Growing Feelings: A Kids' Guide to Dealing with Emotions about Friends and Other Kids [Paperback]

Children’s biggest emotions often come up about friends and other kids. In this funny and useful book, authors Eileen Kennedy-Moore and Christine McLaughlin help kids understand and cope with feelings in ways that build strong friendships.

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Everyone likes the idea of “best friends forever,” but friendships can be complicated, and they often involve dealing with difficult feelings. Almost all children have experienced feelingshyat a party where they don’t know anyone,furiousduring an argument with a friend, orsadwhen a friend moves away. Because kids care a lot about friends, they often have big emotional responses about them.

This entertaining and empowering book addresses a wide range of feelings children have about friends and other kids, includingworry,guilt,jealousy,compassion, andgratitude.Through relatable cartoon stories, practical, research-based coping strategies, plus silly commentary from a cat and dog who have their own (questionable) ideas about what might help, kids get a hands-on approach that they can put into practice.

Child psychologist Eileen Kennedy-Moore and parenting and health writer Christine McLaughlin show kids how to recognize the Feelings Story behind common friendship rough spots, demonstrating the links between events, thoughts, emotions, actions, and social reactions through the situational cartoons, so children can clearly see how their reactions fuel or resolve relationship problems. And going far beyond a simplistic and unrealistic “don’t worry, be happy, think positive only” approach,Growing Feelingsoffers a nuanced perspective on feelings about friends. It emphasizes thatallemotions are useful and guides children in how to empathize with others’ reactions, as well as how to understand, manage, and communicate in healthy ways abolƒ