When my son was still non verbal, I was wondering often if he understands me. And I’m not talking about  understand words, sentences. If he knows that I love him, that I’m upset for some reason, scared or happy. I did’t know if he would be able to let me know what is he feeling or what are his worries?

And why the hell is he smiling while I raise my voice to him doing an angry face when he’s acting badly!?

How to be sure that everything what’s about emotions, sensations and feelings is not only an ocean of confusion and frustrating disorientation mixed all together?

I read a lot of articles about feelings and emotional difficulties in individuals on spectrum and I found out that there will be some kind of issues with identification and interpretation…but yes, people with autism don’t lack emotions and feelings at all.

It’s important to introduce them  soon enough and start ‘training’. I know, that sounds like ‘the new circus is in town’ but also recognition of facial expressions and reading the emotional state of a person is a goal that can be learned if not ‘learnable’ by default.

First step for us was going to Ikea. Yes. And the reason is really simply explainable. This genial chainstore furnished our bathroom in a cute, veeeery resistant designed-for-kids mirror named BARNSLIG that can be placed everywhere you want or easily transportable in your kid’s hands without any fear. It’s ‘plastic-fantastic’ and it works perfectly!

Face exercise of any kind. Anything that your mind ‘produces’. Just play with your mouth, lips, tongue, nose, teeth. Good to start is the moment during your kid’s teeth brushing or hands’ washing. Just make you visible in the mirror and start do strange faces as your kid is right beside you and is able to see your reflection in the mirror. Do not say anything, just do faces and make it fun for you. Will work!

Let your kid take the mirror whenever he wants. In his room, in the kitchen. In a few words make it available.

Second step was reading with additional explanation of facial expressions. You can use any picture book your kid likes. It doesn’t matter if it’s a ‘special book’ or not. Start with stuff that your kid likes and plays willingly with.

If he likes painting or drawing, use it to introduce a few facial expressions also here. My boy loves shapes so I take advantage of this nerdy interest and I use my drawing tablet to make his shapes smiling, tired and upset.

After that he started to notice babies crying on the street, toddlers screaming loudly during tantrums in the markets. Good. Progress. While he noticed, I was describing. ‘Oh, that baby is probably hungry that’s why she is crying so hard!’, ‘yes, that boy is laughing, his mom just tickled him, he is happy!’

Everything what came next was quite natural. He started to communicate to us about his two emotional sates at the beginning: ‘I’m tired’ and ‘I’m upset’.

He was no longer smiling while I was giving him a telling-off.

There is one book (and I won’t mention  “Inside Out – Book of Emotions”   ) that I can recommend you for the emotion-teaching training. Lovable and cute pop-up. We love pop-ups (!). “The Color Monster” by Anna Llenas is a real treat for your little one. Teaches how to distinguish five emotions – happiness, anger, sadness, fear, and calm and makes a correlation with the colors to describe how each emotion might feel. Truly recommendable. We had a lot of fun!

And remember –  individuals on spectrum they don’t lack emotions. They might live them differently. Maybe happiness is yellow and anger feels like red. Why not!?