Feeling Description To Help Expand Your Child’s Vocabulary

Antoinette Steyn • March 31, 2022

When it comes to helping our kids expand their emotional vocabulary it will not suffice to only teach them to be able to label the basic emotions such as anger, fear, sadness, happiness or fear. We need to help our kids to fully understand these feelings and to understand them. In the process of doing so, we might just be able to help our kids discover their underlying emotions, which often leads to identifying the things which cause our feelings so much easier.


Here are some examples you can use to help your kids understand or describe certain feelings:


JOY: Feeling grateful and connected to others/something important to you. It is a happiness that is sometimes bigger than happiness which can make your heart smile and your whole body feel good.


DISSAPOINTED: Feeling upset, let down, burned out or even sad because something good that you expected to happen, did not happen.


OVERWHELMED: Feeling like you are experiencing too much pressure and that you have to deal with too many things at the same time.


HAPPY: Feeling satisfied to such an extent that you experience everything as joyful and full of pleasure. You feel as if life is good.


BRAVE: Is the feeling you experience when you do something scary/ challenging or uncomfortable even if you feel scared. It also means you are feeling courageous. 


ANNOYED: Feeling irritated, aggravated or even impatient.


DETERMINED: Feeling confident that you are going to push through no matter what in order to achieve or accomplish something.


WORRIED: Feeling as if you have something or many things to be concerned about, you can feel concerned, distressed or even fearful when you are worried. Sometimes you can have racing thoughts with regards to the outcome of something about which you feel uncertain.


HOPEFUL: Feeling hopeful and inspired about the future or looking forward to something.

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