By Mikayla van Loon
When Tabitha Lakeland’s son came home from school worried about his friend who hadn’t spoken all day she knew the power of sharing emotions whether aloud or written was crucial for young people.
“The reason his best friend didn’t speak all day was because he didn’t know how to articulate these feelings. He didn’t know what was wrong,” she said.
Having an ‘aha’ moment during the night, the Kilsyth mum set on the path of making her Emotionology cards, a tool that young people could use to share their emotions with others.
“If we could make a set of cards that resonated with kids so they could quietly pop one on the corner of their desk or they could go and get one to put on their teacher’s desk or they could pass the teacher a deck of cards and say, ‘Could you please sit with me and go through these so I can work out how I’m feeling’,” Ms Lakeland said.
The process began in 2019 with Ms Lakeland’s son Ash drawing the figures for each emotion and talking through the emotions most felt by his classmates.
“As an adult, we think there’s certain emotions that we just don’t need to verbalise because it seems so obvious to us but for them [it’s not as easy].
“So the kids definitely had a big role in saying ‘you need this one Mum’, and after our first batch, we’ve got a 2.0 version now, we added five new cards that we hadn’t previously had, so they were homesick, grumpy, disappointed, sorry and embarrassed.”
With the return to school after the lockdowns and all the other events happening in the world, Ms Lakeland said the most used cards at the moment have been homesick and stressed.
While more emotions come up often, Ms Lakeland said she is happy with the deck of emotions currently available to teachers, psychologists and counsellors.
“We’ve sold to teachers all over the world and they come back to us and say the benefit of having them in the classroom is huge and all the cards get a show at some time.”
Now that it has expanded all around the world, to places like Switzerland, Guatemala and Asia, Ms Lakeland has applied for the DECJUBA Foundation’s Find Your Amazing $20,000 grant in partnership with Lady Startup Academy to hopefully print the Emotionology cards in different languages.
“We’d also love to either link arms with a charity or start a charity, but at the moment we can’t afford to because every cent that we get goes to making more cards, where we are feeding children breakfast and lunches at school.”
Down to the top five finalists, Ms Lakeland said the recognition of just making it that far has given her the confidence to continue because of Emotionology’s value.
“Obviously the financial support would be phenomenal because it means we can really level up and take the business to new heights but more so it really cements and solidifies that what we’re doing is important and it is valued and people can see the value in what we’re doing.”
Voting for finalists is open until Tuesday 12 April at 11.59pm. To vote visit www.findyouramazing.com.au
