Recognizing the Light
When you turn on a light everything is illuminated, you can see clearly. As an educator I have always hungered to turn a learner’s light on with ideas, knowledge, and AHA’s. Watching the light turn on in a learner’s eyes is what nourishes my creative drive for education. Recently I had my own light bulb moment at Acton when I realized the need for sharing a colored light metaphor to connect emotional identification and promote emotional regulation.
For the last few months at Acton we’ve been running a traffic light experiment. The experiment and the traffic light metaphor are both simple. My top experiment questions were:
Will this metaphoric language be applicable in both age studios as a tool to communicate and will this language last and become adopted by learners?
After 2 months of colored lights my results are YES and therefore I’d like to share this helpful tool with you to support your child and even yourself.
First, let’s connect the colors. RED—You are furiously angry, have tears in your eyes, your face is red, your body is tense and on edge, and at this moment everything is at a stop. Your voice might stop, crack, or raise volume. YELLOW—You are either frustrated, confused, or uncomfortable. Your shoulders raise closer to your ears or your arms cross your body to find comfort or protection. You can breathe and you are cautiously exploring what will happen next. GREEN—You feel fabulous, comfortable, and easy going. Your body flows and your face smiles with ease.
So, now that you know the colors, how have we used them at Acton? The first step is noticing and verbalizing your observations. “I’m noticing your face is red and you’ve been yelling. You seem like you are a red light.” The next step is asking “Do you feel like a red light? Are you mad or upset?” Then you ask for change “Do you need space or a moment to breathe and change your light from red to yellow?” Lastly, it’s always great to share warmth, “I’d love to know what’s going on once you breathe and are at a yellow light.”
This process gives a child an easy color to identify when words are hard to form plus the color identification narrows down the emotions that a child could be feeling. Often a child focuses on the details of events rather than the feelings that manifested. Naming feelings is the first step to understanding and making a change. During this experiment our Guide team LOVED hearing leader learners share this exchange with a red lighter “I’m noticing you are a red light right now, you are really loud. Can you take some deep breaths to change your light to yellow?” What’s amazing is when lights are used learners quickly listen and welcome the light direction! After many weeks of traffic light metaphors, light language is here to stay at Acton.
Every one of us has experienced a red, yellow, or green light moment, these moments are what makes us human. For Guides and parents you can use lights to share your feelings too and you can use lights to help siblings and friends know when to give space and gauge when and how to help. Light language quickly lets everyone know how to move forward and light language normalizes the beautiful array of emotions that we all have.
Although some emotions can feel dark, or at least our societal programming has prompted us to believe that feelings of sad or mad are dark emotions to avoid, I invite you to express these emotions in front of your child. No need to apologize for getting frustrated. The only apology needed are for actions not emotions, emotions are free agents flowing with color. So, if you find yourself at a full stop, recognize your light and say “I am at a red light right now, I need a moment to change my light.” It is my belief that children do not need to see perfect happy parents all the time, instead children need to see healthy emotional regulation modeled by the people they love. From now on, practice sharing the color of your light and help your child practice identifying theirs so that together you can share your beautiful lights and grow together. The lights are on!