Crafting our Emotional Vocabulary for children in developmentally appropriate ways.

 Experts say children around age five and six "show jealousy toward siblings" and "understand their own feelings"  They say they can even"show empathy and offer to help when they see another in distress." If this is true, I can see a need for beginning readers that help children build emotional literacy.  If we know children have these feelings and show them, I wonder if society gives children the words to actually express these feelings.  The more I research, the more I ask others about their thoughts about how children build emotional vocabulary and use it, I realize that there is little evidence that they are getting good examples in their reading material that model healthy emotional expression, resilience, and coping skills.  I am hoping that we spend less time looking at emotion words as great adjectives to add after you have written a story, and more time building scenarios where we really look at actual scenarios where a feeling fits a situation.  What do you think?