Question 5: Home Program

Provide 2 family focused home programs which will help families either help their child compensate OR drive them to a higher level of ability and efficiency in emotion/face processing

      Ideas for home activities for families:

·         Have a poster of different faces all representing different emotions, along with pictures of family members and friends expressing different emotions. Review daily with child what each emotion is and what it means. 

·         Throughout the day when mom is upset, happy, frustrated, have the child “guess” the emotion and reward as appropriate.  If time allows, you can even have your other children join in the game to guess other emotion.

·         Have a game where you each try to make different faces and guess which emotion you are portraying; discuss how that emotion makes the child feel.

·         Have child point out on board of faces how they are feeling that day and see if they can identify why they feel that way.

·         Read stories, such as, Bernstein Bears and talk about how each person would feel in the story and how you can tell.

·         Parents can play this online “feelings” game with child: http://specialchildren.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=specialchildren&cdn=parenting&tm=6&gps=308_237_1362_521&f=10&tt=13&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.do2learn.com/games/feelingsgame/index.htm

·         A good idea on the website: http://www.parentingscience.com/facial-expressions-for-kids.html is to match pictures of situations with pictures of the emotion is would make you feel.

·         This website:

http://www.thomasandfriends.com/usa/Thomas.mvc/Games/Home  has two games: one choose the right emotion and one matching emotions.  It could be done at home and the family could talk about when you would feel each emotion.