Episode 2: Developing Emotional Literacy in Children Through Books and Play

The episode of “Pages and Play” focuses on emotional literacy as central to bibliotherapy and play therapy, emphasising that children need language and safety to understand and express feelings, and that adults’ own emotional awareness is vital. We discuss how books and play provide safe ways to explore big emotions (anger, grief, anxiety, jealousy) and reduce shame, supporting co-regulation and later self-regulation. 

We reference theories and research from Claude Steiner, Daniel Goleman, and Mia Kellmer Pringle on emotional security and learning. We discuss how hide-and-seek and the Hansel and Gretel fairytale illustrate how a child can process separation anxiety, attachment needs, and autonomy, alongside the importance of validating feelings. Practical prompts include body-based questions and open-ended reading discussions, plus book recommendations for children, teens, parents and caregivers.

Learn how books from renowned authors like Brené Brown, Tom Percival, and Mark Wolynn can guide both adults and children through the complex landscape of emotional development. Whether you’re seeking guidance for yourself or your child, you’ll find resources to nurture self-awareness, compassion, and connection within your family.

00:00 Emotional Literacy Basics

01:21 Why Words Matter

02:28 Emotional Literacy Research and Foundations

04:01 Play Therapy Goals

04:50 Lessons from Hide and Seek

06:57 The Use of Fairytales in Bibliotherapy and Play Therapy

07:58 Hansel and Gretel Case Study

10:08 Characters as Containers

13:58 Multiplicity of Feelings

19:38 Body Signals and Questions

22:15 Building Secure Attachment through Hide and Seek

27:06 Back to the Hansel and Gretel Case Story

35:21 Imagination & Executive Skills

37:51 Bibliotherapy Reading Tools

42:47 Book Recommendations

51:59 Closing Takeaways

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Hi everyone, welcome back to Pages and Play, the power of bibliotherapy and play therapy on young minds. Today we want to talk about something that sits right at the heart of both bibliotherapy and play therapy, which is emotional literacy. So emotional literacy is not just about naming feelings, it's about helping children and the adults around them understand what's happening inside, making sense of it, and feeling safe enough to express it.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

When you were saying that, Pidjol, it's so important that if you think of a child growing up not understanding their emotions and what's happening inside of them, and not feeling safe and healthy enough to be able to express that, then you can end up with adults that don't understand what they're feeling or their emotions.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Yes, 100%. I think that whole point about adults knowing themselves, having an awareness of emotions and what they mean, and just a general understanding of emotional literacy, they are absolutely vital to the child's development of emotional literacy. And I feel that books and play are two of the most powerful ways that we can do that. Children only process what they have the language for. And if a child doesn't have the words for anger or grief or anxiety or overwhelm, those really heavy bodily emotions, then those feelings often play out in their everyday behavior. And so what stories and play do so beautifully is give children this safe language, language that says you're not bad, you're feeling something big that's perhaps bigger than you are, and but especially allow them to explore these very negative emotions, which we can argue that they're either negative or positive, depending on the context, but these really big emotions such as anger, jealousy, sadness, without the fear of punishment or without feeling anxious about expressing them. So play really enables these emotions to move through the body in a way that feels very contained. And Freya, I know you're the play expert and the play therapist. I'd love to hear a bit more about the theory behind it as well.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

Yeah, absolutely. So Sophia Mare defined emotional literacy as a form of social intelligence that helps people distinguish between their emotions and the actions. It focuses on processing emotional information. Research has shown that the brain, especially the prefrontal cortex, is crucial in managing our emotions, our attention, our self-awareness, and highlights the strong links between the sensory input and feelings. So the term emotional literacy implies that these skills can be taught and improved through nurturing.

