Feelings Books for Kids

I’m a startup leadership coach, not a child psychologist or a parenting expert. And yet, I can’t tell you how many times after a manager training or a T-group weekend, a tech leader asks me: “Okay, so how do I teach my kids this stuff?”

I get it. When you’ve made it to your 20s or 30s or 40s without training and support for cultivating your own skills in emotion regulation, as a parent you want to give your kids that knowledge as early as you can.

My two favorite books on child psychology:

How Toddlers Thrive - this is the book that helped me when my first daughter was a toddler -- I remember especially appreciating the chapter on how to get aligned with your spouse/partners as both of you bring so much of your own psychologies to parenting that it's often a missed step to talk about your own experiences as kids and how your child's behavior may be triggering you disproportionately in ways that your co-parent would benefit from understanding and, potentially, balancing you out in a way

The Whole Brain Child is helpful for understanding neuroscience and how to help kids practice not jumping to inaccurate or "catastrophic" stories.

And several recommendations of feeling books for kids:

For younger kids:

In My Heart - my absolute favorite book about feelings, with the one caveat that the leading protagonist is a girl so I’m not entirely sure if your sons or boys will notice /care or still connect with the book as much

You're A Crab - this is more playful and subtle, but still introduces feelings/emotions and I especially appreciate how it explicitly tackles how dynamic emotions can be

The Color Monster --- a gorgeous pop-up book that helps build emotion granularity (the ability to identify and describe emotional experiences with more specificity)

I'm Feeling Macaroni and Cheese --- fun and colorful series of books that presents the feelings through the lens of crayons

Note: There are many children’s books out there that explore one specific column/family of emotions and try to offer kids tactics for understanding and managing those....I own this one about anger and I think it's pretty good, but when my older daughter was younger she read the first two listed above more often with me.

For an older kid:

My Mixed Emotions -- a gorgeous and well-designed resource book, haven't used it extensively with my older daughter but intend to more over time

Hello Happy! -- this is an activity/workbook, I’m only a few pages in with my older daughter but like it thus far