Focus On Emotion
Children's Photography Workshops
Most of us take pictures of people, places or things because it evokes an unspoken emotion or feeling. We may not recognize it at the time, but capturing that moment in a photograph allows us to re-visit that emotion time and time again.
With our Children's Photography Workshops we combine the fun of learning basic photography skills with a light-hearted awareness of emotions. Our parent/child photography workshops are focused more of the "heart" of photography rather than the "art" of photography.
Studies show children have an increased ability to develop reflective awareness from a photographic image. Children’s photographs have the capacity to uncover, provoke, and communicate likes and dislikes, and as a result, children construct their identity in relation to their parents and their peers.
Photo-Emotion Coaching uses a child’s own images as a tool to learn and affirm emotions.
As an alternative, we are now offering downloadable, and web-based, at-home photo-emotional learning activities for children on our Focus on Emotion/Learning Resources page.
Parent Emotion Coaching Workshops
Parenting is one of the hardest jobs we have. Our Emotion Coaching Workshops for Parents provide an overview of The Gottman Institute’s Emotion Coaching Principles, as an alternative method of positive parenting. Participants will learn how to: *Recognize, respond to and validate what your child is feeling.
*Use emotions as opportunities for connection and teaching.
*Building life-long coping skills.
*Express understanding and empathy.
*Improve family and peer relationships.
In addition to parents, we encourage grandparents, caregivers, and youth education professionals to attend. Parents are encouraged to bring their parenting challenges for our discussion/troubleshooting segment. Emotion Coaching Workshops for Parents, is presented by a professional trained in the skill of emotion coaching. It offers real-life solutions for parents seeking to improve their emotion coaching skills to help their child explore, understand and regulate emotions.
Emotion Coaching vs Professional Therapy
What is the difference?
An emotion coach does not provide the same benefits as that of a trained therapist or counselor. Although they both work toward making positive changes in behavior, emotion coaching does not identify, diagnose or treat emotional or mental health conditions.
Therapists are educated and skilled to work with a patient’s unconscious past to change problematic behaviors in the future. The photo-emotion coaching experience offered by The Focus On Love Foundation instead engages parent and child to interactively learn using photography to identify emotions to help bring awareness and positive change in behaviors.
Emotion coaching is not intended to replace the need for professional psychotherapy or counseling, however because emotion-coaching is therapeutic it may precipitate need for additional help from a professional therapist. Children and adults can benefit from both types of services for similar but different reasons.