SPEAKER_02 4:09

Yeah, that's so interesting. And just to add to that, Daniel Goleman later popularized the concept, arguing that emotional and social intelligence are both vital for success at work and in life. And in particular, you have the psychologist Kelma Pringle, who in 1986 continued to build on the work of Maslow's hierarchy to suggest that children need emotional security to learn effectively. And without feeling safe, children are less likely to take these risks, essential for learning, and many require support to build resilience and confidence in the face of these challenges. Freya, I don't know if you'd like to start with the importance of play therapy in developing emotional literacy. Obviously, you've just touched on it, but it probably deserves a bigger conversation.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah, absolutely. So, yes, so in terms of developing emotional literacy, the ability to express their feelings, this is a very common goal for parents and carers starting their childhood play therapy. So often a child and adults will express their emotions through behavior. Okay, so behavior is a form of communication. You may have heard that, and it's so true. So we frequently begin by supporting parents and carers to create a space for a child, a safe space for them to be that child to communicate all the emotions. So including even those ones, but Joe you were saying the commonly labelled negative ones, and through play, these emotions can be acted out, and we can help give the child the words for what they're experiencing. So in this episode, I thought it would be helpful to tell you a little story about a young girl and the game of hide and seek. So in hide and seek, like many childhood games, children are offered opportunities to build their emotional literacy through play. The game provides a natural setting for children to learn, recognize, label, and express their feelings. So if you think about how the game of hide and seek unfolds, you have the child finding themselves in the flurry of anticipation and excitement as they try and find the perfect hiding space, whether that's slipping behind a curtain or ducking underneath the table, and the child's heart is pounding, the thrill of not being found at that they found the perfect hiding place. And in this moment, they are both alone and independent. They're experiencing a brief but meaningful separation from either their peers or from their caregiver. And this childhood game has a real natural progression. You'll see it when infants are really young, they'll play peekaboo. So they're learning about object permanency there, and then it naturally evolves into hide and seek and then into more complex games of tag as the child develops and grows. And adults participating, they've got a real opportunity here to demonstrate vulnerability in their emotions. So they can show their child how they're managing their feelings. So the anticipation of where are they? Where am I going to find them? Am I going to find them? All these things can be safely explored within this game. So again, like I said, it really does give an opportunity for children to see all the emotions and for them to be valid and manageable. So it's really common when we're using play for children to use fictional characters and personas during their play, as these imaginary figures often help them make sense of their experiences and their emotions through presenting their narrative through the lens of a fictional character. So, Bidjil, for this story, I am going to use the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel, but Gretel. And children in play therapy often use fairy tales and well-known stories to play out their concerns completely non-directive.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Yes, I love the use of fairy tales in bibliotherapy as well, because they're timeless and they always have so many lessons that continue to apply even to this day, no matter how old or ancient they are. In fact, I have a course on fairy tales called Freud and Fairy Tales, which explores some of the meanings behind these fairy tales in more details. And a handsaw is a brilliant one to use. There's so much in there in terms of abandonment and the fear of the devouring witch, who could be like the devouring mother. But anyway, I'm not going to hijack your story, but I won't 100% resonate in using these fairy tales.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

They have such a gem of metaphors and things going on. They're just a treasure box, all these things. Absolutely. Yeah, so like I said, I thought I'd start with Gretel and Hansel. So they are siblings and they're living with their parents, their father and their mother. They're living deep in the woods, and their father is a woodcutter, but they're really having significant challenges. Okay, they're really struggling with the scarcity of food. The crops haven't been good that year, and they're really struggling with poverty. All four of them are living within these conditions, and it's a real struggle. And one day, Gretel's father decides that actually she needs to come to therapy. She's become really attached to her father, and she is refusing to let him go. So whenever he goes to work every day in the woods, she's pulling on him, she's crying, she's doing everything to make sure that he stays at home. She does not want to stay at home with the mother when he leaves, whenever this happens. So as she starts play therapy, she's really reluctant to let Dad go. Okay, so it's a real struggle for her going from the waiting room to the playroom. And then as she slowly starts to tentatively come into the room, she's really exploring the room. She's checking out the environment, everything about it. She wants to know what's going on. But she's really drawn to the natural material. We've got some mud, some sand there, and she's really interested in putting that on her skin. And then she sees the play um food, and she's making sure that she knows all the food is there, and making sure it's in little mounds around the room and where it is, and making sure that it's hidden, and only she knows where it is. And then she starts to start to play the game hide and seek. So it's really important for her that she is hidden and I'm the one seeking. And this game is played in numerous ways all the time, okay, at this beginning stage. So we're playing one game after another. And it may be that she's making noises for me to find her, or it may be that she stays completely silent, or it may be that she runs from one place to another, but she stays hidden, and I need to wait until she's ready for me to find her. Virgin, I was wondering if you find that children and adults that you work with find their own fictional characters or worlds and then work within them, and how that might explain or develop their understanding of their emotions? Yeah, that's a great question.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Thanks for it. So children and adults absolutely relate to characters in literature to connect with their own emotions, and that's enabled by the recognition of similar emotions that are felt by the character. So they naturally will gravitate to them, either in fiction or non-fiction, sometimes when we use graphic novel memoirs, for example. And then when the work is non-directive, these figures often become containers for feelings that might be too complicated, frightening, or vulnerable to express directly. So for children, you might have a superhero or a dragon who can safely hold these emotions like anger or fear or loneliness. And by moving the character through these situations, the child can themselves experiment with solutions such as either to rescue themselves or avenge or repair. And because the character is having to experience these, the child's getting sufficient emotional distance to stay calm, to stay regulated, to not be too triggered by these emotions while still expressing something that's very real. And then, of course, adults do something similar. So to remind parents that sometimes when we are resonating with a character's emotions in literature or in film, people that we really strongly identify with, we can see parts of ourselves in these personalities. And we ourselves can almost imagine these scenes, or we'll get drawn back into these uh stories to think about, oh well, this character did this, or what would I have done in that situation? And we are safely exploring these in our own minds through our imaginations or through journaling, and so we're exploring these emotional truths in a really similar way. And children do the same. We're externalizing some of our own emotions through these stories, and then that allows us to process them in a more calmer way, it gives us that psychological distance, it allows us to be a little bit more disconnected from that in a way that feels easier to process. I feel that it's something we can't just learn it through reading a book, but we have to also experience it and relate it back to ourselves. And that's the whole point about leveraging literature to deal with our own emotions and navigate our own emotions. And when we see adults role modeling this, naming their emotions, giving them labels, learning to be calm even when we are feeling really angry, we're really modeling this regulation in real time. And characters are also doing this in literature. So, this is of course guiding the child in terms of how to deal with something that might be really difficult, like anger or sadness, but also be allowed to openly share them with an adult who's talking about these emotions as well with them. And I assume that play therapy obviously works in a really similar way where the adult helps the child co-regulate their emotions by giving the emotions labels and demonstrating or illustrating how to deal with them through an example they might have seen in a piece of literature, and then the child then learns from that, and then it learns to self-regulate as well. This lesson then becomes that feelings are safe and very manageable and not something to be scared of or to shy away from.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Yeah, absolutely. It's about learning co-regulation, and then the child's able to do that self-regulation afterwards. Vigil, I was really interested in bibliotherapy and how it approaches children learning about the multiplicity of emotions because it often strikes me as an adult that we talk to children about one emotion at a time, which isn't really realistic. We tend to experience several emotions at once.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

