Although we may wish our children could be happy all of the time,  sometimes they will be sad.  As we see tears welling up in our child’s eyes, we get a lump in our own throat. We don’t like seeing them sad and we want to fix it!  But how?! Sometimes we tell them, “You’re OK” even though we can see that they are obviously NOT OK!  We want them to be OK...we may think they should be OK (maybe they tend to overreact), but they do not feel OK...they feel SAD!  We might be tempted to tell them to “stop crying” because we are uncomfortable with it.  But when we do this, we lose an opportunity to connect with our children and help them to work through their sadness.  Another tool we often use is to try to distract our children from their sad feelings.  We might try to get them to laugh or offer them a cookie or engage them in an activity with the hope that they will forget feeling sad.  While all of these reactions are well intended, they rob our children of the chance to learn to understand and cope with sadness. 

Children need adult support and a lot of practice to be able to learn the skills of recognizing and managing their sad feelings.  We can start by noticing when our child looks sad and then taking time to listen to and acknowledge what he/she is feeling. By listening, your child will learn that it’s okay to talk to you about feelings and that their feelings are important to you. We need to allow our girls and our boys to cry and to validate the feelings behind those tears….even if those feelings seem silly to us.  Feeling heard and understood allows children to release their sad feelings, let go and move on.  We can’t take sadness out of our children’s lives, but we can give them the gift of genuine empathy and teach them to work through those feelings. 

Pot o’ Gold

• Find a small pot or jar and decorate it if you wish.

• Find something small that can be the “gold” to add to your “pot” such as pennies, gummies, fish crackers, etc.

• During the week, each time you notice or talk about feeling “sad” be sure to add a piece of “gold” to the pot.

• At the end of the week, you can count/eat the “gold” as you reflect on the “sad” feelings that you noticed all week long.

NOTICE and LABEL “sad” throughout the Week

• Watch for times when your child looks like they are feeling sad.  Talk about how they feel and why?  What does their face look like? What does their body feel like?

• Notice (or recall) times when you yourself feel sad and “talk aloud” about it with your child. Talk about what has made you feel sad.  Point out how your face looks and how your body looks and feels when you are feeling sad.

• Don’t forget to notice and talk about characters on TV and in books who are feeling sad.  Ask your children how they know the character is sad and why they think they might be feeling sad. 

Play “sad” with stuffed animals

• Together with your child choose some stuffed animals, puppets or dolls.

• You might model this activity for your child by choosing a toy and making it say for example, “I wonder what Baby Bear felt when they noticed that their chair broke? How would their face and body look if he were sad?”  Encourage your child to think about how the toy would be acting and sounding sad.

• Then invite your child to have the stuffed animals/puppets/dolls act sad and make up a story about why they are feeling sad.

• Follow your child’s lead, but as opportunities arise encourage your child to think about how the puppets/animals/dolls body might be feeling and ways to help it feel better.

Activities

Act out sad in pretend play scenarios

• Pretend play is a great place to talk about emotions.

• Join in your child’s play and use emotions to talk about the stories they are creating! ("I wonder if your baby feels sad that it is time to go to bed and be done playing?"

Shaving Cream Sad Faces

• Gather shaving cream, food coloring and paper towels.

• Give your child a squirt of shaving cream on a clean surface.  Add a drop of food coloring if desired.

• Tell your child to think of a time when they were sad or someone they knew was sad.

• Talk about what their face looked like.

• Encourage them to draw sad eyes and a sad mouth.

• Challenge them to make different sad faces in the shaving cream.

• Do all sad faces look the same?

Feelings Dice Game

• Create two large dice by covering two square tissue boxes with paper or cutting two wood blocks and painting them or buying two large foam dice at a local dollar store and painting over the dots.

• On one dice draw or tape a picture of a different animal name on each side.

• On the other dice draw or tape a picture of one of the following feelings on each side (angry, sad, happy, surprised, worried, lonely, calm).

• Each person takes a turn rolling the dice onto the floor.

• Then that person has to act out whatever the dice say. For example, they can pretend to be a “sad duck” or a “happy cow.”

• Your child might need help to think about what the animal would look/act like if he was feeling that emotion.

• Talk about times when your child has felt that way.  What did their face and body look like.  How might that look or sound in a cow or pig?

Feelings Hunt

• Create some feeling face cards by drawing some simple ones with your child or by printing some free images from the internet.

• Hide the cards around the house.

• Have your child look for the feelings cards.

• As cards are found take turns either making the face on the card or telling a story about a time when you had the same feeling.

• Be sure that you have “sad” as one of the feeling cards as well as other feelings you have talked about with your child. 

Ring Toss Feelings Game

• Gather paper plates, paper cups and a marker.

• Draw a different feeling face on the bottom of each paper cup. Be sure to draw a sad face because it is the focus feeling for the week.

• Cut the centers out of paper plates to make a ring for each player.

• Toss the plates to ring an emotion.

• As emotions are rung have your child tell you about a time when he/she felt that emotion.  Talk about how their faces and bodies looked when they felt the emotion.  If it was a strong emotion, what helped your child to feel better.

More Activities

Sing a Sad Song

• Sing If You’re Sad and You Know It

  If you are sad, and you know it, make a frown.
  If you are sad, and you know it, make a frown.
  If you are sad, and you know it, then your face will surely show it
  If you are sad, and you know it, make a frown.

• Be sure to sing this verse with “sad” emotion in your voice, face and body!

• Come up with a list of things that make you and your child sad.

• Notice with your child that the things that make you sad are sometimes the same and sometimes different.  Talk about how we don’t always feel the same way about things.

Play Simon Says “Feelings” Game

• Play Simon says with the children substituting feeling phrases for the usual directions. For example, say: “Simon says, look sad.”

• In between commands you can ask them questions about those feelings, such as “What makes you feel sad?”  “How does your body look and feel when you are sad?  Does it always feel good to feel sad?”

• Be sure to review the feelings already talked about in this Feelings Treasure Hunt Series (calm, angry, happy worried, excited, lonely, surprised and sad).

Play dough Feeling Mat

• Gather play dough, a mirror, paper bags, plates and or construction paper.

• Draw the outline of a head on a paper plate, paper bag or construction paper.

• If you have access to a laminator you might laminate your face outline to use over and over again. Or you might try contact paper, clear packaging tape or using a large plastic baggie or page protector to protect the face.  If you don’t have a way to protect the face outline, just make a new one the next time you want to do the activity.

• Encourage your child to think about a time when they felt sad. Provide a mirror and have your child try to make a sad face in the mirror.  Talk about what their mouth and eyes look like when they are feeling sad and encourage them to create a sad face on their playdough face mat.

• Try this same activity creating faces that look calm, angry and happy, worried and excited, lonely and surprised as a review of previous emotions.  Be sure to talk about how faces and bodies look and feel as well as times when your child has felt these emotions.

Feelings Book

• Talk with your child about times when they have felt sad.

• Show each other what your sad face looks like.

• Either take a picture of your child’s sad face and print it or have your child draw their sad face. (Use a mirror if your child is going to draw their face.)

• Protect the picture by slipping it into a plastic baggie (quart size works well).

• You can also make calm, angry, happy, worried, excited, lonely and surprised face pages to add to your book. (These are the feelings previously talked about in this series.)

• As you learn about new emotions don’t forget to add those pages to your book. You can tape the baggies together along the plastic seal to create the binding of your book using duct tape or packaging tape.

• Read your feelings book often. Try to help your child remember times when they felt that feeling and share times when you felt the same way.