One day, I was out with my family at a Cafe at an Autism focused school. As it was early afternoon, the school day was nearing its end. I watched the students get picked up by their respective personal drivers, parents, and school buses. The school pick-up zone had become packed and noisy; children and their parents were everywhere. As the crowd was dying down, I noticed that a child was crying; a group of four adults encircled him, each trying their best to console the child. They kept attempting to ask him what he was wailing about, but he never answered and all he did was continue. I watched as the adults around him grew progressively panicked, as he was too deep in his emotional outburst to respond to them. In the end, they did nothing but watch him cry and wait for his negative emotions to subdue.
I've seen this kind of scene play out more times than I would like to admit is true. Growing up, I was surrounded by many children who were far younger than me, whether this was with extended family, school activities, or services. It forced me to quickly learn how to help a child manage their negative emotions. I noticed that some adults ignore trying to understand the child and would automatically jump to trying to soothe them wherever possible, usually with an Ipad or some other mode of distraction. Because of this, both the child and the adult fail to learn how to manage emotional outbursts, which is very important for a child's psychological development and future.
After witnessing this, I thought to myself, what if there was a far more undemanding way of him voicing what he needed emotionally without words? It was clear that despite the adult's best efforts to understand him, they struggled to recognize what he needed, wanted, and felt at that current moment. What if he just wanted some space? Perhaps the setting of so many grown-ups looming above him was frightening. If the adults could understand him, would they have been able to help him then?
Was there even any straightforward tool to help children convey their emotional needs? I wanted to create a simple way of letting children and adults communicate their psychological requirements. It would be valid to say that comforting a child could be far more straightforward if children and adults could acknowledge each other's feelings.
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