Yeah, that's so right. It's never standalone, is it? There's always a multitude of things that are going on, and that unpacking is really key.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

It is so key. It always really strikes me. Even as adults, we spend quite a lot of our time trying to work out how we're feeling. And sometimes, like you said, those emotions can be quite conflicting. We can often feel excitement and anxiety at the same time. They're very close. For instance, starting this podcast series. I'm so excited to be talking with you, but I'm also really nervous because this is a whole new thing to me doing podcasts, but I'm also feeling really energized when I'm discussing things I think really matter. And there's also another part of me that's really reflective because I'm thinking about myself as a playtherist, but also as an adult and a mother, and also reflecting back on how I felt as a child. So, how does bibliotherapy approach this? Does it help for children to build their understanding of the multiplicity of emotions?

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Yeah, that's uh such an important part of therapy, the multiplicity of emotions. And I feel that books are actually one of the best tools we have because you're right, characters rarely feel just one thing at a time. When we think of a child starting school in a story, they might be excited or frightened or curious or homesick, and literature then allows the child to know that those feelings and that complexity is completely normal, but also that you might be feeling all of these things at the same time all at once. And so the literature might say, or might be pointing to the child and saying, instead of telling, don't cry or don't be angry, it's showing that these are the emotions that the child's feeling, and it's almost inviting the child to express how they might be feeling right now and explore the two feelings that are coexisting or three feelings that are coexisting, and then showing them that it's okay to feel this. And this shift is really powerful in bringing the child to the story because it's allowing the child to recognize this range of feelings and explore them in a really safe space, and then giving them the language to label those emotions and maybe take it to an adult to talk about or draw it on a piece of paper or write it down. And oftentimes when children don't have this, that's when the emotions start to feel really overwhelming because they don't have the language, they don't have the words, they don't have the tools to express it and write it down, talk about it. So bibliotherapy brings all of this together as does play therapy, and then these stories are expanding the emotional vocabulary of the child, introducing them to new experiences like disappointment and jealousy and anxiety and jealousy is all over literature. You can always fight it in some book or some novel. It's such a major emotion when it comes to literature.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

I would imagine that's incredibly helpful because with things like jealousy, we can quickly go into shame spirals. So actually having books that normalize these emotions that we tend to not talk about is so helpful.

