I love books that are both engaging and also supportive for children’s language and social development. Here are three books I read this year that I highly recommend:
Loving Kindness
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
This book is so beautiful! I picked it up during my travels to Dharamshala (Hometown of the Dalai Lama) It takes kids through a very simple meditation focused on cultivating empathy. The main reason I have to make it a 10/10 is because, the first time I read it with a group of primary school children one of the girls told me that doing the meditation “took away all of her angry feelings”.
How Do I Feel?
A Dictionary of Emotions for Children
Rebekah Lipp & Craig Phillips
This book is a big dictionary of emotions which is an amazing support for social and emotional learning. If I were going to be picky (and I am hehe) I would love a little more diversity in the body representations of the kids in the book (I have a few clients going through some challenges with body acceptance, so this is front of mind for me atm) but overall, it’s a great resource to build emotional vocabulary.
Aroha’s Choice
Rebekah Lipp & Craig Phillips
By the same author as the previous one. This book talks about how we can get stuck in thought patterns and provides a framework for reframing these as positive thoughts.
I think this one's amazing! I've been using it with clients in the past few weeks and it's been a really great portal to larger conversations about engaging with our inner coach voice rather than our inner critic.
