Our Brain box

One of the most important things we can do is teach children about their brains. Helping children understand what their brains do and what exactly happens when we feel those big emotions is of the utmost importance to help children become emotionally intelligent and aware.

Our brain box was an idea I came across by Dr Hazel Harrison. Throughout the years I have used and adapted to suit the needs of children all ages and abilities.

Using Dan Siegal’s approach our brains being like a house we start by explaining how there is an ‘upstairs’ and a’downstairs’ section of our brain. Using characters we are explaining to children the functions of their prefrontal cortex (our thinking brain) and our limbic system (our feeling brain).

The upstairs characters help us problem solve, think, plan, resolve, emotionally regulate and be able to make decisions. I focused on a calm character, flexible character, problem solver and creative character.

Our downstairs characters are the feelers. They are so important and keep us safe. These characters are constantly on the look out for danger and they help send out an alert when we need to fight, flight or freeze. Here we have the Big Boss, Alarm and Frightened character.

I have watched children create super heroes, shapes, animals and characters that represent each of these perfectly for them. From calm characters that look like Nintendo switches to Frightened characters that look like Jelly. By providing these characters it helps give children language to wrap around some of these big emotions. The next stage is talking about what happens when these characters aren’t where they are supposed to be, but I will leave that for another day. Who’s in your brain box? Why not have a go at creating your own characters!