SPEAKER_02 18:53

Yes, exactly. It's getting away from that spiral of shame that it's not shameful to feel some of these more controversial emotions like jealousy and envy. They do advocate for feelings to be shared as something to be processed and honored rather than as a problem to solve. They're all part of us being human. A character is allowed to miss home, but also enjoy the adventure, as is the child who perhaps is starting school. Or it's okay to totally love a sibling and also be angry with them at the same time. There's all these cognitive dissonances that we feel that we're allowed to hold these two difficult emotions together, no matter how contrarian they may seem. They can be brave while scared or have the courage to do something that's quite anxiety-provoking. So, like you said, this all reduces the shame and the pressure to simplify their inner world and allows them to embrace the messiness of life and the acceptance that perhaps not everything needs to be resolved. And sometimes we just need to be able to sit with our feelings. And also, just to add to that, stories allow this transition and the change to be explored as well, because as we go through a story, feelings evolve and they change and they transform, their feeling is ever permanent, it's very transient and in passing. And so a child learns that we all have emotions which may initially feel heavy, but their intensity will reduce over time. You have to give things time, and time does heal a lot of our wounds, and also lead to possible growth as a result of accepting them and moving forward. So the child gets the message that emotions are temporary but survivable, even if complicated. I think teaching children these things through literature is important, and also to illustrate that sometimes we might be feeling it in our body first, and the importance of learning to understand these body signals, and then relate that back to how the character might be feeling because often literature uses all these metaphors of my heart sank, or I could feel my tummy rumbling when we're anxious. I think literature also highlights to children that you might be feeling these emotions in your body first, even before you can verbalize them through tummy aches and headaches and restlessness, or this desire to hit something or throw something, or feeling anger. This also reminds me of the Bessel Vanderkock book, The Body Keeps the Score, which I'm sure a lot of us have come across it. But it's this wonderful non-fiction book on how so much trauma is stored in the body and how the body is also a vessel for emotions. And I think play especially also highlights how children might feel things through their body first before verbalizing it. So I know, Freya, you use a lot of therapeutic stories in your work. Therapeutic stories are wonderful in helping children notice what worry looks like in their body and where anger lives, and giving the body essentially a voice through movement, sensory play, and symbolism when we don't have the words yet. So, what I would like today to parents is use the following four questions, which you might want to jot down, is ask the child what might they be feeling in their body, what might they be worried could happen next, what are they hoping for, and what do they need right now, or what might they need right now, and then getting the child to respond to these questions through one of the following, whether that's drawing the feeling or whatever it is that's coming to mind, or writing down their feelings, and also exploring their feelings and pretend play or role play and using toys and soundtrace, which Fraya, I'm sure you will advocate, or making a feelings map. Fraya, just going back to your Hide and seek example, because I have very fond memories of playing hide and seek, and all of the emotions that you mentioned that a child goes through when playing this game, you were 100% spot on. Those are all the emotions that I have certainly felt when playing hide and seek. I think it's such a powerful tool in play therapy, and I'd love for you to just expand on it a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Yeah, absolutely. And now I just wanted to pick up on loads of things you were saying, but definitely that Bessel Vanderkook and talking about it all being there in the body, and we see that obviously a lot within the playroom. And when Gretel's coming in and she's playing with the mud, and the mud is going all on our hands and up her arms, and that deep sensory play is something that is very much explored. You're getting very much to the root of how you're feeling in your body and those emotions. It's more than what you can see as a game, and actually, I highly recommend it as an adult because you'll still feel those emotions playing it as an adult. It is actively, like I said, nurturing the child's emotional literacy. It provides hands-on practice of being independent in a safe way. There is that joy of reunification every time, and that can be repeated and repeated, and that's why Greta was doing it at the beginning so many times. Do you remember when a toddler's two or three, and you go out and you have a coffee, and your toddler will sit stand by your knees and then they'll go off a little bit and then they'll come back to you, and they can go a little bit further and then come back to you.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

I feel like children still do that.

SPEAKER_01 24:48

Absolutely. So that's the circle of security, and children will do that and they'll go a bit further and a bit further. And hide and seek probably does all of that as well, is making sure that you're still going to be there. You're still looking for them, or you're still going to be there when they go off and come back again. So you can really start to see those things are the making of that secure attachment that you're looking for all the time when they're young. But hide and seek is also about encouraging children to understand other people's viewpoints. They start to listen to you and where you might be going next or what you're looking for in them. So you can say, Oh, I'm really missing them. I miss spending time with them, and they really enjoy being with me. There's ways that it can be really useful in terms of getting them to understand your viewpoints. It is also because you're doing all of that attachment building, it helps for forming healthy relationships for them later on in life. And one of the really key things as well is it helps a child to feel powerful and in control. They are choosing where to hide and when they will be revealed. Okay. It gives them the autonomy, the positive self-imaging. They found the best hiding place. They're really good at this. Yeah, I know exactly. And I still remember that. I still remember thinking when I play hide and seek with friends, and I had found the best hiding space in a wardrobe underneath loads of clothes and nobody for ages, you know. Yes, exactly. It's just that sort of instant dopamine hair.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

When you know the novelty is all around finding a really cool place to hide.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

Absolutely. And then there's games like sardines where then they would join you and you would end up in this really cramped space together.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

Yeah, the joy of it all, right? The joy of sharing this really cool spot is our one super intent.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

Oh, such an amazing feeling. So you can see how it manages anxiety, the anxiety of being separated, but then coming back together.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

