Ever find yourself asking children these questions:

“What happened?”

“Why’d you do that?”

“What’s wrong?”

“What are you feeling?”

And the most common answer to these questions, one you’ve probably heard a million times, is…drum roll please…

“I don’t know.”

Are you getting too many frustrating “I don’t knows” from your growing person when trying to talk about emotional experiences?

Creating a mutually shared emotional language is an important step to guiding children through big emotions.