Lets Write About Our Feelings – 12 Story Prompts
The story prompts below can be a powerful way to understand and accept the range of emotions we experience in our lives. Pick a couple of prompts, or let your child pick a prompt they like. These stories can be written down when age appropriate. But they can also be drawn, told, or acted out with toys. Use your preference.
While we explore these exercises with our kids, we can reflect on what emotions the prompts and stories bring up in our kids and ourselves. Telling stories about different emotions can help us and our children hold a place for our feelings while ensuring one emotion doesn’t become extreme and crowd out the others.
Show self-compassion and express gratitude toward our kids for each emotion that comes up and tell them that these feelings each serve a purpose in our lives. It may be necessary to remind our kids that we are playing make-believe, but we shouldn’t shy away from the uncomfortable feelings these stories present.
Happy Stories
– If you were your pet and could go anywhere in the world, where would you go, and what would you do?
– Describe the best possible meal ever. What would the appetizer be? What would the main course be? Dessert? What would you smell or taste?
– Describe your best friend. What do you like about them? Write them a thank-you note.
– Who was your favorite teacher? Pretend they are on vacation – what are they doing? Remember to think about what they did that made them special? How did they make you feel special?
Sad and Lonely Stories
– Think about someone you have not seen in a long time or someone who is no longer in your life. What do you imagine they are doing now? Think about what you miss about them and what you remember most about them.
– Think about your favorite toy. What would happen if you lost that toy? How would you react?
– How would it feel if everyone forgot about your favorite holiday, so it didn’t happen?
– Pretend that you had to move across the country and leave all of your friends behind. Write a story about your going-away party, where it would be the last time you would see them.
– What is the saddest thing that could happen to you? How would you feel, and what would you do?
Angry Stories
– Who has made you mad lately? Write about how you would like to tell them? Where are you? What are you doing? What would you say?
– Is there a villain in a favorite TV show you enjoy? Write an episode where that character acts mean towards someone.
– Pretend someone was mean to one of your family members. What did they do that was mean? How would you act out your anger?
There are so many feelings that we can encourage our kids to think about creatively. Now that you’ve gotten the hang of helping your child use these prompts, write three more prompts for each of the following feelings or have your kid think of prompts themselves:
Worry
Fear
Embarrassed
Jealous
Confused
Writing about feelings in a way that is not journaling can be magnificently powerful. Sometimes feelings are too scary or hard to deal with. If we remove them from ourselves and allow them to exist in a story outside of ourselves, we can feel comfortable enough to really think about them and what they are. This exercise is such a great way to support creativity, build emotional literacy, and maybe even process a few difficult things in the meantime.