Yes, it really is building that safety net, it's bringing agency. I don't think I appreciated how powerful the game actually is, and also why children would naturally be drawn to it because it is allowing them to explore all these things. It's such a valuable tool. Thank you for sharing it. I hadn't actually come across this before, so it's something that's really making me think. And I wonder if adults do this in everyday life, this sort of role-playing. I guess we do in terms of giving ourselves space and building boundaries and to protect ourselves from things that might be really difficult, or just being able to get by the day-to-day of navigating life.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Absolutely. It's about us learning those emotional literacy skills of knowing your own system, what you need in this moment. So that goes on into adulthood. As you get older, you realize I'm feeling really agitated. What do I need in this moment? And that may mean that you need company, you need to be with others, or actually you need to be alone. So all these things are really trying to understand yourself, building up the vocabulary in order to understand your emotions, and then being able to be self-aware, and then being able to do that kind of regulation.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

Yes, exactly. I think it brings about so many learning tools there. So yeah, get your children to play as much hide and seek as they can because it's such a fantastic tool for emotional literacy and building it.

SPEAKER_01 28:19

Absolutely. This is all non-directive. Children hide and seek, all these childhood games, they will gravitate to what they need at that moment. So Gretel is using exactly what she needs in that moment. Okay. So she's now hiding. We're playing these games hide and seek repeatedly. And she's a child that knows the forest well. So then she starts to imitate sounds of various different animals, whether it be squirrels or deer. And I'm thinking, I'm gonna find rattle, but then I find a deer. I'm just coming near to deer sounds, and she's starting to show misleading signs and pathways. So I'm following this line of leaves that she set out for me, and I end up with just a pile of blocks or something, or some blankets that she's put there and pretended that it's her hidden away. And at this point in the play, she starts to introduce her brother into the play. So she starts, when she's hiding, talking to her brother Hansel. And at this point, I'm repeating, I'm really missing Gretel, I really enjoy playing with her. I'm really doing all that stuff to show her that I am looking forward to finding her again. And at this point in the play, she says, I don't want you to find me. Okay, I wish to remain hidden from you.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

What a sense of agency coming through there, right? And that sense of control. That's fascinating. It reminds me when adults have this desire for privacy and then a desire for connection, and you know how they manage the two.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

And this is where it is, like you said, this is a moment of empowerment, that it's the first big step in acknowledging her feelings and reflecting those emotions and those viewpoints without judgment, without fixing the solution. So, this is something I often talk about with parent and carers, because in this moment I'm gonna reflect back her thoughts, even when I see things differently. Okay, it's important that I validate those feelings instead of brushing them aside. So, I'm gonna give you an example of a parenting one here because this is so applicable to outside of the playroom. So imagine if your child has got upset that their school trip has been cancelled and they're saying it's really unfair. I had this whole plan, I was gonna sit next to Jen, all these things, and they had it all planned. And as a parent, we want to jump right in there and solve the problem. We all say, There's no reason to be upset, the trip's gonna be rearranged for next week, you don't need to worry about it. The danger here is that the child can feel dismissed or misunderstood, and that their emotions are not acknowledged. Okay. So in this moment, it's really important that the parent sits down or the carer sits down and listens and accepts the child's feelings. So they might say, I can see you're really upset, you're really sad and angry, and it's okay to feel that way. I understand this is hard for you. And by doing this, the caregiver is validating the child's emotions and helping them feel heard and supported, even when the situation cannot be fixed straight away. Because sometimes there's going to be something that comes up that we cannot fix or cannot be fixed straight away. And so it's really important that in these conversations we bring up the language to show that the child's feelings are important and accepted rather than ignored or minimized. At this point with Gretel, I'm accepting that she doesn't want me to find her. And it's at this point that outside of the playroom that she is able to tell her father that she is overheard, that her mum, the mum at home, is intending to leave the two children in the woods to fend for themselves. And at this point, then the father is able to help, he's able to support and make sure that they're okay. And what I'm seeing in the playroom is that Gretel is coming up with strategies for how to keep her and her brother safe. She's starting to collect pebbles and make sure that she's leaving them everywhere she's going so she can see a pathway. She's putting food into different corners and she's making sure that they're hidden, but that she knows where they are. She's then developing a whistle that she can use to signal to her brother to make sure that if they were separated, that they would be reunited. So, in both settings, Gretel is finding her own way to keep herself safe. She's able to make her real life situation safe by telling her father, but she's also finding strategies for how she's going to cope in the future if something happened to her, how would she do it? So, as you can see in this simple game of hide and seek, she's used this game to play out some of the things that are really concerning her about being left and how to keep herself safe and her brother safe. And any of these games that children tend to naturally gravitate to have so much power in terms of their emotional literacy, in terms of learning things like independence, object permanency, everything. And so when you're doing this with your child, you can really lean into that. So, Pidgel, is it okay if I say my play prompt for this episode? Yes, of course. Yeah. So I'm really thinking about, and you can do this with anything. This doesn't have to be specifically to hide and seek, but using it for opportunities to express how you feel. Okay. So exactly what Pitcher was saying, you're making sure that you're using that language with yourself so that the child gets really used to it. For example, I was spending lots of time saying, Oh, I miss Gretel, where are they? I miss their smile, I miss playing with Gretel. I want to find them. And using that opportunities build like affirmation. So they're so good at hiding, where are they? Yeah, yeah, so ingenuous. Yeah. Wondering if I can hear them, they're so quiet, which is often the one. And opportunities to confirm your connection. So I'm gonna keep looking until I find them. I feel they're close, I can feel they're nearby, and that persistence as well, right? To carry on. Absolutely, you're gonna keep going until you find them. And that's such a huge determination. And it's about that self-attachment, that secure attachment. Oh, it's just so powerful. And the thing that I highly recommend is when you're at the end stage and you found them, imagine that they're a small toddler. You know, when you find a toddler and you're playing hide and seek and you'll be like about you, have that, even when they're much older, because that's what they're seeking. They're seeking that joy of reunification. And so often when you're playing that game, that's what they're looking for. Obviously, in Gretel's situation, she was actually looking for how to cope herself and how to keep her brother and her safe. She was looking for something else. And through me accepting what she was vocalizing to me and what she was expressing, she was able to play that out. So it's really important that we do that.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

