Intuition and Early Warning Sign Activities

Intuition is the funny body feelings (early warning signs) that we all get at different times. Sometimes intuition is nothing more than our fears taking over our body and thoughts but often intuition is our body screaming at us to listen to what is really happening around us.

Intuition needs to be clearly taught to our children. Far too often, I have heard children and women say, after the fact, “If only I’d listened to my intuition.”

Here’s two simple art activities I use with children in therapy to help them understand what their early warning signs are. Recognizing and acting on early warning signs is a way to prevent our children from being sexually abused. These therapeutic activities can be easily blended into your every day play with your children. Protective Play is the most unobtrusive way to keep our kids safe.

Drawing/writing exercise using prompt pictures: Show your child a picture from a magazine, photo, or card. Ask them to draw/write the way their body would react to the situation in the picture. When, and if, children respond by saying they would punch/kiss the person, trust them because they look nice or run away, ask them to draw/write what would be happening inside their body where nobody else can see. This process is a bit like peeling an onion. There are layers to get through to help connect with body reactions, emotional layers that are deeper than the behaviours children show us.

Art collage of different faces: Cut faces out of magazines and glue to a sheet of paper. Ask the child to say how they think each person is feeling. Learning emotional language will help your child throughout life. When they can express emotions, children have a better chance of telling you if something happens to them. Because children don’t have an extended emotional vocabulary they act out their emotions as a way of telling us something is wrong. As parents, we often miss these messages, and ask the child to stop being naughty/silly/annoying. If your child cannot find words to express their emotions, they have body stances. Mix the pieces up and have the child match them together. While the child is matching, give hints about what a person’s legs might look like if they’ve got an angry face and have their arms crossed, or what a face might look like when the arms and legs are hanging limp.

Can you imagine yourself doing this with your kids? What other things do you do to teach intuition (early warning signs) to your kids?

My favorite book for teaching about Intuition is: Jelly Legs by Colin Varney.

Other activities to protectively play around intuition and early warning signs:

A Mime of Early Warning Information
Game to Develop Emotional Intelligence.
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