Emotional Backpacks
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30
Gather your family and ask each child to find a backpack or bag. Then, list a few emotions. Next, ask each child to find an item to represent each of a few different feelings: one for anger, one for sadness, one for frustration, one for hurt, one for peaceful, one for happy. Encourage your children to find items of different kinds: some lighter and small, some heavier and big. Have your children spread these items out throughout your home in different areas.
When this is done, you’re ready to get moving! Everyone put on their backpack, then start to walk through the house. You can tell your children that you are taking a journey that goes through a regular day in your house, thinking about the experiences you might have each day. This is how you play: Every time you find an item you had picked, name the emotion it represents and something that might make you feel that way and then put it in your backpack. Keep going until you are finished journeying.
Feel free to stop for a rest halfway through and comment on how your backpack is starting to get full and a bit heavy. Engage your children: “What about your backpack? Is it full yet? Is it getting heavy?” If a child is struggling under the weight, have him tell you which emotion it is that is heavy. Offer to take that item for your child and see if that feels better for him.
Keep going until you are done and anytime things get heavy, see if you can share the load of all the items. When you are done, take a look at how much you’ve each carried and wonder if that’s how it is most days. Ask some questions and have conversation:
- When your bag got heavy, how was it when someone offered to carry something for you?
- Do you experience most of these feelings each day?
- Which of these items/emotions is most familiar to you?
Whew. Just doing this adventure got me a little tired. When I get tired, I need a little rest. Jesus knows we need rest because life can get tiring and carrying those heavy things is not easy. He tells us this in Matthew 11:28-30, let’s read that now. Jesus wants us to share our emotions and experiences with Him so that we don’t have to carry all of these ourselves. He loves to help us so we don’t have to feel alone when we have all those different feelings.
End with prayer, thanking God that He helps us both to know what we are feeling and also to carry them with us.
We encourage you to keep using this kind of language for emotional check-ins with your children through each day to help keep those backpacks light!