Yes, I think there is a real joy, even as adults, when we've really missed someone or we haven't seen someone in a while, there is that sense of, oh, it's so lovely to see you again, and I was really excited to see you, or it all leads back to these little games that we used to play as children, right? It's such a wonderful way to express joy as well as some of the other emotions that a child is racing through when they're playing hide and seek. It's a beautiful way to hold a range of emotions.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Absolutely, and they do it all themselves.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

This is the amazing thing they don't really have to facilitate too much by just enabling them to play the game, and that's enough. Yeah, it's wonderful, and I think it's a great tool for parents.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 36:40

And this game of hide and seek also reminds me of the importance of imagination as well. And I'd just like to touch on it because I feel like hide and seek is such a game of discipline of being able to not let out where you are hiding and really staying still in your position of hiding and imagining perhaps where the seeker is and how you might react when you see them, or how they might react when they see you. And there's this use of imagination, which is a skill of discipline and a use of executive functioning skills, which I think hide and seek also does really, really well. Just to quickly add, all of these skills and practicing these emotions allow us to build empathy, resilience, problem solving, perspective taking. Hide and seek can also build empathy. The seeker might be thinking where the hider has found a place to hide, or the seeker might be trying to work out where the hider is. But it also brings about a sense of resilience, like I mentioned, because both the hider remains where they are, the seeker continues to find. There's a determination and a persistence to find the hider, but there is also a determination and persistence to stay where they are from the hider's perspective, and then of course, problem solving. So the seeker has to continue to work out where the hider is, and then there's also an element of perspective taking where the hider has to work out what the seeker might be thinking and where they're naturally going to look and then not hide there, and the seeker also has to work out where the hider might have put themselves, and so there's so many executive functioning skills that are going on as well within this game and within this role-playing world, but this just demonstrates how shared stories and imagined stories, because essentially hide and seek is a shared story in some shape or form, helps to build emotional connection and safety and emotional literacy. So I think it works on so many levels, and I think we could extend this out to other shared stories where children are role-playing or pretending or creating, building their own fictional worlds to explore things.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

And as you can see, with this one, what we would often see in play is the safer exploration of some of the more negative emotions and those ones that are more difficult and complex. And I was thinking about how bibliotherapy provides a safe space for children through language and stories to explore and express those more challenging and difficult emotions. And do you have any reading tips for how to nurture this with your child, Mitchell?

