Understanding Emotions

Some people with special needs, including people with autism , have problems processing emotional information and may not recognise emotional expressions. They miss the facial expressions that other people rely on to gauge how a person is feeling.
They go through the same stages and challenges as typical people, but it usually takes them longer to get through them.
They may need more help to learn how to deal with the stresses and upsets of everyday life.

They will need to be taught how to recognise specific emotions and this can be challenging.

One tool used for teaching emotions is Social Stories, another is to use a mirror, you can have a person attempt to copy your facial expressions in the mirror.

Thomas the Tank Engiine is another wonderful way of teaching emotions to young children particuarly if Thomas is their special interest . The faces of the characters, are completely static and non-animated. There are no slow progressions from one emotion to another with the characters. They are either happy, angry, tired, scared, or surprised. Also, the emotional state of the character in question is usually reinforced by explicit statements from the narrator, i.e.”Gordon was angry” "Thomas was surprised" etc.

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