Eric is a sand dragon who loves the sea very much. Each day, he watches it go out, knowing that it will return. But one day, Eric waits and waits, but it does not come back. He falls on the sand, feeling as if he has lost everything. Eric wants to shut himself off from his feelings, but eventually spots a little wildflower growing, and another, and another. He builds a rock pool garden, in memory of the sea that he loves, and learns that it is much better to feel the full pain of his loss, instead of closing his heart. The Day the Sea Went Out and Never Came Back is a story for children who have lost someone they love. The beautiful illustrations and sensitively written story offer a wealth of opportunities to begin a conversation about the difficult emotions that can follow a loss, helping children to acknowledge and express their emotions. The story shows them that it is brave to feel sad, that they are surrounded by support, and that memories of a loved one are a special treasure that can never be lost.Ideal for starting conversations about grief and sadness, this is an essential resource for anybody supporting children aged 4-12 who have experienced loss.

This practical handbook begins with the philosophy and psychology underpinning the therapeutic value of story telling. It shows how to use story telling as a therapeutic tool with children and how to make an effective response when a child tells a story to you. It is an essential accompaniment to the "Helping Children with Feelings" series and covers issues such as: Why story telling is such a good way of helping children with their feelings? What resources you may need in a story-telling session? How to construct your own therapeutic story for a child? What to do when children tell stories to you? Things to do and say when working with a child's story.

This book is designed to enable practitioners to help children whose emotional wellbeing is being adversely affected by troubled parents. These are children who live with the burden of having to navigate their parent's troubled emotional states, often leaving them with a mass of painful feelings about a chaotic and disturbing world. They can feel alarmed by their parent rather than experiencing them as 'home', and a place of safety and solace. The author explores the fact that when parents are preoccupied with their own troubles, they are often unable to effectively address their child's core relational needs, e.g. soothing, validating, attunement, co-adventure, interactive play. As a result, children are left self-helping, which all too often means drugs, drink, self-harm, depression, anxiety, eating disorders or problems with anger in the teenage years. This guidebook offers readers a wealth of vital theory and effective interventions for working with these children and, specifically, the key feelings such children need help with. Particular focus is given to the effects on children of: family breakdown, separation and divorce, witnessing parents fighting, and parents who suffer from depression or anxiety, mental or physical ill-health, alcohol or drug addiction. Readers will learn: the complexity of children's feelings about their troubled parents how to enable children to address their unspoken hurt, fear, grief, rage, and resentment about their troubled parent in order to move forward in their lives how to empower children to find their voice when they have been left in the role of impotent bystander effective parent-child intervention when parental troubles are adversely affecting the child and how to help a parent and child 'find' each other again.

A Nifflenoo Called Nevermind is story for children who bottle up their feelings. Nevermind always carries on whatever happens! Each time something horrible happens to him he just tucks his feelings away and carries on with life. Find out what happens to Nevermind and how he begins to understand that his feelings do matter, how he learns to express them and stand up for himself.

At this challenging developmental stage, when teenagers are finding things difficult, this book can really help. It is full of tools and techniques of what to say and how to be, enabling teenagers to move from unhappiness, poor functioning or learning blocks, to a place of self-awareness, self esteem and the ability to thrive. The first part of the book offers a key assessment tool, namely 'The Teenager Well-Being Profile'. This is designed for people to easily assess just how well the teenager is doing in their life emotionally and relationally. If the teenager is messing up in some areas, the Well-Being Profile will show clearly which life skill he or she has not yet mastered. The accompanying, empowering worksheets address key feelings, issues and concerns common to teenagers. The worksheets enable adults to be with the teenager in a confident, non-embarrassing and effective way so that the conversation flows. This book provides a real opportunity for transformational conversations that will really make a difference.

This is a guidebook to help children who: are insecure or worry too much; suffer from phobias or nightmares find it difficult to concentrate to let go and have fun have suffered a trauma; are worryingly good or seem like little adults use order and routine as a way of coping with 'messy' feelings retreat into dullness as a way of managing their being in the world and, develop obsessive-compulsive behaviour in order to ward off their too-powerful feelings.

