The feelings poster with forty faces on it is a vocabulary test. A child in the middle of a feeling cannot take a vocabulary test.
A printable check-in with five named feelings, a box to tick and a line to write why — which can stay empty.
Download the PDF ↓No email, no sign-up. It downloads the moment you click. Print it as many times as you like, at home or in a classroom. See all our free printables →
Happy, sad, angry, scared, tired. Almost everything a small child is experiencing fits near one of those, and a short list is one they can actually scan while upset.
There is a reliable shift when a child puts a word to a state — it stops being weather that is happening to them and becomes a thing with a name. You do not need to fix the feeling. Naming it is the intervention.
A check-in works at a calm moment — at bedtime, after dinner. Presenting a chart mid-tantrum reads as a demand. Use it when nothing is wrong and it will be available when something is.
Let them. Consistency is not avoidance; a child who says "tired" every night at seven may simply be tired every night at seven, which is worth knowing.
Offer the line and let it stay blank. Requiring a reason turns a check-in into an interrogation, and the pointing is the part that helps.
Part of our guide to Bedtime & mornings.