? about communicating feelings/emotions

[Jodi]

Ryan has a hard time with negative emotions. I don't know if it is a processing issue or what

If Ryan is watching a movie, and there is a part when a character is crying, I will say something like "oh, he is sad" and Ryan gets all upset and says "no, happy". Sometimes he will just about start crying himself while saying "no, happy". And when he is crying about whatever (being told he can't do something, getting hurt, being crabby), I will ask him if he is sad/upset, and he says, "no, happy" when CLEARLY he is not!! When he sees other people upset, he looks lost. He definitely doesn't like negative emotions.

I've talked with his teacher at school, and she goes further with this and talks about how Ryan doesn't like to discuss his feelings when it comes to negative issues (getting in trouble, going on time-out, being unkind to another student). He will change the subject, lose eye contact, or just ignore her.

Any thoughts

[cindylou]

Forgive me Jodi-but I don't know how old Ryan is.

I will say that I know plenty of boys in our neighborhood- and my son is 3.5. What I have noticed over the years with the neighborboys is that they seem to HATE--I really mean HATE-attention in regards to any emotion. My Sam would get MAD when we celebrated potty success. I learned that I have to say - good job-like I don't care at all and keep walking on by. I have seen other neighbor boys totally break down crying while frustrated playing hoops--and they were in 4th and 5th grade-and then just stomp off.

What I'm trying to say is that the boys to me seem MUCH more emotional than my girls have every been, but very frustrated and embarrassed by attention in regards to their emotions.

I don't know if that makes sense--I find boys to be perplexing at times..
cindy

[Debbie]

It is hard for me to see people cry especially in movies. It was especially so after my cousin passed away. Certain emotions do upset me like for instance confrontation. I tend to draw back when someone confronts me and yet I have a hard time getting my anger out. I can be better at times and then sometimes I can't seem to handle my anger and get it out in a healthy way. I tend to keep some emotions like that inside of me. I have to work on this alot. My father tells me that here I am forty six years old and I can't seem to get out my emotions like "typical" people do. I know you are talking about young children here. Sometimes adults have these problems too.

[CC]

Jodi, man oh man reading your post was like reading bout Christopher. But in our case I think part of what is going on with Chris is we use to use the sad or happy face on behaviors. Worked like a charm ;D But we have gotten off that 1. because he is older and 2. because it got to the point that just giving him a sad face OMG the kid would stress tons till he got that happy face. Well it got to the point for my guy that if he just heard the word "Sad" he would immediately just say "NO Happy". Didn't matter what else he heard if the word "SAD" was used OMG he will just say "Happy".

We have a board on his augmentative just for emotions and how he is feeling and we play with it and we go over all the emotions, you know kind of act them out. Excited, scared, happy, sad, angry, and so on. Work in progress but I do believe it is helping him some

Chris hates to see anyone cry OMG if you are crying he will go right up to you and be so gentle and tell you to be "Happy" and wipe your tears away. He loves for ones to be smiling and will do his best to get one to smile. He cracks me up, if he sees something that does gets you to smile or make you laugh, forget it he will do over and over again, just to get that happy reaction.
BUT on the same hand confusing cause Chris only likes the normal type of happy if that made sense. OMG if ones over reacts say when he was tiny and did a GREAT thing like go on the potty and if we did a BIG YAHOOOO he hated that, go figure

Honestly for my guy I am not sure he gets the concept of "what are you feeling means" yet but we continue to work on it cause as with anything else with my guy, he just one day gets it when I think he never will

CC~