The Happy Sad Emotional Development Awareness Program

The psychology of children is a field that has come a long way since the days of Sigmund Freud, who created an entire theory and set of practices around childhood, but who only worked with one child in his career. Most of his data came from analyzing adults’ memories of their childhood. A century later, we have dipped further in the other direction, focusing almost exclusively on how children are feeling right now, and less on children and the young adults they will become as they grow up.

To strike a balance between these two things is not easy, because we ideally do both. We ideally take care of children for who they are now, and prepare them for who they are becoming, eventually launching them into an ever-changing world as adults.

At The HappySad Company, we take this balance into account. We believe the research on childhood development reveals a clear progression for emotional development in general, one that makes more than enough room for the unique expression of individuals. And it all starts with simple awareness.

Awareness of feelings is not always easy for adults, let alone for children. But it makes sense that emotional regulation is preceded by emotional awareness, just as emotional intelligence proceeds from emotional regulation. And this has implications for cognitive development as well. The two are intertwined. For example, a young child must be able to cognitively perceive their impulses to know what they want (emotionally). Likewise, they must be able to emotionally feel those impulses to communicate them to others (cognitively).

This relationship between thoughts, feelings, and communication is the bedrock of children growing and becoming adults. 

As such, our proprietary survey program, the Emotional Development Awareness Program or ‘EDAP’ that we have developed at The HappySad Company has been designed to meet growing children where they are, while also providing room to grow in their capacities for communication.

From Kindergarten to 3rd grade, our question program uses words that are closer to the native “impulsive” stage of development. These same questions are then altered to be more literal, with references to categories and the physical world for grades 4 – 7 (matching their emergence and development through the “concrete” stage of development). Finally, those same questions become more abstract and nuanced for grades 8 – 12, to match their growth into the “socialized” stage of development.

This progressive design for our survey questions is therefore better able to mirror and support the development of children through the three most important stages of their lives – the natural growth to becoming a healthy and contributing member of a family and society. 

Our survey program is designed to access the deep structures that change slowly over time, as well as addressing the surface, emotional uniqueness that differs across all children. Children present us with a rich tapestry of their experiences. It is up to adults to help them interpret those experiences, both for the child’s sake and in our efforts to support them as they grow. It behooves us to present them with surveys that address where they are, developmentally.

At the HappySad Company, we are focused on the different ways that kids make sense of their experiences from 3-18+.  We aim to achieve greater validity with our surveys by considering the whole child, as an evolving self, with unique experiences, across 3 major stages of development that they occupy in their educational and emotional growth journey.

We invite you to join us in this growth-mindset way of creating a better experience for children on their journey to social emotional awareness & insights by utilizing the Happy Sad app. Our current app focuses on K-8th grade with future development currently happening for 8-12th and beyond.

If you’d like to know more about our program and release dates based on age ranges or school grades, please reach out to us at: help@thehappysadcompany.com 

Written By Happy Sad Chief Developmental Psychologist, David Zeitler. 

• David Zeitler spends his days humming and hawing about cool new research and ways to help people of all ages break through mental health & developmental barriers. He also helps the Happy Sad team build impactful, research-based products to support your kiddo’s wellbeing based on 20+ years of experience and real life experiences. Cool aye?