Frequently Asked Questions

It is a social-emotional learning (SEL) program that teaches children about their feelings, develops social and emotional skills, promotes emotional awareness and intelligence, and improves the mental health of 4-7 year old children, from kindergarten to 4th grade.

The innovation in the program is having videos for today's digital native children. We also have songs, debating suggestions for adults to start a conversation with children, and printable arts and crafts activities.

All the characters in the videos are puppets and the main character is Surfeel.

Each session takes between 10 minutes and 1 hour to complete. All the content is online. Families and schools can use The Feelings Detective autonomosly, flexibily, and and their own pace.

Yes. We crossed the program with the curriculum in the "student profile to leave the mandatory education" and Surfeel works 4 of the 10 areas of skills referred to:

• Interpersonal Relationship ("Recognize, express and manage emotions, build relationships", page 25)
• Personal development and autonomy ("establish relationships between knowledge, emotions and behaviors", page 26)
• Welfare, Health and Environment ("Relations with Society; Responsibility social, page 27)
• Body awareness and mastery ("Be aware of yourself at the emotional level in order to establish with yourself and with others a harmonious and healthy relationship", page 30)

We also crossed the "Referential Education for Health" and Surfeel contributes to two themes ("Mental Health and Violence Prevention" and "affections and education for sexuality"), two sub-themes ("emotions" and "affective relationships"), in 5 objectives:

• "Develop self -knowledge in its emotional dimension" (p. 19)
• "Develop emotional literacy" (p. 19)
• "Recognize the importance of affections in individual development" (p. 75)
• "Recognize the importance of interpersonal relationships" (p. 75)
• "Value the cooperation and interaction relations" (p. 75)

Yes you can. We are so confident that you will like the program that has a free session forever if you subscribe here. If you want more sessions, we offer a free and no-strings-attached pilot project, where for two weeks you and your school can access part of our digital content. To benefit, please collect the contact information of those who will trial the project, choose a start date, and send us this information by email.

Each session consists of a video, a song, a choreography for the song, in conversation suggestions, and a manual activity. Some sessions also have a true story.

In the 1st cycle, sessions usually last 45 minutes to 1 hour and consist. In preschool, educators often share the session into 2, one with video, song and conversation (the educators stop the video several times to talk), and another session with manual activity only (children take more time to make thematerial of the day).

Our content and material are entirely online on our website. Parents, educators or teachers can access the videos by streaming and download the activities to print at home or at school. If you want to use offline, you can buy the full package with DVDs.

Yes, access to the contents is entirely online through our site through an account, which requires an email address.

Yes and no. Many educators say that the program is so simple that no implementation guidelines are needed, others like the flexibility to implement as they see fit and depending on their circumstances.

However, many educators implement the session as follows:

• show the video (5-10 minutes);
• children are asked what Surfeel's secret was (1-2 minutes);
• play the song again for the children to sing (2-3 minutes);
• they invent a choreography for the song and do the dance (5-10 minutes);
• ask the children the questions in the conversation suggestions and talk about the secret and about emotions (5-10 minutes);
• read the true story (when available);
• do the arts and crafts activity (20-30 minutes).

These guidelines are valid for all sessions, which share the same structure.

The conversation suggestions have more specific guidelines for each day of the program, with questions to ask the children and reflect on. You can see an example from the first session here.

No. The program is autonomous and does not require training. Parents, educators and teachers can implement without intervention on our part.

We ask parents, educators and teachers to first register: it's free! Afterwards, we ask you to use the free session to see if you and the children like the program. If you decide to purchase the complete program, you will have access to a page with detailed instructions, such as name, address, and tax ID for issuing an invoice.

We will provide access to the full program within 1 business day of payment. Your access to the program is entirely online on our website.

The video episodes by themselves develop children's "emotional vocabulary", that is, give them words to understand what they are feeling. For exemple, children learn that we have four basic emotions (fear, sadness, anger, and joy), and that all emotions are good and important.

The magic of Surfeel happens when children follow the program along with adults important in their lives, for example relatives or educators, because human relationships are the basis of emotional intelligence. Thanks ot the program, children and adults have a common language to talk about emotions. Adults understand abstract concepts, like emotions and feelings; children like concrete stories; our videos bridge the gap between the two. We show situations from the daily life of chilren and give adults and children concrete words and tangible stories to talk about problems, develop emotional awareness, and try different behaviours.

One example of this magic is the true story from episode 3, where Becky teaches that emotions are caused by thoughts or facts:

Once upon a time, there was an 8 year old girl who sometimes felt afraid of the dark. She felt fear especially when at night her mother asked her to fetch something on the other side of the house. The problem was that, with the lights turned off, she thought that a robber could be somewhere in the house... After watching episode #3 and with help from her mother, she understood that she felt fear because of a fact: the turned-off lights! So she decided to change the fact. When she turned on the lights, she would see that no robber was present and she could fetch what her mother had asked without feeling fear.

