Counselor Emily gives parents a quick resource to help build emotional health with their children. A transcript of this video is available below.
Resources Mentioned In This Video:
Video Transcription:
Hi, I’m Emily with Garrett Counseling. So today I wanted to talk about how you can take ordinary games that you have at home, and make them therapeutic. So these are some things that we do in counseling, but these are definitely things that you can do as a family at home, and kind of get onto those deeper conversations while you’re having a good time.
So one of my favorites is my Feelings Jenga. So what I did is I took just typical Jenga blocks, and I wrote feeling words on them. So there’s worried, annoyed, grateful, peaceful, happy, mad, sad, depending on how old your kiddo is. And you would just play it like you would play normal Jenga.
So what you do is each time that somebody pulls out their piece, they have to read their word, and they have to tell you a time that they felt that way. And that’s where you guys can just get to know each other, and get to know the different feelings that they have, and what makes them feel that way. Then you guys could even come up with what’s something that could help with that feeling. So that’s just a really good way to talk about your feelings at home. So that’s my number one favorite that I love to use.
And then the next is UNO, because who doesn’t love a good game of UNO? So again, you would just play UNO, regular, exactly how you would do it. Your typical, whether you play by the UNO rules or if you have your own house rules at home. A way that you can make this really engaging with our feelings, is each color can represent different types of feelings. Every time they play a yellow card, they have to talk about a time that they felt happy, or you talk about a time that one of your other family members were happy. And how did you know they were happy, and just all things happy.
Green can be anger, so a time that you felt angry. A time that brother, sister, mom felt angry, and how did you know? Or what’s something that can help when you feel angry. So these are ways that you can just play the game, but then just get to know each other a little bit more. Things that we don’t just talk about all the time.
So those are some tips and tricks for taking your everyday games, and making them therapeutic. Thank you. Bye.