New initiatives from nurseries teach children emotional intelligence, reports Kate Freud
Having skipped into nursery every day for six months, one morning my typically sunny two-year-old Jago dissolved into a fit of rage and tears and refused to go in. He was his usual self at home, and his teacher reassured us he didn?t seem unhappy at nursery, yet his refusal to go became a daily battle of wills. We tried every trick in the book; persuasion, negotiation, bribery, to no avail until one day, three months later, he moseyed into nursery without a backward glance and normality was restored. It was as if nothing had ever happened.
Any parent will tell you that young children are famously difficult to read, but if Jago had a way of expressing why he had taken against nursery ? fear, feelings of abandonment or even an issue with another child ? it could have spared us a great deal of worry. Like many parents, it?s times like this that made my interest pique when I heard about the RULER programme being rolled out in primary schools across London, to teach emotional intelligence to pupils. The acronym stands for Recognising your emotions; Understanding them; Labelling them and Expressing them in a Regulated way. Every morning children are asked to plot their feelings on a ?mood meter?, with red meaning angry, blue for sad, green equalling calm and yellow meaning happy. They are taught to express what has made them feel this way, and then taught how to read their classmates feeling...