Hi, I’m Eliana (pretend you see me wave) and I specialize in working with young children. I love my job and love working with children. I also love to think of creative ways to help my clients learn the lessons they could use for themselves. One of those ways is by using books!!
Coming from the elementary school environment, I was taught how to do lessons with books. Luckily, my supervisor also had a “library” of great books to use with our students. I’m gradually (and slowly) building my own as well.
Why can books be helpful?
Especially for the young ones, books help bring a visual representation to the lessons they may be unaware of. Being that I am a visual learner and processed better with visuals, I feel like it’s a great way to teach.
It’s important for your therapist to have an understanding of what behaviors you (as parents) might be observing with your child. I have books on flexible thinking, feelings, communicating, being respectful, loving oneself, and making mistakes. That’s all I can think of right now, but no matter what, I have some great books in my (slowly accumulating) library.
Book Number One: Have You Filled a Bucket Today?
This book, written by Carol McCloud, is a great book. It’s written to be a daily guide for happiness for children. This story encourages positive behavior in a colorful way. If we look into the modeling for this book, it models how easy it is to be kind, appreciative, and love.
This book is about everyone having an invisible bucket. Now remember, this bucket is invisible and your child will most likely say they have never seen this type of bucket before. Trust me, I’ve been there. Multiple times.
For this book, there are mostly two things involved: bucket filling and bucket dipping. Bucket filling encourages being respectful, while bucket dipping is the opposite of someone being respectful.
Book Number Two: A Little Spot of Flexible Thinking
This book, written by Diane Adler, is a great children’s book describing rigid and flexible thinking. It brings in a visual representation of rigidness and flexibility, which I really like to bring into sessions. When it talks about something being rigid, it uses an oak tree, and then uses a palm tree for flexibility. Hence why I made a poster saying “Think like a palm tree!”.
Book Number Three: Marcy’s Having All the Feels
Allison Edwards wrote this book that acknowledges how we mostly just want to feel happy all the time. It shows others that with all these feelings coming out of nowhere, we can learn to accept them all and figure out how to work with them.
Book Number Four: Be Honest and Tell the Truth
This one!! Cheri J. Meiners has a few books similar to this style. But this one in particular, helps young children to be honest and tell the truth with pictures and examples. It helps children discover tools for problem solving and social skills.
Book Number Five: Wilma Jean the Worry Machine
Wilma Jean is a character written by Julia Cook. This character exhibits worry like no other. You know, actually, she just deals with anxiety. This book provides strategies to help kids that may feel the same way about certain things. Sometimes all you have to do is sit down, think about your worries, and figure out what you may or may not have control over.
Book Number Six: I Just Don’t Like the Sound of No!
RJ is another character written by Julia Cook. And RJ, acting like someone his age, doesn’t like hearing no. In the story, he often tries to get his way, until… His teacher brought up a star board only for people that are in the “Say Yes to No” club. He seemed to really want to be on that board, so he started to work on saying yes to no. He learned and he followed through, and he got on the star board!.
Book Number Seven: I Think, I Am
This book, written by Louise L. Hay and Kristina Tracy is a cute book about affirmations. Affirmations can be a big word to understand, but to also listen to. This book brings examples to life for bringing negative thoughts into positive ones- similar to thinking in a fixed mindset and turning it into a growth mindset.
Overall
No matter which book you start with with your young ones, you will have made a great choice. Each book listed in this blog are part of my up and coming library. I read them with my clients, and most often will create an activity with them to do after completing the book. You all can do the same at home. Kids love to be creative and “take charge” of activities- use their strengths to do just that.
Written by,
Eliana Cohn, LSW
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