Feelings Book

Descripción

The Feelings App is based upon the Feelings Book (Rubin & Laurent, 2000). It is designed to provide an easy to use format for fostering the "Three "E's" at home, at school, and in the community. The “Three E’s” are otherwise referred to as:

Emotional Identification
Emotional Understanding
Emotional Regulation

In contemporary literature on child development, a child's mastery of the "Three 'E's" is highlighted as being essential for his or her ability to actively participate and adapt to the demands of different social partners and different social settings. These capacities are often challenging for children with social learning disabilities, children with social-emotional vulnerabilities, and children with regulatory challenges. With the Feelings Book App, children are provided with an interactive visual tool for: selecting and expressing one's emotional state, considering the intensity of that emotion, comparing the emotional event to other events that evoked a similar reaction, and selecting appropriate coping strategies that coincide with their ever changing emotional states.

In our clinical work, we have implemented these types of interactive visual supports with great success. The Feelings Book App is designed so that each “book” within the App can be individualized to the child's unique needs as well as a family's and teacher’s preferences in regards to coping. Multiple “books” can be stored within the App.

Who can use the Feelings Book App?

The Feelings Book App is appropriate for any individual who has difficulty with emotional identification, understanding, and regulation. The App can be used with a wide age-range of individuals, as it is designed with three different developmental levels. At the developmentally youngest level, Level 1, children who are learning to express their emotions in conventional ways can use the App to choose appropriate coping strategies from photographic representations. Level 2 is for individuals who are early language learners and combines simple text with photos to help individuals identify their emotional state and choose a coping strategy. The final level, Level 3, is most suitable for children in the elementary school years that already have a basic vocabulary of emotion words and reading skills at the 1st grade level or above.

How do individuals use the Feelings Book App?

All three levels our Feelings Book App help an individual learn to identify and/or express his or her emotions using a broader range of emotional vocabulary. At Level 1 photographs and text labels are included for the following emotions: happy, sad, scared and angry. At Levels 2 & 3 of the App, we have included photographs and text labels for the following emotions: happy, silly, sad, embarrassed, bored, scared, frustrated, and angry.

At all three levels of the Feelings Book App, individuals are encouraged to learn about and choose emotional regulation by recognizing socially appropriate coping strategies for reacting to dysregulation depending upon the context and intensity of their emotional state. Although example coping strategies are offered, the App is designed so that each child, family, and educational team may add unique and individualized coping strategies.

In addition Levels 2 & 3 include “pages” which are designed to foster emotional understanding. Individuals are encouraged to record events associated with particular emotional states using text and photographs in their personalized “books.” Emotion meters are included to help individuals index the intensity of emotional states correlated to specific events.

For additional information related to the Feelings Book (Laurent & Rubin, 2000) please go to:

www.commxroads.com
www.amy-laurent.com