Empowering Children to Understand Their Feelings

"A child’s feeling of guilt is an opportunity for the child to learn about responsibility and the consequences of his or her actions. Parental response to guilt can have a tremendous impact on the development (or lack) of a child’s conscience, the ability to learn right from wrong, and their level of social interest and responsibility. Children who are allowed to feel their feelings, and helped by their parents to identify their feelings and learn from them, are learning the skills to deal with life in a responsible way. Feelings in children that are suppressed, express themselves in a wide variety of misbehavior." [read more]

Title: F is for Feelings
By: Goldie Millar and Lisa Berger
Ages: 3-8

"We all feel many different emotions every day. Young children need help finding the words to describe how they are feeling. Our friendly alphabet book gives children feelings words and explores the idea that while some feelings are more comfortable than others, all are natural and important.

F is for Feelings invites children to share, express, and embrace their emotions—every day!" -- Publishers

You could craft up your own parent-child emoticons / stickers and use them as a way to communicate how you feel that day.  To step it up, you could even start and end the day by comparing how you and your child felt through the day and compare what each of you did differently to make the day better.