This is a story for children who are anxious or obsessional. Willy is an anxious boy who experiences the world as a very unsafe, wobbly place where anything awful might happen at any time. Joe, the boy next door, is too ordered and tidy to be able to ever really enjoy life. Follow their adventures with the Puddle People who help them break out of their fixed patterns and find far richer ways of living in the world.

This practical handbook begins with the philosophy and psychology underpinning the therapeutic value of story telling. It shows how to use story telling as a therapeutic tool with children and how to make an effective response when a child tells a story to you. It is an essential accompaniment to the "Helping Children with Feelings" series and covers issues such as: Why story telling is such a good way of helping children with their feelings? What resources you may need in a story-telling session? How to construct your own therapeutic story for a child? What to do when children tell stories to you? Things to do and say when working with a child's story.

Now in a fully updated second edition, this professional guidebook has been created to help adults provide emotional support for children who have experienced the loss of somebody they know, or something they loved. Written in an accessible style and with a sensitive tone, Helping Children with Loss provides adults with a rich vocabulary for mental states and painful emotions, paving the way for meaningful and healing conversations with children who are struggling with difficult feelings. Practical activities provide opportunities for conversation and will empower the child to find creative and imaginative ways of expressing themselves when words fail. Key features of this resource include: Targeted advice for children who defend against feeling their painful feelings by dissociating from grief Tools and strategies for helping children cope with loss, including engaging activities to help children explore their feelings in a non-threatening way Photocopiable and downloadable resources to help facilitate support Written by a leading child psychotherapist with over thirty years' experience, this book will support children to develop emotional literacy and connect with unresolved feelings affecting their behaviour. It is an essential resource for anybody supporting children aged 4-12 who have experienced loss.

Draw on Your Relationships is a bestselling resource to help people of all ages express, communicate and deal more effectively with their emotions through drawing. Built around five key themes, each section contains a simple picture exercise with clear objectives, instructions and suggestions for development. The picture activities have been carefully designed to help ease the process of both talking about feelings and exploring life choices, by trying out alternatives safely on paper. This will help to create clarity and new perspectives as a step towards positive action. Offering a broad range of exercises which can be adapted for any ability or age from middle childhood onwards, this unique book explores a range of emotions surrounding a person's important life experiences, key memories, relationships, best times, worst times and who they are as a person. This is an essential resource for therapists, educators, counsellors and anyone who engages other people in conversations that matter about their relationship to self, others and life in general. This revised and updated second edition also contains a new section on how to use the superbly emotive The Relationship Cards (ISBN 9781138071018) to facilitate deeper therapeutic conversations.

Understand key stages in your child's development and discover effective parenting strategies from experts in education and neuroscience. What Every Parent Needs to Know delves into the latest research on child brain development and applies it to real-life scenarios that all parents face. This isn't one person's opinion or experience of parenting. Director of Education at the Centre for Child Mental Health, Margot Sunderland, together with research from Professor Jaak Panksepp, who has studied the emotional brain for over 30 years, presents evidence-based strategies for parents looking for trusted information and guidance on how best to raise their family. Alongside detailed information on how the child's brain works, anatomical illustrations present the science while case studies and Q and As apply the science to everyday situations. Parenting strategies span from sleep training your newborn right through to soothing your 12-year-old, addressing separation, anxiety, social development and more. This book not only focuses on your child's needs but also on yours as a parent with advice on looking after yourself too. New material on child mental health completes this new edition making it the ultimate parenting tome.

Combined set of Draw on Your Emotions and The Emotions Cards. Draw on Your Emotions is a bestselling resource to help people of all ages express, communicate and deal more effectively with their emotions through drawing. Built around five key themes, each section contains a simple picture exercise with clear objectives, instructions and suggestions for development. The picture activities have been carefully designed to help ease the process of both talking about feelings and exploring life choices, by trying out alternatives safely on paper. This will help to create clarity and new perspectives as a step towards positive action. The second edition of Draw on Your Emotions contains a new section that explains how to get the most out of combining the activities in the book with these cards to encourage meaningful conversations and take steps towards positive action. The Emotion Cards are 48 emotive and artistic images designed to help people to review their emotions and their relationships in a meaningful and often transformative way. The cards are designed to capture the deeper truth of how people experience their life, offering poignant descriptions for what someone may be feeling.

