What Made Me Write A Series of Emotion Books for Children

One thing that I decided to try out in my life was teaching. When my psychology studies didn't turn out quite the way I expected them to, my backup plan was to complete a teaching certificate and get into the classroom as quickly as possible. And while at it, I would give the whole teaching thing 100% of my efforts.

As a teacher, I was able to learn quite a bit about what was needed in the classroom. Nowadays, there's also a huge prevalence for developmental disorders amongst children, like autism and ADHD. Children with these disorders have also become very integrated into mainstream classrooms, where it seems that schools today have permanent departments responsible for helping each child to do well in these mainstream classrooms.

This is not a bad thing - don't get me wrong.

But for a teacher like me who hasn't specifically trained to work in a classroom where the needs are so majorly different (despite having a degree in Psychology), this was an extremely difficult task. I found it truly overwhelming to be in a class where half the students had a developmental need - and I wasn't able to keep up with the demand of addressing each child's individual needs. It was rough.

Although, good came out of the experience.

At the one school I was teaching at, I got involved with the counselling department. There was one student who was really struggling with the social and emotional aspects involved with peers and school. My job was to come in and give suggestions on how to help this child grow on a social and emotional level, but merely through the parents - not in actual face-to-face time with the child.

So, my logical thought was to create a list of books that the parents could read with their child to help him better be able to grasp social cues and how to identify emotions. However, when I was researching this list of books, I was horrified to learn that there are hardly any books out there that truly explain emotions to children in ways that they will actually understand what they are. There are many books related to learning social cues and socially integrating with peers - but hardly any on emotions.

Children are also at a very unique developmental age in that they can't reason in an abstract way. They are also not particularly good at recognising what emotion fits with what facial expression.

Emotions are a very abstract concept. You can't see them. You can't touch them. And children - especially primary school aged children - learn best when they use their five senses (sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste). How can I child know what anger is if they can't touch it or smell it? How can I child know what it means to be brave if they can't see it or hear it?

And my years of experience working with primary school children also meant that I was able to observe the fact that children don't understand emotions. They don't know what they are. They don't know how to express them appropriately. And they don't know how to identify the emotion they're actually feeling.

Of course, this is something I attempted to encourage in the classroom with all the children I taught. But without the proper tools and without the appropriate knowledge required to state which emotion they were feeling, it was difficult to help them.

That's where my children's series comes in.

I saw a gap of what was available - for parents, teachers, and children alike - and I saw fit to fill that gap. I can only hope that the poems and imagery I've created will enable children to understand how emotions feel more, so that they can identify them, feel them, and deal with them as they navigate through childhood.