The anxious child - talking about feelings.

We now have a really important book in our lives... "Feel a Little" and it is helping us deal with a lot of things that Scarlett is going through... and mummy too.

Scarlett's first weeks at school have been tough for her to get used to, she has been sick 50% of the time but even in the moments of health school has been met with a flood of anxiety and worry.

She has been worried about the food in her lunchbox hurting a child with an allergy.

She has been worried that her teacher will growl her.

She is worried about the older kids that poke tongues at her while she stands in her area of the courtyard.

She misses her daycare friends.

She feels like everyone is smarter than her and she wont be able to read.

She hates it that she cant get things straight away.

She is tired at the end of the day.

She doesn't like how homework takes too long.

She misses playing all day.

How is the "Feel a little" book helping?

We have always had a "debrief" at the end of the day :)

I started to do this when she was around 3 and a half... "mummy, I want to talk about stuff" she would ask.

So we started to have debriefs at the end of her day in bed, talking about what had happened and what was the best part ect.

Now that we have the book "Feel a little" we can also refer to that too now.

These debriefs were always unique to my older child too I might add, so while I do talk a lot to my younger child about feelings she doesn't seem to have the same anxiety about things and actually often jumps into bed and tells me... "go away mummy, stop talking, I'm tired" hahaha.

I ask Scarlett questions starting with what made you sad today, what made you frustrated, what made you excited, what made you happy.... we would always end on the happy one :)

If you have the book "Feel a little" you can pick a page and talk about the emotion on that page especially if there was a specific emotion that needs to be expressed, like 'worried' for example.

I have to admit that this whole transition has been hard on me also so having a resource like the book 'Feel a Little' has been invaluable and it makes me feel less lost in how to deal with this whole transition to school thing.

:)

Check out Scarlett with her book below :)