Help Your Child Explore Their Feelings With the Best Children’s Books About Emotions

Buyer's Guide To Finding the Perfect Children's Book About Emotions

Children who are emotionally strong, grow up to be confident individuals who can handle every situation without stress or anxiety. But laying the foundation of such a personality is not easy. You have to calm down their emotional turmoil and help them embrace their emotions in a healthy manner. A good children’s book about emotions is a way to start early. Below we have curated a buyer’s guide to help you find the right one. 

Why Is It Important for Children To Understand Their Feelings and Emotions?

Despite their small size, children are little tornados of feelings with big emotions hidden inside. You can’t tell when their feelings will bowl you over, because they haven’t learned to regulate their emotions just yet. A simple question can incite confusion and anxiety. Children need to learn to regulate their emotions, as it is very important for their emotional and mental well-being. Here’s how it happens:

Decreases anxiety 

Children tend to feel more intense emotions than an adult. No wonder our body goes into stress mode when an adult exhibiting childish behavior approaches us. But when you validate that such overwhelming emotions are normal, and make space to facilitate their experience, your little one will not only feel relieved, they’ll start to develop a healthy acceptance of their emotions. Fighting with their feelings often leads to children becoming stressed and anxious. When they know that it’s acceptable to feel that way, all the stress and anxiety vanishes. 

Boosts emotional intelligence

It is wrong to expect your kid to automatically let their feelings out in a healthy manner. You have to first help them identify the various emotions they feel. Familiarize them with the vocabulary of emotional language so they can pinpoint what they are feeling. This ability is the building block of their emotional cognition. 

Self-soothing reduces unhealthy behaviors

Once your kiddo can identify their different feelings, they also start to develop ways to cope with them. These self-soothing strategies help them become calm. Without these, your child will resort to unhealthy behaviors. A good way to help them is to identify what helps them avoid stress and practice it with them until they master it. 

Helps them become their best self 

Suppressing their feelings and emotions often becomes a huge hurdle in their ability to perform at full capacity. Unresolved issues linger in their subconscious, using up their mental energy and internal resources. If you want them to utilize their full potential, you have to make sure that their feelings don’t remain unresolved.

Improves their bonding 

Statements like “Stop crying!” can quickly encourage your child to suppress their feelings. This well-meaning attempt to reason is often lost on their developing brain that is, at that particular moment, flooded with stress hormones. This leads to the child becoming withdrawn, which leads to social distancing from both the parents and peers. Allowing the feeling to come and go helps them process their emotions in a better way. It helps them connect with you and their peers in a better way. 

How Books Help Support Children’s Emotional Learning 

Simply put, children’s books about emotions facilitate their Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). Whether you are reading it aloud to them or they are reading it themselves, a good children’s book about emotions can help them build vital SEL skills like empathy. Here’s how:

Develop their emotional vocabulary 

Self-awareness is the key to emotional competence. Acknowledging their emotions and the ability to name them is something they can learn from children’s books about emotions. Knowing what different emotions look like, and what they are called, helps them identify them when they experience them themselves. 

Teach them self-management strategies 

Besides knowing that their feelings and emotions are normal, children should also know about the ways to cope with them. And that’s something a good children’s book about emotions can teach them. When reading such books, you can have a conversation about your own struggles with emotions and help them find the strategies that work for them. 

Promote acceptance and diversity

Reading about the characters who appear quite different from them but are experiencing the same feelings encourages empathy in kids.  Using such literature helps dispel stereotypes and make way for positive relationships that are based on equality. 

Develop their consequential thinking 

Children’s books about emotions help prompt kids to think consequently. When they understand that all their actions have a reaction, they learn to conduct themselves more appropriately. Seeing the various characters struggle with their emotions and how they finally cope with it gives them the courage to bravely face the tide of emotions. 

Features of a Good Children’s Book About Emotions 

What does a good children’s book contain? Easy to read text and vivid imagery. But what makes a good children’s book about emotions? Find out below:

Relatable 

A good children’s book about emotions contains situations and characters that children can relate to. Even if it centers around imaginary characters, like giants and elves, the events should be similar to what kids experience in day-to-day living. That way the readers will be more involved in reading it till the end. 

Not too difficult to understand

If you want your kid to grasp the already difficult concept of emotions, you have to choose a children’s book about emotions that is easy to read and understand. The difficulty level of the book depends upon your child’s level of maturity, as well as on their language skills. Even if you are the one who’s going to read the text, if your child cannot understand it, all the hard work will be useless. 

Strong illustrations

Being able to see what different emotions look like helps children associate them with their own feelings. That’s why a children’s book about emotions must contain colorful and engaging illustrations to help kids grasp the concept more clearly. 

Easy to discuss

For a successful learning experience, you have to reinforce what your kid has learned. For this purpose, you need a children’s book about emotions that is informative yet simple. You can go over it with them asking about various characters, or how they are feeling or how your kid might react if they are in the same situation.  

How to Talk With Your Little One About Emotions 

Talking about feelings is not simple, even when you are an adult. Imagine how difficult it would be for a small kid who can’t even name what they are feeling. Here is how you can have a heart-to-heart convo with your little one:

Describe your own emotions

The best way to make your little one understand different emotions is to show them yourself. You should use specific words to label your feelings such as happiness, sadness, or anger. And no, it won’t make your kid feel worried or insecure. Rather, it will teach them that it is absolutely normal to express emotions. You can even suggest a coping strategy. For example, when you lose a game, instead of saying “Oh no! I lost”, say “I feel sad that I lost, will you give me a hug to make me feel better?” 

Some feelings are inappropriate to talk about with kids, like the inability to pay a high bill. It’s best to not talk about such things to kids; rather you should tailor a kid-friendly statement such as, “This math problem is confusing me. Let me take a walk to clear my mind.” 

Help them label how they are feeling 

If your little one is unable to express their emotions, you can summarize their feelings. Judge their behavior and voice how they are feeling. When you observe that they are feeling mad, say it. They’ll learn to associate the feeling with the word and use it later to express themselves. Saying, “You’re frowning and stomping your feet. Are you mad at something?” will help them put a label on what emotions they are feeling. 

Talk about how the characters in books or movies are feeling

In addition to voicing your emotions, you can also use the characters from the books and movies your kid loves as additional practice. By labeling the character’s feelings, your little one will understand and explore other emotions, such as disappointment, shyness, frustration, and embarrassment. 

Allow them to experience different emotions 

We understand your urge to solve your little one’s problems as soon as they arise, but letting your child struggle to find a solution also helps them grow emotionally. For example, when their car is stuck under the dining table out of their reach, instead of running to take it out, say, “It looks like you are frustrated that your car has gone far. Am I right?” Such statements empower them to voice how they feel and to understand that such emotions are normal. It prepares them to face more difficult situations in later life.