Autism Awareness Month
– the benefits of sensation and emotion cards
Approximately one in 100 children in the UK have a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC). Autism Awareness Month has raised awareness for Autism and Asperger’s syndrome for 50 years and April is a time to celebrate neurodiversity.
In honour of Autism Awareness Month – now more commonly moving towards Autism Acceptance Month – and the importance for all children to develop a comprehensive social and emotional vocabulary, have the capacity to put words to feelings and experiences, and to express or make sense of the social and emotional world around them we introduce our Sensation & Emotion cards.
Children with ASC may experience a range of challenges regarding emotions – they may find it hard or impossible to accurately recognise and name their own emotions. They may find it confusing to imagine the emotions of others and they often find it hard to understand how words and actions can affect the emotions of another person.
Helping all children to notice, recognise and begin to express how they are feeling allows them to develop key emotional literacy skills such as self-awareness and self-regulation, which are vital for emotional and social development.
Acknowledging that all emotions are valid and needed for us to be emotionally healthy, is a core element of the Hamish & Milo Wellbeing Resources. We recognise that whilst some emotions can feel uncomfortable, they are all important and help us to recognise our experiences and communicate our needs.
Whilst emotional literacy may not be easy, it is important to support children with the acquisition of language, the concept of emotion and how it can affect us and to then begin to learn ways to regulate and make sense of feelings we may be feeling but not able to put words to.
Children with autism spectrum conditions can have difficulties in recognising and responding to emotional and mental states in themselves and in reading others’ facial expressions. Some autistic children can be highly intuitive and emotionally intelligent and some are non-verbal, so it is important that with visual cues, social stories, pictures and images we help them to form a language, a sense of meaning about emotional expression.
Helping children to recognise and notice sensations is the first stage in building emotional awareness and our unique Sensation & Emotion cards are invaluable in enabling children to begin to put language to their feelings.
Our Sensation & Emotion cards can help children begin to relate to, identify and connect with a range of emotions and to put meaning to their own feelings. It supports their understanding of the concept and experience of emotion in others and the world around them.
All children need multiple, repeated experiences of empathic adults noticing, labelling and validating their emotions in a safe, relational way and these experiences reinforce and acknowledge to the child that all feelings are acceptable and safe to have.
This empathic engagement with a child enables a ‘felt’ sense of being understood and activates changes in the child’s neurological system allowing them to calm and regulate, physiologically and psychologically.
Sensation & Emotion cards support emotional development by helping children to:
¹ Autism Plus
² LuxAI
