I thought I would lighten things up this post and just talk about my Let’s Talk Series!
This series (in both hard- and paperback) covers a range of topics that prompt children and their adults to discuss important topics that help them gain knowledge, acquire skills and develop positive values. The series covers topics such as emotions, friendships, positive mental health, celebrating differences, consent, death, even the birds and the bees and more. Here I tell you a little about each book and how they get discussions with children flowing!
The Books on Emotions, Resilience and Mental health
This is the first-born of the series: How Are You Feeling Today? It contains such a simple but effective idea. Children look at the contents, decide which of the emotions listed there they might be feeling and are then directed to a two-page-spread where they find an illustrated list of suggestions of what they can do when they feel that way.
I have had such positive feedback from parents/carers and teachers about their experiences using this book. For example, one parent told me, ‘my son often falls asleep cuddling this book. It’s helped him tell me what he’s feeling which in turn has reduced the frequency of outbursts he has. He has learned better ways of expressing his frustration.’ I think the main plus of this book is the way it puts emotions well-and-truly on the agenda and emotions becomes far easier to manage when we become more conscious of them.
This is the sequel to How are You Feeling Today? called How are You Feeling Now? and includes slightly more ‘sophisticated’ emotions than the first book like feeling disappointed, guilty, lonely, proud and surprised. It works in the same way as its predecessor.
One school used these books as a prompt for children to draw their own pages for an emotion of their choice. I absolutely loved what they produced. In fact the emotions they chose to explore might have influenced which I included in this book!
What’s Worrying You? is a great book for helping children understand worry and anxiety by looking at different situations that could typically trigger a child to worry. For each situation, the book looks at what you might feel, what you might be thinking and also provides reassurance.
For example: it looks at when you fall out with a friend, being scared of things like the dark or spiders, when you don’t have friends to play with. One teacher told me she did a term’s PSHE based on this book!
What’s Going on Inside Your Head? is great for initiating conversations about what helps us develop and maintain positive mental health. In simple and supportive language it considers self-image, what helps when something upsets us, the importance of asking for help and much more besides. I have explored this book with children a few times – so each child ends up with a self-drawn poster that includes the things they think it would be good to do to keep their minds healthy. It always prompts really insightful discussions. It even led to one child deciding to name their brain so they could tell it when it was being helpful and when it wasn’t (partly inspired by my daughter doing this!) For a small book, it covers a lot!
It’s OK to Cry is a book that increases children’s emotion vocabulary (which research tells us is a simple but significant way of improving emotional intelligence). The book illustrates several different situations that have triggered a different emotion for someone in the picture. It helps children understand the words and likely triggers for different emotions. It also lets children see that not everyone reacts the same way emotionally to the same situation and that our emotional responses can be unique to us.
It was originally written with boys in mind to address the conditioning males tend to receive that can mean their emotions become suppressed but the book works well with all children for increasing emotion vocabulary.
This How Are You Feeling today? Activity and Sticker Book can be used on its own or can more effectively be used alongside How Are You Feeling Today? as it invites children to consider the emotions in the book through: matching expressions to triggers, describing emotions, thinking about what helps with different emotions, looking at what can trigger us to become angry and thinking about the messages different emotions might be giving us.
I completed all the tasks myself and then accidentally gave the book I’d completed away to someone!
The books about relationships
Will You Be My Friend? explores different aspects of friendships and helps children start to learn to empathise with others.
It considers what a friend is, how to show a friend that you care, how to be a good friend, what might prevent you from being a good friend, what to do when a friend upsets you, how to make friends and much more. It helps adults to equip children to value friendships and to navigate them more independently.
I did hear of an adult gifting it to one of ther friends!
In a very clear and simple way, It’s OK to Say No considers the topic of consent. It starts children on a journey of understanding respectful behaviour within relationships as well as the right they have to feel comfortable and safe in different situations.
The book explores, what consent is, when to ask for it, what people usually keep private and when might we need an adult to help us – and much more. It’s an empowering and reassuring book!
The book that considers behaviour
What Makes you Do That? is a book about behaviours we might be tempted to engage in (and spells out why we might be tempted) and considers what might be more helpful as an alternative and why!
It’s a brilliant book for getting children talking honestly about what they do, why some behaviours can create problems and discussing how a better behaviour is beneficial. It makes children more conscious of their behaviours! For example, the book considers telling lies or being honest, cheating or playing fairly, giving up or being determined – amongst several others.
The books that celebrate similarities and differences
The Same but Different is a popular book that helps children celebrate difference. By looking at how we all look different, can be good at different things, like different things, have different personalities, opinions, beliefs, live in different homes etc., the book encourages children to consider their own traits and start to appreciate that others can be the same and/or different. It also gets them to think about how boring the world would be if we were all the same!
I really enjoy reading this with children as differences are positively highlighted as you go through the book. The book helps young children be bolder in their differences!
What Makes a Family? helps children learn about the many ways families can be different by looking at different sized families, the names of different relatives, who can be parents/carers, the different ways family members are related to each other, the different ways families can start, how families can become blended and much more.
It helps children understand how their friends’ families might be different but also that ‘what makes a family?’ means they still have much in common.
The books that help with topics that can be tricky.
The only euphemism in Let’s Talk About the Birds and the Bees is in the title! This is the book I wished existed for me to recommend to parents and carers of primary-aged children when I worked as an advisor in the field of Relationships, Health and Sex Education (RHSE). It’s age-appropriate, yet honest and straightforward and covers growing up, development, reproduction and relationships and more.
Many adults find a page or two at a time is a good pace for reading this book as it covers a lot. Many parents/carers have told me how it helped them cover a topic they really had no idea about how to best approach!
The following is a review for Let’s Talk About When Someone Dies that touched me deeply. It’s exactly how I wanted the book to help.
I’ve been through a lot and bought a lot of different books to help me discuss the death of someone close with my young child. This book stood out on its own. When you’re not sure about the best way to cover the subject of death, and you want to do so in a clear, open and honest way, this is your guide. I must have read and bought 10 books discussing the subject, and this is hands down the best. I urge you to buy it. All the other books were disappointing, discussing death in ways likely to be confusing to young children. My little one asks for it to be read at bedtime and not only is it one of his most helpful books, but I’m confident in its messaging, which is crucial at an extremely sensitive time in life.
My next book Who Will You Be When You Grow Up? is out in May.
