So one of the best things I think any parent can do is help kids verbalize their emotions. Each time we get kids in our home, we focus on feeling words. Books are obviously a great way to do that and these helped our kids a ton. Here are 6 children’s feeling books that both adults and kids will love.
I’m Happy-Sad Today
This was a great book for our 7-year-old. It helped him understand you can have two feelings about something. We got it when we were getting toward reunification and talking about how it’s ok to feel sad about leaving us and happy you’re going home.
Grumpy Monkey
One of our kids struggled with being Grumpy. He had all the emotions that you would expect a child to go through moving homes and not knowing anything for sure. Sometimes he would be fine then go grumpy. This book helped him have words for his feelings and let us talk about it’s ok to be grumpy, it’s not ok to hurt people because we feel grumpy.
The Bad Seed
Really all the books in this series by Jory John are great for kids. This one we especially liked because it talked about how we don’t have to keep the labels that are on us. We always have the choice to start being a new person.
What Am I Feeling
This book came with a feelings chart, which we hung up and went through each night. It goes through kid situations and feelings that come because of them and talks about how naming the feeling keeps it from controlling us.
Little Unicorn is Angry
We haven’t tested these with kids, but I love them. There is also sad, scared and shy. We saw these at Ollie’s and had to get them. Hopefully, our kids will like them as much as we do. They go through explaining other emotions associated with the main one, giving them chances to identify their emotions, and in Angry, it walks through breathing exercises.
Kindness Rules
This is just a fun board book that walks kids through the magic of being kind and gives examples of how to be kind. I enjoy reading it to them as much as they like the fun pictures and story.