SPEAKER_02 39:27

Yes, in terms of practical tools, which I think will also be applicable to play, as well as reading and telling stories, both important aspects of the bibliotherapy toolkit when it comes to children. I would suggest firstly choosing an emotion-focused story and asking open questions. So, an open-ended question, for example, is a question that cannot be answered with a yes or a no, or a short fact. It must be an invitation to a child to ask them to explore or describe or reflect or expand on their thoughts and feelings. And some good phrases or some good ways to start the questions are as follows: what was it like when the character did this, or how did you feel when you read this? Or tell me about that character, or tell me how you're feeling after having read the story, or I wonder what the character might have felt when this happened, or in what way would you change the ending of the story? So these open-ended questions are really useful in helping a child explore their feelings, also work out what they might be feeling, rather than just point-blank asking, did you feel scared or did you feel angry? Because it's just putting words into a child's mouth and they may not be feeling that, but they may think they are. So it's really important to leave it open and allow them to come up with their own answers to how they might be feeling. And also, if they don't always have the language or can't verbalize it, invite them to draw or journal their feelings. So it could be some drawing, some doodling, maybe writing down a few words and then working out from there what they're experiencing. And then, of course, creating alternative endings. This is a really great way to explore agency or coping skills that might be more relevant for your child, say they did not like the ending of a story or say they might be doing something differently. It's also a great way to get the child to use the imagination and help them build a sense of agency and take responsibility for what they might do in a certain situation, really allowing them to rehearse their coping mechanisms and their strategies. And also, this gives them the tools to think about how they might deal with things in the future as they get older. They're talking through these situations in their heads and they're using literature as a prompt or pretend play or role-playing as a way to help them work out what they might do next. You can combine all of these things with play therapy through the use of toys and dolls, so books and toys, sensory play, whether that's sand or clay or water, and also maybe even some movement and acting out certain situations, can really be great for a child when it comes to building emotional literacy. And Freya, you might have a few that you'd like to add as well.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Yeah, it's so interesting. What I see on a daily basis is that children will often go where they need to go. So, in terms of their play, they will tend to gravitate to whatever they need to do in order to process what they're feeling. But I think that there's a number of things that we can do as parents, carers, educators. First off, you were saying about it earlier, bitch, but modeling that emotional awareness. That's huge. Okay. If we are showing them that we can talk about all the emotions and we can show in a healthy way some of our more difficult emotions too, and how we manage that, it normalizes it and it gives them a role model to be able to do that. We all have these emotions, and some of them are really tricky, and so we can't shy away from that. That's something that is really important in terms of learning emotional literacy. And one of the things that we were talking about emotional labeling earlier really gives us the vocabulary to be able to do this and then validates it. And it's the building blocks of that self-awareness that we can then use to improve our emotional intelligence and our decision making, our relationships, our resilience, all of that comes from those beginning points. And then we can get to the point of our empathy development through activities such as reading and storytelling, but also using things like reflective listening, which is when we're really listening to somebody and thoughtfully reflecting the emotions or ideas or thoughts that they're giving to us. So, Bidil, on that note, I'm desperate to hear what books you would recommend for children and for adults as well.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

Yeah, I know this is the bits that I love the most. So I have brought a few suggestions and don't worry about writing these down because I'll put them all in the show links. I'll just quickly go through them. I've put them in age groups so it's just easier to navigate and find them. For the earliers, I'd say some of these picture books. So for this is for ages zero to five, I'd say The Colour Monster by Anna Lanas, and then the When I'm Feeling series by Trace Moroni, the Feelings book by Todd Parr, and then Ruby's Worry by Tom Percival. So these are just a few books that are wonderful for naming emotions and pairing them with sensory imaginative play. And I do have more on my website. But these are just a few that I wanted to share. I had reading lessons on my website, so feel free to check those out. But then also for primary age kids, so around the ages of six to ten, I'd suggest The Huge Bag of Worries by Virginia Ironside, and then The Invisible String by Patrice Karst. This is one of my favourite books. I had to mention it here.

SPEAKER_00 45:26

So good. It's so good. And you've got all the different versions of the work books as well. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

And I feel like as adults we could deal with it as well, especially when we're going through grief or something really difficult. I think it's such a meaningful and symbolic book in terms of allowing us to hold someone really close to our hearts in our own inner space and absolutely connected to them. Really looking at that secure attachment again within that. Exactly. It's great. It's a great one. And then My Hidden Chimp by Steve Peters. And then The Boy with Big Big Feelings by Brittany Winley. So these ones really help children understand relationships and the complexity of emotions that we were talking about earlier, the multiplicity of emotions, and then of course the importance of regulation, and that's co-regulation and self-regulation and teaching regulation through books. For teenagers and tweens, I'd suggest the following books, which are young adult type books that offer language for identity and belonging, big internal experiences, the big coming-of-age experiences. So books like Wonder by R.J. Palacio, A Kind of Spark by L. McNicole, then The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and also The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo. So these are really wonderful books for children, covering those three different age groups that I mentioned. But then, of course, for parents and caregivers, especially if you struggle with expressing your own emotions or even sometimes working out what you might be feeling. These books are really helpful. So Emotion Coaching, The Heart of Parenting by John Gottman. And it's really helpful in validating and naming feelings and building emotional vocabulary and regulation. And then something a little bit more recent is The Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown. I love how she literally builds this emotional dictionary and captures all the different feelings that human beings experience. So it's fantastic for that emotional toolkit and expanding on our emotional language and vocabulary. I love this book, Virgil. I just think it is beautifully. I think somebody needed to bring it all together, and I think she does a really good job of doing that and categorizing them. There were some emotions in there that I really didn't feel like I even experienced that often, but I thought were really key because we all have a range of things that we go through, and just having the words for it changes the way we process and experience them and brings so much meaning to our experiences, right? Like it honors some of the really difficult experiences that we might have gone through and never really gave voice to. Yeah, that's those are like her core emotions. And shame is one of the hardest emotions because it's also something that we impose on ourselves because of our own moral code, but also the moral code of others. It's so underpinned by morality, it's really this emotion that we really hold ourselves to high standards for, and that can really eat us up alive inside.

