DaddyDear

MummyDear and I attended a short workshop at Ashley’s school last Friday evening. I felt that it’s more like a mini sales talk by an external consultant selling their product. The consultant was encouraging the parents to persuade the school to adopt the program. Despite the sub-standard sales talk, I did pick up a new tool that may come in handy when coaching kids or even adults on emotion management.

This tool is the “Emotion Thermometer”. It was introduced by Dr Michelle Garnett as a technique for scaling emotional intensity by drawing pictures against a scale similar to a thermometer, hence allowing a person to describe and process their emotional experience in a concrete and specific manner.

Here’s an example I found in an article at smelena.com:

I find it especially useful when applied on young kids who are not equipped with sufficient vocabulary to describe their emotions, as it’ll help them to visualize the level of their emotional state with reference to a scale using pictures or simple words. The process of creating the “thermometer” activates both the left and right brain, and will be more appealing to the “visual” and “kinesthetic” people.