Remember-When Feelings Tin

Family members pull a feeling out of a tin and each tells a true “I remember when I felt…” story — child and grown-ups alike.

  1. Together, draw six to eight feeling faces on slips of paper (happy, sad, angry, scared, surprised, disgusted, plus one or two extras such as proud or worried). Fold them into a tin or jar.
  2. The child pulls one slip and names the feeling.
  3. You go first with a short, true, child-sized story: “I remember when I felt scared. I was six and I got lost in a shop. My tummy felt wobbly. Then a lady helped me find Grandma.”
  4. Now it is the child’s turn: “Can you remember a time you felt scared?” Help with open questions — “Where were you? What happened first? How did it feel? What happened in the end?”
  5. If they cannot think of one, offer a shared memory: “I remember you looked scared at the fireworks. What was that like?” Pull one or two more slips, then stop while it is still fun.

Variation: scroll through family photos on a phone instead of using the tin — stop at a picture and ask, “How were you feeling right then? What was going on?”

Requirements

  • Space: Anywhere cosy — dinner table, sofa, bedtime
  • Surface: Not relevant
  • Materials: A tin, jar or box; slips of paper and a pen
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child minimum; lovely with the whole family
  • Supervision: Light — adult shares stories and asks open questions

Rationale & Objective

Talking over past emotional events is one of the most powerful everyday routes to emotion understanding. In a training study, Van Bergen, Salmon, Dadds & Allen (2009) taught mothers to reminisce with their preschoolers in an elaborative, emotion-rich way — open questions, feeling words, and talk about causes — and their children showed better emotion knowledge six months later than a comparison group. Fivush, Haden & Reese (2006) review a large body of work linking elaborative reminiscing to children’s understanding of self and emotion. A past feeling is easier to examine than a live one: the child is calm, so the “upstairs brain” is available, which is the logic behind Siegel & Bryson’s advice to help children retell experiences and “name it to tame it.” Hearing adults tell their own feeling stories shows that everyone has every feeling, and practises the subdomain skills of naming one’s own emotions and their causes.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: names the feeling on the slip but cannot recall a matching time; retells your story as their own or says “I don’t know”
  • Developing: recalls a recent event for happy, sad or angry with your prompts; tells what happened but leaves out the feeling or the reason
  • Proficient: tells own memory for most basic feelings including what caused it (“I was sad because my balloon flew away”); adds how it ended
  • Advanced: recalls older memories and trickier feelings; mentions body signs or that the feeling changed; asks you follow-up questions about your story

Safety Notes

  • Keep your own stories small and resolved — a child should not be handed adult worries (money, illness, conflict between parents)
  • Let the child pass on any slip; never press for a sad or scary memory, and do not use the game to reopen a recent telling-off
  • If a memory brings real tears, stop the game, comfort first and talk later — connection comes before conversation
  • After a bereavement, accident, hospital stay or other frightening event, let the child lead; if they repeatedly bring up distressing memories, have nightmares or avoid reminders, seek advice from your pediatrician or a child psychologist
  • Do not correct the child’s memory of how they felt — it is their feeling to report

Hints

  • Playfulness: decorate the tin together and give it a grand name. Shake it like a lottery drum. Include one “silly” slip — “a time you laughed so hard you fell over”
  • Sustain interest: add a new feeling slip now and then; invite grandparents to play on a video call — children love hearing what scared or embarrassed Grandpa when he was five
  • Common mistake: firing closed questions (“Were you sad? Was it at the park?”). Ask open ones — “What happened? And then? How did that feel?” — and wait through the pauses
  • Limited space: needs no materials at all in the car — just say “Tell me a time you felt surprised” and take turns
  • Cross-domain: telling a memory in order with a beginning, middle and end is narrative practice (language); past-tense verbs get a workout; writing the feeling words on the slips touches early literacy
  • Progression: shared memories you prompt → child’s own recent memories → older memories → tricky feelings (proud, jealous, disappointed) → child asks the questions and you answer → comparing two different times they felt the same feeling

Sources

  • Van Bergen, P., Salmon, K., Dadds, M.R. & Allen, J. (2009), “The effects of mother training in emotion-rich, elaborative reminiscing on children’s shared recall and emotion knowledge,” Journal of Cognition and Development
  • Fivush, R., Haden, C.A. & Reese, E. (2006), “Elaborating on elaborations: Role of maternal reminiscing style in cognitive and socioemotional development,” Child Development
  • Siegel, D.J. & Bryson, T.P. (2011), The Whole-Brain Child — “Name it to tame it” (retelling experiences)
  • Dunn, J., Brown, J. & Beardsall, L. (1991), “Family talk about feeling states and children’s later understanding of others’ emotions,” Developmental Psychology
  • Kusche Affective Interview — Revised (Kusché, Beilke & Greenberg) — “tell me about a time you felt…” items
  • CASEL — Self-Awareness competency