Helping children understand their emotions through stories

This article looks at why that is, how to use the books you already have, and how a personalised story, where the child is the one who feels and copes, can add something.

Why a story reaches where a lecture does not

Tell a child “you’re feeling jealous of your brother” and you will often get a denial. Read them a story about a bear cub who is cross because the new baby gets all the attention, and you will often get silence, then “that’s like me”. A story puts the feeling at one remove, where it can be looked at safely. The character has it, not the child, and yet the child knows.

Stories also show what comes next. The cub is cross, and then something happens, and then it is all right again. That shape, feeling, trouble, resolution, is the thing many children need to see over and over before they believe it about their own feelings.

Using the books you already have

• Pause and ask: “how do you think she feels right now?” and “how can you tell?”. The pictures do a lot of the work.
• Name the feeling yourself if they cannot: “he looks worried to me. His shoulders are up and his mouth is small.”
• Link it gently to real life, after the story, not during: “you looked a bit like that when Arthur took the digger”.
• Let them disagree. A child who says the fox is not scared, just cross, is thinking hard about feelings.
• Read the same book again. The second time, they notice things they missed.

Read a real example book together and try the questions above

Emotions for every age

• At 3 to 5: the big four, happy, sad, cross, scared, with faces to match. Books about tantrums, about missing Mum, about being brave at nursery.
• At 6 to 8: the subtler ones, jealous, embarrassed, disappointed, proud, and the idea that two feelings can happen at once.
• At 9 to 12: friendship trouble, fairness, feeling left out, worry about things in the news. Longer novels do this better than any explanation.

The feelings do not need to be the point of the book. Many of the best conversations come out of an adventure story where something goes wrong on page nine.

When the child is the one who feels

A personalised book adds one thing: the child is in it. With AI-Koma Kids, your child chooses the hero, companions, world and adventure in pictures, and you can add their first name and a value to pass on, sharing, courage, friendship. For children who want it, the emotions are also one of the learning themes that can be woven into the story, as part of the adventure rather than a lesson. So Grace, aged five, reads a story in which Grace is the one who is sad when the race is lost, and the one who finds a way to feel better. The shape of the story, feeling, trouble, resolution, now has her name on it.

Reading it together, in your voice, is where the value is. The questions above work just the same, with the small difference that “how does she feel?” is now “how do you feel?”, asked sideways. A voice generated by artificial intelligence can read the book on other nights, stopping at each page, with soft sound effects if your child likes them. The first book is free when you sign up.

Create a free first book with the value you want to pass on

Keeping it light

Not every story needs a conversation afterwards. If you turn every book into a feelings lesson, your child will notice and stop enjoying the books, which defeats the purpose. Read for pleasure most of the time, ask a question now and then, and let the stories do their slow work. Our articles on the fear of the dark and why children love being the hero look at two particular corners of this.

If you are worried about your child’s emotional wellbeing, rather than the everyday ups and downs, your GP, health visitor or school are the right people to talk to. Stories help, but they are not a substitute for that.

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