How can children with a speech disorder express their feelings?
How does a child feel when they have had a bad day at school? To find out, a simple question comes to mind: «Would you like to talk about it?» But are all children able to answer such a question? What if a child has a speech disorder, for example? Such disorders can affect a child's ability to use language to express and cope with feelings in the way that adults usually do.
Talking to yourself is an effective way of regulating your emotions. It can help you to distance yourself from negative events. For example, if you fail a test, you might say to yourself: «This result doesn't matter in the long term.» This allows you to put an event into perspective, which helps you to feel better.
This effect has been proven in several studies. For example, in an American study from 2020, participants were shown disturbing images. The participants who engaged in distancing self-talk were less distressed afterwards than those who did not engage in self-talk. They felt better when they spoke less often in the first person (I, we) and used fewer verbs in the present tense. The more they distanced themselves using these language techniques, the better they felt.
However, we now know that children are nowhere near as successful as adults when it comes to using such language strategies to regulate their emotions. One effective technique for emotion regulation is «temporal distancing». This means that current negative events are viewed from the perspective of the future self.
Strategies for regulating emotions
My colleagues and I wanted to find out more about children's ability to use this technique. To do this, we asked a group of ten- to twelve-year-old children and a group of young adults to imagine a negative scenario such as «you fail an important exam». They were then asked to rate their feelings - once at the moment this scenario happened and once after they had imagined themselves many years later.
Compared to adults, children showed a smaller difference in stress levels between the present and the later moment. From this we conclude that children are less able to regulate their emotions via temporal distancing than adults. This could be due to the fact that adults are better at distancing themselves through self-talk.
Children learn strategies for verbal emotion regulation such as temporal distancing from carers through verbal communication. However, it is particularly challenging for children with communication difficulties to learn how to use verbal regulation strategies. In England, an average of two children in every class suffer from an often undiagnosed speech and language development disorder (SES).
SES is characterised by difficulties in expressing oneself verbally or understanding spoken language. This does not include biomedical diagnoses such as deafness or autism. Children with SES are twice as likely to experience mental health problems such as anxiety disorders and depression than children with typical language development. This could be partly because they find it difficult to use verbal strategies to regulate their emotions.
Verbal strategies for emotion regulation can also be learnt from role models such as parents and teachers.
In our previously mentioned study, the children were asked to reflect on and express their emotional states and imagine the future. A quarter of the children with a language disorder were unable to complete this temporal distancing task because they had difficulty understanding the instructions. These children may find it similarly challenging to talk about emotions in real life. This makes it difficult for them to benefit from traditional services such as talking to educators or school social workers to support their mental health.
In order to help children with language disorders maintain their mental health, teachers and carers could specifically teach them the language that supports emotion regulation. This includes both a vocabulary of emotions and a syntax, i.e. a sentence structure that links events with feelings. For example: «I'm sad because I was reprimanded at school.»
Vocabulary is crucial
Verbal strategies for emotion regulation such as distancing self-talk can also be learnt from role models such as parents and teachers. In our study, children with SES who were able to follow the instructions of the task were successful in their emotion regulation. This indicates that children with SES can manage their emotions effectively once they have the necessary vocabulary and appropriate syntax.
Teaching a targeted vocabulary of emotions and verbal regulation strategies can help children express and manage their emotions, whether they have a diagnosed language disorder or not. Equipped with these skills, a child who has had a bad day at school can talk about it, distance themselves from it and ultimately feel better.
This text first appeared in English on the BOLD platform.
