As parents we always want to know how our children are doing or how they are doing in school, etc., however, this is not always easy, since not all children have the same facility to express themselves and express their feelings .
Learning to recognize feelings in order to face, live and deal with them is not an easy task and can represent a real headache for parents when it comes to their children’s feelings, but there are certain mechanisms that we can apply so that they younger children feel safer and more eager to express themselves . And in this sense, the so-called rose and thorn method was born.
The importance of identifying feelings
Personal growth and the development of the so-called emotional intelligence are very important for life, as they allow us to know how to identify the things that happen to us, reflect on their causes and consequences and prepare ourselves not to suffer more than necessary when things go wrong or develop empowerment and strength to be able to get out of problems without too much difficulty and without affecting our health.
Children are even more vulnerable to problems , as they have not yet developed the capacities to identify, analyze and / or protect themselves from certain situations that may affect them physically or emotionally. That is why it is so important that we equip them with tools so that they can learn to distinguish when they are sad, when they are tired, when they are disappointed … as well as to avoid, when possible, all those emotions (considered negative) from happening, and how face them healthily when they cannot be avoided.
The game of the rose and the thorn
The rose and thorn method can be applied in various ways, but the most interesting thing for young children is to apply it as a didactic game consisting of relating the rose to positive emotions and good things, and the thorn to the most unpleasant emotions or the most negative situations that can happen to us on a day-to-day basis.
The mechanics can be established with a shorter or less periodicity, that is, we can apply the method every night or the last day of each week, to count the roses and thorns that we have had at the end of the term that we have set.
This mechanism, in addition to being very useful to improve communication with the family or with classmates, will help adults to be participants in their children’s problems and guide them in the processes of recognition, reflection and solution of them .
Each time the method is put into practice, each participant must describe what the roses and thorns of their day have been , and how they have made them feel, especially when talking about thorns. What has that thorn produced in us? What has made us feel? Pain? Sadness? Anguish?
By talking and using this method, the little ones will feel confident and will feel closer to feelings and emotions , learning to distinguish them and to face them with a higher level of emotional intelligence.
At the end of the week, vases can be prepared in which everyone puts the flowers with all the thorns that they have counted. This symbol will serve to understand that thorns are part of life, and that they do not subtract an iota of beauty from flowers, if they learn to live with them.
