Today I’m back with another book guide-last time I talked about the best books for speech delay and now I wanted to share the best books to help your toddler deal with emotions, feelings, and tantrums.
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This is something all toddlers struggle with-since they can’t regulate their emotions properly (cue tantrums!)-but is perhaps even more pronounced for those of us whose toddlers can’t properly communicate how they are feeling. I decided to try some of these after my son-who has speech delay-started to get frustrated and even biting as he gets closer to 3. Our speech therapist explained how we needed to teach him about different emotions and how they make us feel, so we ordered some books. This blog should be useful if you’re looking for books to help your toddler deal with emotions, feelings and tantrums or want books to help speech delay toddlers communicate their feelings.
1. Best book for explaining tantrums to toddlers: Tiger Has A Tantrum
This book is great value (it’s £2 on Amazon or you can get in The Works 10 for £10 deal). There’s a whole series in these behaviour books (covering everything from patience to sharing) and they’re really well illustrated and explained-Jude loved the story of the tiger constantly having a tantrum.
Buy Tiger has a tantrum2. Best book for toddlers who are biting: Teeth are not for Biting
We ordered this as soon as Jude started biting. Although the biting wasn’t too bad, we wanted to try and tackle it head on. It’s a really well illustrated book and very repetitive to help drill things in simple terms-we then used the language if Jude bit, ‘no teeth aren’t for biting-biting huts.’ and we haven’t had any biting (touches wood!) since we started reading it. There’s lots of books in this series, including Legs are not for kicking.
3. Best book to explain feelings simply to toddlers: Feelings Flap Book
This is another book we bought to try to explain feelings to Jude. One tip our speech therapist gave us was to label Jude’s emotions (‘your cross, your happy etc’) and this book is a really visual introduction to different feelings-and I imagine you can have more in-depth conversations with it as a prompt as they get older, e.g. ‘why is she cross?’. This is one of Jude’s favourite books-it covers lots of different emotions but we are focusing on cross, happy and sad for now.
Buy Feelings: A lift the flap board book4. Best book for anxious todders: Ruby’s Worry
Through the narrative of Ruby, this explains to toddlers how worries can grow and impact your mood and behaviour.
This is the perfect book for discussing childhood worries and anxieties, no matter how big or small they may be
Buy Ruby’s Worry5. Best book for explaining feelings and actions:How are you feeling today?
We haven’t ordered this book yet as I think it is for slightly older children or those with more comprehension/speech than Jude. Each page explains feelings along with child-friendly strategies for dealing with that feeling. There’s also notes at the back of the book provide more ideas for parents and carers to use with their child and other strategies to try out together to practice the all-important skill of dealing with feelings.
Buy How are you feeling?