As some of you may know, I am the Kids' zone host at the Clean and Tidy Home Show and part of that is to introduce amazing authors on to the stage. It was wonderful to meet Chris Dixon and his amazing books on feelings, that help our children to communicate how they are feeling and support parents and caregivers on the tools we can use for emotional intelligence and self-regulation.
As with my first book, I believe there is MORE TO BOOKS THAN READING, so it is wonderful to introduce this guest blog with Chris Dixon.
How did your books come about?
My journey of becoming an author began through challenges I’ve had with mental health, predominately chronic anxiety and depression. During the COVID pandemic I started to struggle - I was fortunate enough to see a therapist. Something my therapist helped me identify was that I was unable to identify or articulate how I was feeling or why. Over many sessions, I gained confidence with expressing how certain situations impacted me whilst also validating that I was feeling certain emotions - from sadness to anger.
The therapy got me through a tough time and also motivated me to explore how we learn emotional awareness and intelligence. Going back to my childhood, and also looking at the Western world around me, it seemed that education about emotions was at best lacklustre. At worst, it has been entirely absent. Combined with my love for illustration that I discovered as a child, I embarked on creating my first children’s book called That’s Okay.
What do children learn from your book?
That’s Okay has a number of aims as an educational resource.
1. It helps children get to grips with emotional intelligence skills so they can identify what things upset them, or make them happy. It also fosters compassion where children can identify feelings of others.
2. It destigmatises emotions we can perceive as negative. This stigma can result in feeling unnecessary shame on top of that emotion. When we feel shame with an emotion, it makes it more difficult to talk about it which may mean we suppress it. By suppressing emotions, we can make them feel worse (such as anger).
3. It also acts as a communication tool for parents, children and those who work with children. They can use the colourful creatures in the book as guides on how the child is feeling.
The book has been particularly effective in SEN settings and with neurodivergent children. Because every couple of pages follow the same layout (rather than a story), they provide a sense of familiarity and safety which helps the child feel at ease and absorb the information.
The creatures themselves have realistic expressions, and there are practical examples that accompany each character to help children learn how they may experience each feeling.
What is next?
I’ve now created other books based on That’s Okay to expand on the emotional intelligence toolset for children.
The second book in the series, called That Feels Earthmazing, helps children tackle any future climate anxiety by encouraging environmental stewardship. In addition to this I’ve produced That’s Calm (a guided meditation book), That’s Happy (a rhyming storybook about how being kind to others can bring them up from feeling down) and That’s Alright (a teenage and adult version of That’s Okay).Collaborations with other people looking to produce their first children’s books also have ties to the series:- That’s Grief - A book made with ELSA Michelle Barton on helping children with the emotions that come with grief- That’s My Money - Maddy Alexendar-Grout, an ADHD Money Coach, and I created this story book that teaches children terms about money.- Climate Change Stories: Polar Bear - A story written by a Dutch student about a polar bear talking about the climate crisis to the government. I worked with Rembrandt Zegers on this.- Ride the Rickshaw: A charity book in partnership with Arc Shopping Centre, Bury St Edmunds, to raise money for rickshaw volunteers who take people with mobility issues round the town. I’d like to keep continuing to make books in the mental health space.
How can we ensure we organise our day to regulate our feelings?
I always feel that when there are lots to do in a single day, which can happen quite often, it can become overwhelming quickly. For example when I have many tasks for work, being self-employed, they can spill out into when we should be resting and relaxing. When it gets busy, and I can feel myself getting stressed at the seemingly endless amount of tasks, I make a quick list on my computer to determine which ones are the highest priority. If they are low priority, and the list looks large, I will see which ones I can move to the next day if I run out of time. I will then work on some smaller tasks between other ones so I can tick a few off in short spaces of time. This then becomes quite cathartic and gives a feeling of achievement quickly, making it easier to stay motivated to work through the day. By creating the list at the beginning of the day, it can rapidly relieve the stress of feeling overburdened and change the mood of the day entirely. I think that overwhelm can lead to procrastination, making the situation worse the next day!
I organise rooms and routines with children in mind, across all the areas of learning. One of which is managing feelings and behaviours.
What routines can we do to support our children to self-regulate?
I remember as a child that strong time-management was not a skill I had - it was something I had to learn to adopt later in life, especially for self-employment. However, I have had suffered from anxiety and depression before my self-employed days began and routine would have helped me manage this far better, if not help prevent it in the first place. So I think it’s essential that children learn routine and time-management skills to help them feel like they are achieving and not feeling overwhelmed.
When planning a day as a parent, discussing with the child what they want to do and what you have planned, and creating a list together, can be a great way to teach routine and time-management skills at a young age. This also gives a sense of control for the child over their day and an understanding that some things can take longer than others. By having a regular routine of planning together, this can make the child feel comfortable and safe, and as a result more able to regulate their emotions thanks to a lack of surprises.
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