The Frog Who Longed for the Moon to Smile is a story for children who yearn for someone they love. Frog is very much in love with the moon because she once smiled at him. So now he spends all his time dreaming about her. He waits and waits for her to smile at him again. One day a wise and friendly crow helps frog to see how he is wasting his life away. All the time he has been facing the place of very little, he's had his back to the place of plenty.

How Hattie Hated Kindness is a story for children locked in rage or hate. Hattie lives by herself on an island. She likes sharks, and crabs and stinging centipedes. She likes anything hard and spiky. Lots of people try to bring kindness to Hattie on her island, but each time she is very horrid to them, smashing and spoiling everything they try to do for her. So after a while they all stop coming to the island. Hattie is very alone. So she sits by the water's edge and tries to figure out why she hates love and loves hate. She thinks it must be because she is a very bad girl indeed. But the lapping water-over-her-toes helps Hattie to understand that because she'd been a very sad and frightened little girl in a too hard world, she had become hard too, so that the awful fear and the awful pain would go away. The lapping-water-over-her-toes helps Hattie to move from cruel to kind. In the end, Hattie builds a bridge to the warm and cosy world across the water.

Ruby hates herself so much that she often feels more like a piece of rubbish than a little girl. Children at school bully her. Sometimes Ruby feels so miserable that she wants to sleep and sleep and never wake up again. Then one day, Ruby meets Dot the lunchtime lady, When Ruby feels Dot's kindness and understanding, something warm happens in Ruby's tummy. Over time, Dot helps Ruby to move from self-hate to self-respect. In fact Dot's smile makes Ruby feel like a princess. After a very important dream, and help from Dot, Ruby decides enough is enough. She finds her voice and her anger, and stands up to the bullies. She makes new friends and knows what it's like to feel happy for the first time in her life.

Draw on Your Emotions is a bestselling resource to help people of all ages express, communicate and deal more effectively with their emotions through drawing. Built around five key themes, each section contains a simple picture exercise with clear objectives, instructions and suggestions for development. The picture activities have been carefully designed to help ease the process of both talking about feelings and exploring life choices, by trying out alternatives safely on paper. This will help to create clarity and new perspectives as a step towards positive action. Offering a broad range of exercises which can be adapted for any ability or age from middle childhood onwards, this unique book explores a range of emotions surrounding a person(1)s important life experiences, key memories, relationships, best times, worst times and who they are as a person. This is an essential resource for therapists, educators, counsellors and anyone who engages other people in conversations that matter about their relationship to self, others and life in general. This revised and updated second edition also contains a new section on how to use the superbly emotive The Emotion Cards (9781138070981) to facilitate deeper therapeutic conversations.

This is a story for children with troubled parents. Monica has a horrid problem. It gets everywhere: into her schoolwork, her dreams, and her ability to make friends. People keep telling her to cheer up. She can't. She feels as if she is carrying around some very heavy luggage. Then one day, a helpful teacher sees how miserable Monica is, and tells her about the knights in the world, who are posing as people. In a whispering wood, Monica finds some of these knights. They teach her how to make her problem far less horrid. In particular they show her how to cope when other people's problems weigh you down and make you feel miserable. Most importantly they show her how to do life well. Monica leaves whispering wood feeling empowered and ready to face what she could not face before.

