Uncovering how your child is feeling is an important part of your relationship with them. Most of the time we have an intuitive sense but there are plenty of occasions where we’re not sure what’s going on. And they’re struggling to tell you too. That’s where using different methods can really help you out.

Arts and crafts are very good at giving kids an outlet to express their emotions – and they’re very useful for rainy days too! Here are three examples of how you can use these creative activities as a handy tool.

The best way of helping children express themselves is to provide them with a whole lot of love. In turn that leads to feelings of safety and security, which helps them develop many skills that they’ll need throughout their lives. Just like when you were looking for potty training tips for boys and girls, providing a loving environment for arts and crafts is a great way to help kids express their emotions.

Spending some time doing creative activities provides kids with a great platform to show their love in a number of ways. For one, when you’re spending quality time with little ones, they have plenty of opportunity for affection. They also have the chance to draw or paint their love for those close to them. There really is nothing quite like receiving a homemade card or picture made with love.

Arts and crafts involve a lot of trial and error, plenty of opportunities to make mistakes and plenty of opportunities to build confidence. And it’s easy link the benefits to other developmental stages too. For example, one of the best potty training tips for boys and girls is to let them know it’s ok to have accidents. This can be developed further through arts and crafts. The more your children learn to overcome problems and realise that mistakes are part of developing, the more that their confidence will grow.

So, use crafting to encourage kids to make errors, talk through how it makes them feel, and help them overcome any issues. It’s all about reassurance, praise and trying again. It takes patience on your part but is a handy tool to help little ones become more resilient to problems and overcome frustration.

Finally, sometimes children don’t quite have the words to express how they’re feeling. It might be that they simply don’t have the vocabulary or are just really struggling to vocalise their emotions. Well, arts and crafts are a fantastic outlet for them. They say that a picture paints a thousand words, and this is a chance for them to show you what they’re feeling, rather than getting anxious and upset about not being able to.

The following ideas can help you encourage them to use drawing, painting, glueing, snipping and folding to tell you how they feel:

• Get them to draw faces. Yes, sometimes you can be that explicit. It might be happy, sad, angry or scared; the key is to get them to draw it, and then ask what the face represents. This is a clever way of opening up further discussion and helps little ones express and handle their emotions better.
• Use colour to match emotions. Let them choose the colours of paint, pens, paper, wool or cardboard to match their mood. Ask them questions about what each colour symbolises and give them the chance to explain further. Repeat the process and see if the colours have changed to see if it’s helped.

By creating a relaxed and loving environment, arts and crafts can be a really useful tool for you to identify children’s emotions. And, on top of that, it’ll give them a chance to express themselves, and begin to understand their own feelings better.

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