Supporting Emotional Understanding

---

Emotional understanding develops through relationships, co-regulation and safe, attuned experiences. Many young children, including autistic children, experience emotions primarily as bodily sensations long before they have language to describe them. For some neurodivergent children, interoception differences or alexithymia (difficulty identifying or interpreting internal states) mean that emotional awareness develops along a different pathway, and may require alternative, neuro-affirmative supports.

Adults play an important role in helping children make sense of their emotional experiences by offering language, visuals and compassionate co-regulation that honours each child’s way of processing information.

The Autism Good Practice Guide for Schools highlights several areas of focus in promoting emotional development, which can be reframed within a neuro-affirmative perspective as follows:

Communicating Emotions
Emotional awareness begins not with “teaching skills,” but by helping children connect physical sensations with emotional meaning. Many autistic children experience interoceptive signals differently, or may struggle to notice or interpret internal cues. Approaches such as Kelly Mahler’s Interoception Curriculum provide developmentally respectful ways to explore body signals without judgement or behavioural expectations.

Tools from Autism Level UP! (such as the Energy Meter and Emotional Curve) provide visual ways of mapping energy states and emotional experiences that do not rely on facial expressions or neurotypical emotion vocabulary.

Adults can support this process by:
• noticing and naming body cues (“your heart is going fast; that might feel like worry”)
• providing concrete, visual ways for children to express internal states
• respecting alternative communication, such as AAC, gestalts, sounds or movement

For children who use nonspeaking communication or who process language differently, visuals such as emotion-based communication boards, body maps or energy-based scales can support them to share
how they feel in a non-verbal and low-demand way.

Labelling Emotions
Labelling emotions can support some children in developing a shared language for feelings, but should never be forced or used as a measure of competence. Many Autistic children develop emotional language later or differently, and this is a valid neurodevelopmental pathway.

Neuro-affirmative practice recognises that emotional literacy does not require:
• reading facial expressions
• interpreting social cues
• adopting neurotypical communication
• displaying socially expected emotional responses
Instead, emotional literacy involves helping the child feel safe, connected and understood.

Supporting emotional awareness might include:
• simple, concrete language that links physical sensations to emotions
• visual tools (body outlines, energy scales, interoception prompts)
• puppets, photos or objects (used descriptively, not to “teach correctness”)
• space to express emotions through movement, play, AAC or sensory exploration

These approaches honour the fact that many Autistic children relate to emotion through internal sensation, not facial recognition.

The Purpose of Naming Emotions
While labelling emotions can be helpful for some children, it is important to acknowledge that:
• Autistic children may not immediately experience co-regulation through naming
• Some children prefer relational calm, sensory regulation or movement over conversation
• Emotional naming should be invitational, not corrective
• Alexithymia and interoception differences may mean naming emotions is complex
The goal is not to “tame” emotions or reduce expression but to support safety, understanding and self awareness at the child’s pace.

Labelling emotions can be helpful when it:
• validates the child’s lived experience
• signals attunement (“I see you, and you’re not alone”)
• scaffolds collaborative problem-solving when appropriate
• supports empathy in a natural, non-prescriptive way

Empathy develops through connection and shared experiences, not through teaching children to match facial expressions to emotional labels.
• Autistic emotional development is not delayed; it is different.
• Interoception and alexithymia significantly shape how emotions are felt, recognised and expressed.
• Visual and body-based frameworks such as Kelly Mahler’s Interoception work and Autism Level UP! tools provide more accurate, respectful alternatives to traditional “emotion teaching” methods.
• Emotional understanding grows through co-regulation, relational trust, low-demand conversations and sensory-safe environments.
• The aim is to help children feel understood, safe and empowered, not to train them to interpret neurotypical emotional cues.