So many children and young people in our society are hurting. Research indicates that more children are depressed, anxious or locked in anger than ever before, with all the problems that creates at home, school and in society at large when emotional pain gets expressed through behaviour or physical symptoms. Many well-intentioned adults really want to help when children suffer because of parental conflict, divorce, family financial worries, loss and bereavement, trauma, bullying, isolation, general growing up issues, and worse. But we often lack the confidence and key skills to know how to help in ways that will genuinely support the child or teenager to properly process what is troubling them, and so reach a more positive place of genuine hope and optimism. Conversations that Matter, the latest book by Margot Sunderland, offers a wealth of tools and techniques to empower parents and practitioners to connect to children and young people through conversation, in life changing ways.Dr Sunderland is widely acknowledged as one of the UK's leading experts in child counselling and therapy, as well as being a best-selling author of books for parents and professionals and co-founder of both the Institute of Arts in Therapy and Education and The Centre for Child Mental Health, London. Her life's work has been to find the most effective ways of helping children and young people in distress, underpinning her practice with cutting-edge findings from the fields of affective neuroscience, developmental psychology and the study of trauma. She is also a passionate advocate for the healing power of the creative arts as a means to reach troubled children, when words are not enough. This long-awaited book will give readers a thorough, evidence-based and inspiring grounding in every aspect of talking with children who are hurting, from how to build a trusting relationship with the child, how to deepen the dialogue between you and make it meaningful, when to work directly or indirectly, how to handle the various inevitable challenges that will arise when talking to children about the difficult stuff, and more.Packed with creative possibilities, and illustrated with numerous 'conversations', this book can be re-turned to again and again whilst helping children and young people work through any life issue, past or present. The book also contains photocopiable worksheets, and introduces a completely new therapeutic story specifically written to help children who are struggling with trauma and shock. Dr Sunderland's book will be of benefit to professionals as well as parents, carers and other adults who want the conversations they have with children and teenagers to genuinely help, and to matter.

A Wibble Called Bipley is story for children who have hardened their hearts or become bullies. Bipley is a warm cuddly creature, but someone has broken his heart. He feels so hurt that he decides it is just too painful to ever love again. When he meets some big tough Honks in the wood, they teach him how to harden his heart so that he doesn't have to feel hurt any more. Luckily Bipley meets some creatures who teach him how he can protect himself without hardening his heart.

This is a guidebook to help children who: have been given too little encouragement to follow their hopes and dreams are too despondent or defeated to go after their hopes or their dreams are too busy surviving, so hopes and dreams are a luxury they cannot afford think that hopes and dreams are just for other people do not follow their dreams because they are too afraid of failing are following somebody else's star; and, only dream small dreams for themselves, from a fear of being big.

A guidebook to help children who: worry a lot or exhibit signs of ongoing anxiety experience the world as an unsafe place suffer from phobias, obsessions or nightmares are scared to tell someone that they are scared know a terrible loneliness feel insignificant in a world of adult giants feel defeated by life or need help in being assertive and feel so impotent that their only way to feel any potency is to be mute.

This is a guidebook to help children who: hurt, hit, bite, smash, kick, shout, scream or who are out of control, hyperaroused or hyperactive can only discharge their angry feelings in verbal or physical attacks, rather than being able to think about and reflect on what they feel are angry because it is easier than feeling hurt or sad are locked in anger or rage because of sibling rivalry are controlling and punitive regularly defy authority or are diagnosed with a conduct disorder commit cold acts of cruelty, hurt animals or do not cry any more; spoil, damage or destroy what others do or make create fear in others because they have locked away their own fears do not want to please people, cannot trust, have stopped looking for love or approval or truly believe they do not need anyone do not really know how to 'like' someone; and, definitely do not know how to love someone or are affectionate only if they want something.

This is a guidebook to help children who: don't like themselves or feel there is something fundamentally wrong with them have been deeply shamed have received too much criticism or haven't been encouraged enough let people treat them badly because they feel they don't deserve better do not accept praise or appreciation because they feel they don't deserve it feel defeated by life, fundamentally unimportant, unwanted or unlovable bully because they think they are worthless or think they are worthless because they are bullied and feel they don't belong or do not seek friends because they think no-one would want to be their friend.

One day Teenie Weenie finds himself in a scrumbly screechy place. It is full of noises and crashes and things that swoop and scratch. The worse it gets, the smaller Teenie Weenie feels. After a while, he feels so small that the tiniest insect tries to eat him up. Teenie Weenie feels terrified and desperately alone. But after a while along strolls a Wip-Wop bird who invites Teenie Weenie to come and have a chocolate muffin in his tree house. With the Wip Wop bird and his friend Hoggie, Teenie Weenie learns for the first time in his life all about the power of TOGETHER. He comes to know how very different things look when it's an US not just a ME. And so after that, whenever Teenie Weenie finds himself struggling alone with something too difficult or too frightening, he goes off and finds some TOGETHER.