Feely Faces! 

In both our individual and social skill group settings ‘reading’ people’s emotions is one of our main goals. 

Why?

Often due to their diagnoses, our students often have great difficulty in naturally recognizing facial expressions.  Together, whether in individual sessions or in small group settings, step by step we work on how to look for important information when looking at a person’s face (i.e. are they happy? are they sad or mad?) The next step is then to help our students figure out how to interpret the ‘facts’ they have gathered in different social settings.  For example, in her book Think Social, Michelle Garcia Winner, gives this example:

“A bride who is crying at her wedding is showing tears of happiness, even though we often teach students when people cry it means they are sad!” (pg. 122)

Example

For our little bitties, a great series of books that I often use are the Little Critter books by Mercer Mayer.  These books deal with everyday situations from the point of view of a child. The simple language, visual wit and humorous characters (even the pets!) show a full range of human emotions in an abundance of real life settings.  Everyone’s body language is also very expressive!

Recently, I used Little Critter’s This is my House, during an individual therapy setting.  The young boy I was working with is seven years old and together we not only enjoyed the story but also had great fun discovering what the different facial expressions meant.  The inside cover gave us a peek at some of the ‘mischief’ Little Critter was going to get in to.  In one picture, Little Critter is dressed up as an American Indian his mouth drawn down and eyes are rolling at his little sister!  Throughout the book, my consistent question to my friend was, “What do you think he is feeling now?”  Followed by that wonderful question, “Why?!”  Next, I might ask, “Have you ever felt that way?”  “Show and tell me!”

Pronouns and more

I also love the Mercer Mayer books to help children be successful when using pronouns and answering “wh” questions.  The idea of switching or turning around the pronoun often eludes the children we treat.  For example, I read the first page to my friend, “This is my house.  I live here.”  My question to him was, “Who lives here (pointing to the tree house)”.  He stated, “I do.”  To which I answered, “You live in this tree house?”  He laughed when he finally understood that ‘I’ had referred to Little Critter and stated, “That didn’t make sense!”

Little Critter has starred in more than two hundred books.   I think my daughter Gracie and I have enjoyed them all!

Gail Lindley, MS CCC/SLP

Speech Language Pathologist/Director