Yellow Zone (High Energy, Pleasant) — Happy, excited, optimistic and enthusiastic feelings.
Green Zone (Low Energy, Pleasant) — Calm, peaceful, relaxed and balanced feelings.
Blue Zone (Low Energy, Unpleasant) — Sad, disappointed, hopeless or tired feelings.
Red Zone (High Energy, Unpleasant) — Angry, anxious, frightened or terrified feelings.
The Caregiver’s Role: Permission to Feel
Children learn how to cope with intense emotions by watching the adults around them. The caregiver’s role is not to be a critic but an “emotion coach”. Emotional outbursts can be approached not only as behaviour to manage but also as opportunities to connect with the child and help them name what they are feeling.
Detailed Home Activities
The “Fridge Mood Meter” Routine
How to do it: Hang the Mood Meter, with its Yellow, Green, Blue and Red zones, on the fridge. As a family, check in each day by asking, “Which colour are you on the Mood Meter right now?” Once the child identifies the colour, help them find a more precise emotion within that zone, for example: “I’m in the red because I feel disappointed.”
Purpose: To develop emotional awareness and the RULER skill of Labelling by making the child’s inner experience more concrete through colours instead of relying only on “I feel bad”.
The “Being a Potato” Game
How to do it: Ask the child to imagine that they are a potato. Give instructions such as: “Now you’re at the market and being put into a bag. Now you’re in the kitchen and being peeled”—invite exaggerated facial expressions—“and now you’ve been dropped into hot oil.”
Purpose: To increase inner awareness by encouraging the child to show, through facial expressions, states such as excitement, pain, surprise or fear in response to different situations.