Maw Books

Maw Books – book reviews, book recommendations, book lists, author interviews and more!

Today’s guest post is brought to you be Marsha Jacobson, the author of Boom… Boom… Boom…: A Story to Raise Your Child’s Emotional Intelligence, which as a mother of four, she wrote to to help children understand and deal with their uncomfortable feelings including anxiety, fear and frustration.  As a parent, I’m thrilled with Marsha’s post and serves as a reminder to me that reading with my children is an opportunity for many teaching moments.  Welcome Marsha . . . .

Sometimes our greatest parenting moments are the ones that we take for granted the most. Reading to or with our child is one of these. It is a wonderful opportunity for closeness and teaching. It is often the one time in the whole crazy day of parenting that we can take a breath and enjoy the gift of our child.

A parent’s embrace is like food for a child’s soul. Reading books allows for this in the most natural way and many times parents and children look forward to reading together for this experience alone. I know I do!

Reading a book also presents parents with the most amazing opportunities for parenting – especially where feelings are concerned.

While we are beginning to understand the importance of teaching our children how to manage their feelings, in the midst of feeding, dressing, homework, and activities, we often forget to focus on this.

Increasing our children’s feeling vocabulary, accepting their feelings (positive and negative), exploring these emotions and helping them learn how to manage them are the ingredients for developing their emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence, which is strongly linked to future success and happiness, is something more and more parents are paying attention to.

The book you or your child chooses to read is far less important than where the reading takes you. My experience is that children are drawn to books that explore feelings in some way. Let the book be the platform for discussion. Children don’t need much encouragement. Given half a chance, they will happily discuss how the book makes them feel or how the character in the book feels.

As a parent you can expand on their comments with your own. Here are some ideas:

• Give your children time to explore their feelings at their own pace and come to their own conclusions.
• Restate what they say, but put in some more feeling words.
• Provide some “what if” scenarios such as “What if the mommy had said…?” or “What if that was you, how would you have felt?”
• Share your own stories. Children love to hear real stories, especially things that happened to you or how you felt as a child. It’s sometimes fun to replace reading a book altogether and relate one of your childhood stories instead.
• Share your feelings. Children learn best by example. Parents are their best models and hold the greatest power for teaching.
• Relax and enjoy! Teaching anything in a warm and loving environment always gets the best results.

While any book that speaks to your child is great, I’d like to suggest a few based on what my kids have enjoyed:

• Boom… Boom… Boom…: A Story to Raise Your Child’s Emotional Intelligence by Marsha Jacobson.  This book is a wonderful story about a little girl facing her fears. This fun-to-read story uses the power of storytelling to teach by example. A young girl’s adventure with her mother paints a picture of what emotional intelligence should look like. Children absorb the subtle, yet powerful messages and teachings with ease.
• Thomas’s Snowsuit by Robert N. Munsch (Annick Press, 1985) – My husband and I immigrated to Canada in 1987 with our two toddlers. The whole snowsuit experience was new and not welcome at all! This book got us through. We, along with our kids, felt comforted to know that we weren’t alone in our feelings.
• The Franklin series focuses on many different situations that children can relate to. Parents can really get stuck into the feelings that are evoked by these stories.
• The Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park has been some of my daughter’s favourite books to read. I think it’s because Junie B. is a real little girl who doesn’t always do or say the right thing. It is a great series for teaching the value of learning from our mistakes.

Visit Marsha Jacobson at her website and follow on Twitter.  Are there any other books that you would add to that list?

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