Feelings Candy Land is one of my top, go-to games to help kids with any presenting problem. It is so versatile, engaging, and provides foundational skill-building for future work. The board's artwork is engaging, and the kids immediately light up when we pull the game out. While I primarily use this game with elementary-aged children, the same concepts can be incorporated into other games, such as UNO, for older children.
This game helps children with assertive communication, social skills, modeling, and it helps to build an emotional vocabulary. It provides a safe, non-confrontational way for children to process experiences and make sense of difficult situations. I love that the game is versatile, and can be used with a wide range of ages. It can also be used in individual, group, or family sessions. I also print a copy of the instructions, give it to each of the families I work with, and encourage them to play it at home.
Assertive Communication
Assertive communication is a foundational skill for developing healthy relationships. People will generally lash out and blame others when emotions are high, which can lead to the revenge cycle or unhealthy patterns in relationships. Assertive communication is a skill that is learned to gently and honestly communicate emotions without blaming or shaming others.
The hallmark of assertive communication is using “I statements.” These statements always begin with the word “I,” such as “I feel angry when people take my toys,” or “I feel scared when someone yells at me.” These statements put the ownership on the person feeling the emotion rather than blaming others for making them feel that way.
When playing Feelings Candy Land, you will give an I statement each turn. This normalizes using assertive communication. Children will become familiar and practice the skill within the game so that it feels more natural to use the skill in every day situations. The beauty of it is that they often don’t recognize that this is happening! They are so engaged in the game that they roll with it.
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Building an Emotional Vocabulary
When children lack a meaningful way to communicate how they feel, they will often meltdown or throw a tantrum. They experience a great deal of frustration knowing how upset they are but lack the ability to communicate with others. Feelings Candy Land offers a playful way for children to become familiar with different words to communicate how they feel. The repetition in the game allows them to become familiar with using various feelings words in a meaningful way, preparing them for real life situations.
Emotions can be ambiguous at times. You may be feeling something that is complex, unable to identify which emotion you are feeling. I often find that a child will begin talking about a time they were angry, then also recognize there were other emotions involved, such as fear, rejection, or sadness. This also highlights the importance of children learning that anger is often a secondary emotion, meaning they feel and express anger, but there is a hidden feeling underneath, driving the outburst.
Processing Emotions Verbally
Being able to identify the feelings associated with an experience is the first step in processing emotions. Children will learn to not only identify the emotion but tell the story about an experience and consider the impact it made. Feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are all interconnected. A situation will happen that will trigger a thought, which leads to an emotional response. The child will then respond with a behavior to react to the situation. This is the ABCs of cognitive behavioral therapy. As children tell the story about what they experienced, counselors can help the children understand what their thoughts were related to the event, the emotional response, as well as what the outcome was. This allows opportunities to challenge irrational thoughts, scale emotions to determine if they were appropriate for the situation, and to think of alternative behaviors.
I like to help kids understand their emotional capacity by comparing it to a balloon. You can only fill it so much before an emotional explosion occurs. This is especially helpful for children who tend to bottle up their emotions and later explode. These children will often have somatic symptoms as a result of holding their emotions in rather than expressing them. Feelings Candy Land helps release pent up, unexpressed emotions. By the time you get to the end of the game, you are often digging deep to think of another time you felt various emotions!
Modeling
There are many ways to teach children new skills and to give vital information, but the most powerful and impactful is modeling. We know that children usually will not do what we say, they do what we do. This is because they are little mirrors, mimicking what they see. This is a double-edged sword – kids can learn positive and negative things from others in their lives.
As far as Candy Land goes, adults can model appropriate ways to engage, communicate, handle frustration, and to use coping mechanisms. Children often struggle to make an I statement on their first turn, but quickly mirror my example after I take a turn. Likewise, when I draw the gingerbread man card and have to go back toward the beginning of the game, the child is looking to see my reaction to disappointment. Adults also model showing empathy, patience, taking turns, and following directions.
Related Post: Therapy Games to Process Emotions
Social Skills
There are many social skills that children learn as they play games. All games require some sort of rules and structure to make the game work. Kids must learn to take turns, show patience, and engage with others. They must learn to calm down when they get overly excited or when they are frustrated.
Learning to lose with grace is a hard thing for many children to learn and put in practice. Many children are so focused on winning that they will create their own rules or cheat to avoid the disappointment of a loss. Cognitive behavioral therapy can be helpful for kids who struggle with intrusive thoughts about losing. Many will believe that if they lose a game that makes them a loser. When they learn to confront these intrusive thoughts, the negative impact is minimized. Don’t miss my post “Why Play Games in Therapy?” It goes into more detail about the benefits of games and their multiple uses in play therapy.
Assessment and Treatment Planning
An avalanche of information may come out during one game of Feelings Candy Land. Therapists glean information from what is said as well as what is unsaid during the game. The game will help you assess the child's willingness to disclose information, engage socially, follow rules, and you can determine the level of the child's frustration tolerance. I look for eye contact, the ability to show emapthy, listening skills, impulsivity, and whether they pick up on social cues.
Additionally, vital information may be dropped during the game that needs to be revisited in future sessions. Children will often say something that is troubling them or will confess to something significant, but will want to continue on with the game. I will use this information for selecting games or activities to address in the next session. This game could also be useful in assessing family interactions and responsiveness to one another in family sessions.
Here is a tutorial I created to explain how I use this tool in session:
I created this simple PDF download as a simple guide to demonstrate how to use Candy Land in therapy sessions. Here's the link to the free download:
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