Today I am joined by Meg Price, who is the mother of Sara Price an 11 year old who created Positive Penguins, an iPhone and iPad app to help children understand their feelings – an important first step towards emotional intelligence. Let’s hear the wonderful story about Positive Penguin:
Have you ever noticed that the most opportune time to teach children about social emotional learning is often when emotions are running high? I am sure I’m not alone, in my home there are times I feel that my role is to manage everyone else’s emotions. Have you had one of those days when one child is in a rage because math homework is stupid, another child is categorically stating that he will never ever return to that school to be picked on again and then the one child who is usually happy is sitting in the corner bitterly disappointed because he didn’t make the football team….
This scenario would appear a perfect moment to start up a family conversation about feelings and how we behave when we feel bad. However, when emotions are running hot like this, trying to do so would likely result in all three children exploding and walking off before you have sat down. So instead if you’re anything like me, before you know it you’ve caught this terrible negativity virus and have joined the kids commencing to rant and rave about all the things that are annoying you at this moment in time. How can we teach the important lessons about emotional and social wellbeing when we often end up acting as badly as our children?
My 11-year-old daughter taught me the key to learning about emotions is to take the “emotion” out of emotional learning. She created an app called Positive Penguins based on positive psychology and brought to life four positive penguins to help children pinpoint their automatic and all too often-negative thoughts and help them challenge these thoughts to change their behavior.
Positive Penguins app aims to help children understand their feelings arise from these thoughts challenge these thoughts to change the way they feel.
- The app will ask you what happened? – what was the situation – usually pretty clear – I cannot do my homework, the mean kid bullied me today
- The app will then ask you why is that situation making you feel this way? This is the heart of the app and the toughest part for kids and adults, but the key to resilience. I cannot do my homework is not making me angry – I am angry as I don’t like to be wrong. The mean kid bullied me today isn’t making me feel bad – I feel bad because I don’t think others should treat me that way – nice belief but “broken”. The key is to restore a belief that can help kids change how they feel about the situation – other kids will be mean but you can choose to be the victim or to do something proactive about the situation.
- The app then takes you on a journey to meet 4 positive penguins who challenge the old belief and help establish a new belief.
- Once kids start understanding no situation or person makes them feel a certain way – only their own beliefs do, they can then challenge the beliefs and see what they can do about making the situation better.
- In time they will do this naturally and without the need for the app.
- Kids do need type in their answers to the questions. For younger kids, parents may help them put in the answers.
Kids need know having negative feelings is normal. They also need know they choose their feelings based on their belief. When challenging negative belief becomes a second nature, kids are to be successful at creating optimistic futures for themselves. “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” (Eleanor Roosevelt).
Positive Penguin has two versions, one for iPhone/iPod, one for iPAD. It is $3.99 on App Store.
iGameMom has two copies of Positive Penguins to giveaway, one for iPhone, one for iPAD, thanks Meg and Sara.
To win the app, please leave a comment at this post, telling us what is the most common trigger for your child to get into a negative emotion. All entries entered by midnight Feb.15 are eligible to win.
The winner will be randomly picked and announced here at this post on Feb.16.
The Winner is Amy Marin Carlson and AmandaMac. Congratulations!
If you would like to check it out or purchase it, please use the App Store link provided below. The cost is the same to you, but iGameMom gets a small percentage. Thanks for your support! Note: The link works for all countries.