The traffic light technique (which specialists such as Anna Morató, author of the book “When I grow up I want to be happy”, tell us about it) is a tool that serves, among other things, to help children face the days with positivity . The benefit of teaching children to be positive is that we teach them to choose words and actions that bring happiness to their lives, regardless of the circumstances. Because, it is easy to be positive when everything goes well , but when everything is adverse you have to learn to also get out of those circumstances positively, and that is why we want to talk about this issue in more detail in the next article.
What is the traffic light technique?
The traffic light system serves to improve the mood: to be more positive, to better manage states of sadness and anger … That is to say that, applied to children, it is a technique that uses the colors of a traditional traffic light to teach them how to handle and manage your emotions . For example:
- Understand that fear, sadness, and frustration are common emotions .
- Being able to see anxiety as an ally to be able to overcome ourselves, and not as an enemy.
- Being able to understand the emotions of our brain and our heart.
The traffic light system is a tool for children ages 4 to 10. And the thing is, children at that age can identify basic emotions , but they have trouble managing them properly. In this sense, the traffic light technique uses a symbol recognizable by all to teach the little ones how to handle emotions, especially negative ones.
Most children fully understand how a traffic light works because they see them every day, which makes it an ideal symbol for emotional management. Red means stop, yellow means wait or slow down, and green means go . If we apply the colors of the traffic light to the anger or anger of children, they can learn to manage their emotions as if it were a game.
Meaning of colors and positive values
Green light
When you indicate to the child that he has a green light, it means that you authorize him to move forward, to find exits and to continue forward. It does not mean that there are no problems , it means that there are solutions that can be seen and that must be found and chosen to get out of the problem as quickly as possible.
The red light
It is a natural phase in life. With this color, it is about choosing negative words that describe the circumstances. It is not wrong to say them because they are necessary to vent, but it should be done for a short time in our lives, because while we have a red light we simply do not move forward. We only move towards the green light when we find positive words and solutions again.
The interesting thing about this tool is that we teach the little ones to choose how they want to feel. After all, happiness is an emotional state that is chosen or ignored. Also, while living in a positive state, you learn some important values in life . Let’s see which ones!
- A positive vocabulary is built
Many people have lived in negativity for so long that they have learned to have a negative vocabulary from which it is almost impossible to break away. Therefore, with the traffic light tool, the child is taught to understand the difference between both vocabularies and is taught to prefer a positive vocabulary.
- Abuse of others is not allowed
The child will learn which vocabulary belongs to the time of the red light, that is, what is the negative vocabulary. In this way, he will identify when someone has a negative and even violent vocabulary towards him. With self – esteem tools, you will learn to “stop” all people who want to express themselves negatively towards you or behave inappropriately.
- Empathy is developed, essential for life
Children, thanks to this simple technique, will understand that their positive words make others feel good, and that negative words make others feel bad. In this way, they will develop empathy for other people, with all that this entails on a personal and social level.
Thanks for sharing this technique! Very useful for these days at home.