Emotions

Peeking out here, second from the left, is Mao, who wrote
this entry, with her siblings. This is the first Christmas
she can remember, and she said she was in 1st or 2nd grade.

Emotional literacy made me think about my childhood, how I learned my emotions and how my parents taught us about emotions. Sadly, I can’t say my parents taught my siblings and me much about emotions when we were kids. From what I can remember, I didn’t learn from school either. Not that my parents didn’t love us, but I feel like my parents themselves didn’t learn how to express emotions themselves My parents have always told us we shouldn’t cry, whine, be sad, or mad, which tells me that they didn’t like us expressing our emotions. Now that I am older and understand my parents’ situation as parents, I feel that they weren’t so sure of how to handle our emotions and didn’t know how to teach us to express them, so I can’t blame them.

Out of the six strands of human connection, emotional literacy stood out the most to me. I have to agree with Gordon that literacy is more than reading and writing, it’s about feelings. Children with emotional literacy are able to express their feelings properly, name their emotions, and are able to understand other’s emotions. Emotional literacy is about understanding emotions of self and others. Truthfully, I had never heard of the term emotional literacy until I took CFS classes. I think learning about emotions plays an important role in life. Ever since I can remember, I couldn’t express my emotions directly and didn’t understand other’s feelings. Through grade school I wasn’t a talkative person and I rarely expressed my feelings to the teachers or friends. Even at home, emotion was never a topic to discuss. When I reached middle school I didn’t change much, expressing myself wasn’t easy, and I tended to hide how I felt. I wasn’t sure how to respond to my friend’s feelings when they were sad, frustrated, angry, or upset. When I reached freshman year in high school, I had this awesome English teacher who helped me through being shy and was able to help me talk in front of class. I also thank my older sister for helping me to open up my emotions. I always felt I couldn’t help her when she needed something or when something was troubling her. I was always there to listen, but never knew what I should say. Just watching what my sister has gone through, I learned from her, and I was able to come out of my shell and be able to express my own feelings and respond to other’s emotions.

Just imagine if all schools had Roots of Empathy classrooms; it would teach kids so much. “This learning is extended as they are encouraged to reflect on their own emotions and discuss awareness of other people’s emotion” (p. 61). Gordon’s idea of teaching children about emotions through an infant is such a great idea that I would love to see my own children experience this in their classroom one day. The kids in the Roots of Empathy classroom are able to observe a baby and learn about the baby’s emotions and also learn what those emotions are. Gordon said a child with emotional literacy who is able to “build healthy relationships and a stronger, more confident sense of self” (p. 61). This classroom would have helped me as a child to really understand emotions, to be able to express them, help me to be more confident in myself and not be shy. Who wouldn’t want to experience a Roots of Empathy classroom? All children should experience a classroom like this because it’ll help children for a life time. Who would have thought of the idea for children to learn from an infant? Usually it’s always about learning from your parents and teachers. Gordon’s idea is one of the greatest ideas I have heard because a child learning from an infant is really amazing. I believe we can learn from infants no matter what our age, because every move they make is always astonishing.