A few weeks later, she realized that, in fact, the cause of the fear was a thought! If she thought that a robber was hiding in the dark, she felt fear. If she did not think a robber was there at all, she did not feel fear. She realized that the fear came from an imaginary danger and that, by choosing what to think, she was able to not feel fear and be happier. So she decided not to think a robber was there. Since that day, she started crossing the house in the dark without needing to turn on the lights and feel afraid!

This question is so frequent that we have a page with all the details here.

The series is based on the current scientific evidence about emotions (namely Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy and Transactional Analysis), on our own personal and professional experience with emotions and children, and on the clinical and school practice of our psychologists. You can see the key sentences of all episodes below.

We also contribute to the public and academic debate and construction of new school curricula, with social and emotional learning programs such as "The Feelings Detective". For example, we presented our program in the 11th International Congress on Child and Adolescente Psychology (XI CIPCA).

Social and emotional learning programs done in person in schools have a very positive impact in children, as this literature review shows from 213 social programs. It concluded that children following these programs develop social and emotional skills, attitudes, and behaviours, equivalent to an improvement in academic results by 11 percentil points on average. The study covered 270 thousand students from kindergarten school to senior school.

We include below the scientific and bibliography that served for the first six episodes. To see the detailed bibliography by episode, and to see the references for other days, you need to register: it's free!

Kabat-Zinn, Jon (2005). "Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation for everyday life", chapter "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf", p. 30, has the analogy between meditation practice and ocean waves.

Brackett, Marc (2019). "Feelings influence decisions" mentions an experience described in the book "Permission to feel: unlocking the power of emotions to help our kids, ourselves, and our society thrive", chapter 2, "Emotions are information", section "Emotions and decision-making", p. 32), where teachers were randomly put in a good or bad mood (simply spending 5 minutes writing about a good or a bad day) and then grading the same essay showed one letter difference in grade, i.e. that teachers' emotions significantly affect the grades they give students, and that this effect disappears if teachers first reflect on how they are feeling, realising that the reason they dislike the essay is the bad mood and not the quality of writing.

Beck, Aaron (1976), "Cognitive Therapy and the emotional disorders", chapter 2, "Tapping the internal communications", section "The hidden message" mentions the "A, B, C" model: Activating event, Belief, emotional Consequence.

Fielding, Lara (2015). "Listening to Your Authentic Self: The Purpose of Emotions" (blog) mentions that emotions signal an important need: "Emotions signal a NEED: When something is important to us, we are supposed to feel emotions."

Goldstein, Joseph (2007). "A heart full of peace", p. 46, has the example that thoughts are like the wizard of Oz, where the only power they have is the power we give them, and that we can avoid getting swept by thoughts by paying attention and trainin the mind with meditation.

Brackett, Marc (2019). "Permission to feel: unlocking the power of emotions to help our kids, ourselves, and our society thrive" chapter 6, "L: Labeling emotion", has the strategy, "If you can name it (an emotion), you can tame it."

Yes! Our internal evaluation shows that 90% of children change behavior: they become calmer, braver, and happier. An external evaluation shows that the program is both comprehensive and effective in teaching emotional awareness and regulation. You can read about these results on the impact page. You can also read heart-felt testimonials from families.

You can see the video of the first day on the sample page. To access the remaining videos, you can register: it's free!

We grant permission to use our content (image, trademark, and videos) in the following contexts:

• home and family use: adults showing our content to children on mobile devices, computers, or television screens;
• school and library use: teachers, librarians, or other educators showing our content to students on a computer, a television screen, or a video-projector;
• therapeutic and professional support use: healthcare, foster care, and social care professionals showing our content to their clients or patients.

In all these cases, The Feelings Detective is not a substitute for professional help, e.g. a psychologist or psychiatrist, and shall not be construed as such.

All other uses of our content (image, trademark and videos), including but not limited to cinemas, companies, outdoor events, or TV, are explicitly prohibited without our previous authorization, are against the terms and conditions upon registration, and may lead to legal action from us. If in doubt, please contact us.

We made the program for 4-7 year olds and tested the scripts, videos and songs extensively with children of this age. Nevertheless, it also works for other ages:

• 2 years or less: we suggest downloading the songs, which contain the key sentences in a fun format, and singing them along with children.
• 8-12 years: although children of this age may find the puppets too basic, the characters grow on them after a few videos and children absorb the messages well.
• 13-17 years: although teenagers find the puppets and songs too childish for them, families and schools report that they also learn valuable lessons when they "hitchhike" onto the episodes thanks to their younger siblings. One strategy for schools is for the class to watch the videos in order to present to a younger class.
• 18 years or more: many adults and parents report that they themselves learn about their emotions thanks to our program, saying "this course is made for me!" Adults can register even without children.

Here are the messages from each of the first 6 episodes, based on science. Each episode has a story and a song around its message so children remember it well.

1. emotions are like waves; they come and go and we cannot stop them
2. emotions are important because they affect every aspect of our lives
3. emotions are caused by facts or thoughts
4. if you have an emotion, it's because something is important for you
5. the only way not be carried away by emotions is to pay attention to them
6. giving emotions a name is the first step to navigate them

To see the full list, you need to register (why?).

Normally, no. On the one hand, we want to avoid piracy and illegal copying of our copyrighted content. On the other hand, we measure our short-term impact with the usage of our website and the number of views of the videos. Therefore, we want you to view the videos over streaming only.

