Emotion management picture books

Emotion management picture books are neither a "panacea" that can solve the problem of children acting out in one click, nor are they "chicken placebos" that pay IQ taxes. They are essentially a "cognitive scaffolding" for young children to complete emotional recognition and learn emotional expression. Whether the final effect is good or not depends on the adaptability of the content, and 7 points depends on how parents use it.

I have been in the parent-child reading promotion industry for almost 4 years. I have reviewed at least 400 emotional picture books. I have seen too many parents place orders with the expectation that "after buying a baby, they will no longer roll around and cry". After reading it twice and seeing no results, they threw it into a corner to gather dust. , I have also seen a 3-year-old girl lose her temper and after her mother said a few words, she squatted on the corner of the sofa and touched the cover of "Feifei is Angry" for 5 minutes, then turned around and said to her mother, "I was like Feifei just now, there was a big fireball in my heart, and now it is extinguished."

To be honest, this category has always been quite controversial in the industry, and can even be divided into two schools that have been arguing for several years.

Those who work on the application of child development psychology belong to the "function-first group" and believe that the core value of emotional picture books is to make abstract emotions concrete, and it is best to provide children with practical coping methods - after all, children under 3 years old simply cannot understand "You have to control your emotions" "This kind of abstract principle, you draw anger as a little red monster running around, and draw sadness as a little blue monster with droopy ears. When he touches his chest and feels panic, he can immediately respond to "Oh, I have a red monster running around now", which is already a big improvement. I went to a public kindergarten in Hangzhou to do a shared reading activity. The teacher read "Angry Soup" to the middle class children. Three children came home that day and said to their mothers, "I am angry today. I want to make soup and shout at it."

However, most people who create children's literature do not accept this and belong to the "literature-first school". The most annoying thing is to turn picture books into "emotional behavior instructions". They feel that the essence of emotional picture books that are too functional is to discipline children. Even if they are angry or sad, they must follow standard answers, which will stifle children's perception of emotions. Two years ago, a picture book called "Don't Lose Your Temper" was scolded on the blacklist of the maternal and child circle. It directly stated, "No child who throws a tantrum will want to play with you." This is equivalent to directly labeling negative emotions as "wrong." A mother complained to me that after reading her 4-year-old child, she became angry and did not dare to cry or say anything, so she secretly bit her own sleeve, holding it in until her face turned red. She was so frightened that she quickly threw the book to the scrapyard.

In fact, I really want to say that there is no absolute good or bad, it all depends on the fit. For example, if your child is just 2 years old and is in the sensitive period of property rights, she is not very good at talking and will just lie on the floor and roll around if she cannot get a toy. If you read her a literary picture book that is full of humanistic care and does not even mention the word "emotion", she will not get it at all. Instead, read "My Emotional Monster", a young picture book that makes emotions into dolls of different colors. She will immediately be able to point to her chest and say "red monster". At least she has completed the first step of "recognizing emotions", which is better than anything else. When the child reaches five or six years old and can already understand the subtext behind the story, reading to him a work such as "Last Stop on Market Street" that does not have a single sentence of preaching but hides the core of "how to find small blessings in unsatisfactory things" will be much better than telling big truths directly.

Many people think that emotional picture books are useless. The essence is that they use the wrong way to open them - it is not effective if you just throw it to your child and let him turn it over twice. The best use scenario is actually when an emotional event happens to happen. My best friend just told me about something last month. Her 5-year-old son sat on the roadside crying out of breath because he couldn't buy the mango pancake he wanted to eat when he went out. Before, she would have either said impatiently, "Why are you crying? I'll buy it next time," or she would have compromised and gone further. She bought it from a store, and that day she happened to have a copy of "It's Okay to Cry" that she just bought in her bag. She held the baby and sat on the steps by the roadside, flipping through it. While flipping through it, she said, "Look, this kid is also crying because he can't eat the cake he wants to eat. Are you feeling sore and bloated right now, especially uncomfortable?" ”The baby nodded immediately, cried for two minutes, then wiped his tears and said, "I'm done crying, I'll buy it next time." It only took ten minutes in total, which was much better than half an hour before.

I now recommend emotional picture books to my friends, and I never make a must-read list. I only have one standard: reading them will not make the children feel that "it is wrong for me to be angry or sad." After all, we adults are still unable to maintain a stable mood every day. Even if we are scolded by the boss at work, we have to emote for a long time. Why do we ask a child of a few years old to read two picture books and become a perfect child who neither cries nor makes a fuss? If he is willing to tell you "I have a red monster in my heart now" the next time he is angry, then these dozens of dollars will be well spent, and what else will he need for a bicycle?