Atlas of the Heart- A Journey into Social and Emotional Learning for You!
We have been on a roller coaster of emotions for the last few years (and longer) and are now beginning to publicly share how we are feeling thanks to social media. Schools and businesses are also providing Social and Emotional learning opportunities for their employees. Parents are sometimes harder to reach and they need this more than anyone. They need this so they can share it with their children and model it for the next generation.
I am thrilled that Brené Brown has released a new book Atlas of the Heart which provides the research and language we need to support us in taking the deep dive into sharing our emotional experiences. Research shows it builds connection and that connection heals our minds, bodies and souls!
My favorite quote of all time from Brené
"The power of language does not just communicate what we’re feeling but it shapes it.”
As someone who has been practicing Speech and Language Pathology for more than 30 years, I understand the power of language as well as what happens when we have challenges expressing ourselves. Children are the first ones to be judged for their inability to express themselves, intellectually, and socially and emotionally. It has been my most recent experience that children are becoming eligible for Special Education with needs in Pragmatic (Social) Language. In former years, this was not attended to as much, as the focus was on areas such as Semantics (Vocabulary and Word Usage), Syntax(Sentence Structure and Grammar) and Morphology (Word formation and meaning). Looking at how each child understood and used words structurally.
I am happy to see that we are evolving to look at how we use this language that we have to communicate. Not only in structure but in function. The structure being expressing a complete thought and the function being how it is received by the communication partner.
There are so many parts of life that we can’t control, the one thing we can control is how we use words to describe our experiences and share them with others.
My focus as a Coach draws from my many years listening to and analyzing the language that teachers and adults use and present and children are required to comprehend and how they respond to it.
The most meaningful work I have done is to integrate all of the parts of language into story as a structure to make sense out of life experiences. What does it all mean? How do we feel when we are learning? What makes our life feel purposeful? How are we integrating our experiences into our relationships?
As I undergo my journey of understanding how and why my personal experiences impact my interactions and my thinking, I see that the language of social and emotional interactions is essential to connecting to and building relationships with children and adults.
Children are emotional beings, they spend the first 7 years of life trying to get their needs met by using their “emotional outlets”, crying, laughing, smiling, grunting, gesturing and the way they develop their language is based on their basic needs! Labeling the important people that they need to take care of them, accessing food, objects and help with curiosity and learning about the world. We can help them stay connected by matching their emotional experiences with the appropriate language, but first we need to know what that is. We didn’t learn this in school! Our teachers are still learning this.
We can do this. We must do this so our children feel seen, heard and connected!