Some partners we work with sometimes have important presentations that require 100% guarantee against internet failures and downtime of our website. This situation is for institutional partners and we ask that you contact us to facilitate the situation.

Schools without internet or classrooms without wi-fi can acquire the full package with episodes on DVDs for offline use.

The puppets come from The Puppet Company Ltd ®, which we recommend following on social media:

We used six puppets from The Puppet Company and developed characters for each of them. By order of appearance:

Surfeel has empathy and understands what others are feeling. His signature move is that every time he meets someone, he starts the conversation with the question "How do you feel?" He is confident and likes adventure.

Becky is a scientist with a practical spirit. She has a somewhat hurried and fast-paced personality. She is organized to the point of perfectionism and loves to play sports.

Wisecrack is an engineer and very intellectual. He lags somewhat behind in emotional and relational intelligence and has little empathy. He thinks everything is in books and then sometimes it doesn't work. For example, when he wanted to learn to swim, he read five books before entering the swimming pool.

Gabi is fun, likes jokes and doing new things. She is a bit of a jester. She is usually in a good mood and has her things messed up and disorganized. She prefers to have pleasant emotions and doesn't know what to do with unpleasant ones, for example she panics when someone cries. She has "black-or-white" thinking: she thinks if we have an unpleasant emotion the day is spoiled and she is no longer happy. She is a dreamer and lives for pleasure and enjoyment. She wastes time planning and dreaming, but ends up not realizing it.

Casper is a toucan bird that spends holidays abroad. He's exotic and likes to play football. Sometimes he feels different from others because he's a bird. Sometimes it has foreign expressions.

Toby is obsessed with superheroes and wants to be one of them. He walks around with a blindfold and a cape. He would like to be able to fly.

Emotions are a sensitive topic. We want to ensure that children watch our content with caring adults who can support them, therefore we give access through registration with a valid email address.

Furthermore, this children's series is a sequence of learnings and the videos build on messages from previous episodes. Registration gives you access to the videos in the right order so your little ones understand the educational content well.

We do not make the videos publicly available because we have no advertising whatsoever and so our copyright is what guarantees the sustainability of the project.

Go to the registration page and fill in your details.

We are a social enterprise and our first priority is to solve the problems due to low emotional intelligence among children (read more).

Our business model is "freemium" and "direct-to-consumer" subscriptions: we grant free access to the first 4 sessions and sell monthly or yearly access to the full program.

Our clients are families and schools (both private and public) with children aged 4-7.

Our vision is a better world, where today's children are tomorrow's leaders and have high emotional intelligence with the character traits that stem from it: teamwork, courage, honesty, empathy, resilience, gratitude, and social and environmental responsibility.

To get there, our mission is to teach children to recognize their emotions, understand the reason, and get their needs met; and also to help parents and teachers create a space to talk about emotions with their children.

Our first goal is children's happiness.

We use Facebook to communicate updates and interesting articles. But the content of the series is only available on our website and not on Facebook.

Our videos on Facebook are not those of our children's series. They only serve to communicate updates.

We only store data that enhance our mission to create impact with an educational program. We decided to have little or nothing to steal in case of a cyberattack.

We store your email address because it allows us to communicate with you about your account. We also ask about the number of children using the program to measure the impact of our program, but this question is optional.

We do not use passwords because some people reuse them across websites, which is a vulnerability in case of a cyber-attack, and the others forget the password, and then ask for a new one by email. Instead, we send a unique code (also called a "one-time password") to your email address each time you want to login.

If you register for an account but do not login, we delete your personal data within days. If you do not use the content area of our website for 3 months, we will also delete your personal data.

For safety (yours and ours), we do not use passwords. When passwords are complicated, users forget them and ask for a new one by email. When passwords are simple, users tend to use the same across multiple sites. We decided that giving access to our content was not worth the risk of having a cyber-attack in which we lost a user's password that also served for a bank account.

To make our website more secure, when you want to login, we send a unique code (also called a "one-time password") to your email address. It is similar to the codes you receive on your phone to validate a bank transaction.

If you use our website on multiple devices, such as a computer and a phone, you need a unique code for each. Then the device remembers our website for three months; if you use our website every month on a device, you will no longer need more unique codes for that device.

The project started in the pandemic in 2020. We saw the children around us with emotions around the red, irritated, sad unknowingly. We decided to condense everything we had learned about emotions and teach the next generation.

At the same time, the news came out that the Olympic Games would be canceled for the first time in peacetime. We initially imagined the project as a substitute where children would see our videos instead of the television broadcasts of the games. It would be the "Olympic Games of Emotions", but as the International Olympic Committee is not very protective of the name "Olympic", we changed "emotional athletics. "

However, the project grew, came to many children, and we realized that "emotional athletics" was complicated to memorize and say and that children simply called "Surfeel. "They said, for example, "you have to see Surfeel. "They identified the project with the character, and we decided to enjoy the help of children in promoting the project and we exchanged all the names "Emotional Athletics" to "Surfeel" (except in video credits, which once finalized are difficult to change).