SPEAKER_01 48:49

Absolutely. And I was just thinking, in terms of that, she talks about the antidote to that being like empathy and therapy and play both do that perfectly. Yeah, you really see other people feeling that way, and you realize somebody is still able to validate and accept those emotions that you're bringing.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

Yeah, exactly. It's the first stage to building that self-compassion to remind us of to just be more compassionate and kind to ourselves. So, yeah, I would recommend anything by Renee Brown, like Darren Greatly. I think she's got some great books. And then also The Language of Emotions by Carla McLaren. This again is a really great book on what emotions do and how we can work with them and then not things that we need to shy away from. I think growing up, I was just never really allowed to really talk about my feelings. I think I grew up in quite a stoic household. So that emotional literacy probably came quite late to me. But I think that's probably why I'm so fascinated by it now. And then also permission to feel by Mark Brackett. Again, if you're looking at something that's a bit more scientific on emotional intelligence, this is a really good book. And Farah, you might have a few as well. I always love your book suggestions.

SPEAKER_01 50:04

So well, I was just nodding my head so many times on the same page. Absolutely. I definitely would have said Atlas of the Heart. Adults learning about their own emotions and regulation, it's just so key. And like you said as well, Vidal. I think you mentioned Ruby's Worry by Tom Percival. Um, I did, yeah. Yeah, I think he's so great. He covers so many different emotions and really normalizes some of those big behaviors as a form of communication with children. I think his books are great. I love and have always loved Angry Arthur. Such a great book for kids, so important because anger's one of the ones they really struggle with. Yeah, it gives you visuals for actually how it can feel so big and so unmanageable. Anger he ends up destroying not only his house, his town, the universe.

SPEAKER_02 50:59

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 51:00

Just that exaggeration, I love it because it just gives children the permission to feel yeah, the gravity of it, you know, these emotions can feel so consuming, and that's okay, that's how they feel, and so it's nothing about you. So I love that book.

SPEAKER_02 51:21

No, I think that was really a fantastic edition. Thank you. And I'll put that in the show notes as well. And I realized you mentioned one book that I don't know, The Poet X, so I'm definitely gonna read that. Yes, exactly. And like I said, I'll put the links in so you can just click on them and find them as well. And then I have got these reading lists on my website as well. If you want a few more suggestions beyond these, I've got a children's E to C of reading lists, which Fray you might know about as well.

SPEAKER_01 51:48

I was gonna say, I was thinking about some of the books that you mentioned, and I've got a couple of other ones in terms of I think it's really important to develop self-awareness both as an individual and as a parent. And this is often overlooked to some degree. So I'm really passionate about promoting self-compassion and self-care for parents on this journey. Yeah. Um there's so many books I could mention here. The kind of books that I would definitely say if this is something that you feel in a safe place to explore, that are really key. So, Pedro, you mentioned Van der Kook, The Body Keeps the School, which is absolutely one of those. The other books I would mention is Mark Wollen, it didn't start with you. And then there's a more general one, which is Philippa Perry's the book you wish your parents had read.

SPEAKER_02 52:35

Oh, yeah, both of those are great books. Mark Wollins one's great on trauma and childhood trauma, isn't it? And Philippa Perry's book is again so validating.

SPEAKER_01 52:45

Yeah. So all those three books that really range from just general parenting advice to more looking at the kind of effects of trauma or intergenerational trauma. So please choose which one you think is best for you and what you need.

SPEAKER_02 53:02

No, thank you for I think those are really good editions. We need to put them in the show notes. I think it's just helpful to have a few books to start with. And if there were any that I would recommend, these ones really would be the ones to begin with as foundational or really valuable for readers.

SPEAKER_01 53:19

So finishing today, going back to what we were saying in the previous episode, playing and reading creates new worlds for us. They model and mould neuropathways, they offer a safe haven to help us grow and make sense of our worlds, even when life can feel overwhelming.

SPEAKER_02 53:40

100%. I just want to say that when children see themselves in stories, when they're invited to play without erasing who they are, their voices are genuinely heard. You're not just supporting their emotional well-being, you're really giving them a hot toolkit for life. Books and play are absolutely key to supporting your child's emotional wellbeing. And as a starting point, I'd say definitely check out all those books that we've suggested and continue listening to the series because we've got more exciting things coming up in the next few episodes. So thank you so much for listening to Pages and Play, the Parabibliotherapy and Play Therapy on Young Minds. Until next time, stay well.