Healy - The emotionally healthy child : helping children calm, center, and make smarter choices

Praise for The Emotionally Healthy Child

The Emotionally Healthy Child is a wonderful addition to the growing library of resources for parents and educators about the critical importance of understanding what emotional health looks like in the young. Maureen Healy provides us with clear and simple strategies to help children use the dirt of their daily experiences and steer toward the lotus of their lives. In doing so, she provides a manual for progress without perfection. A real gift.

Claire Kelly, director of Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP)

Maureen Healy provides simple yet life-changing tools to raise more mindful children.

Dr. Saamdu Chetri, former director of Gross National Happiness for Bhutan

At last, a brilliant road map of what emotional health in children is, along with amazingly accessible tools of emotional coaching to help them get there. Generously filled with real-life examples and learning scenarios any parent, teacher, or coach can relate to, plus exercises to teach the necessary skills, this book is a real gift.

Linda Graham, MFT, author of Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being

The Emotionally Healthy Child provides practical advice that is both accessible and potentially transformative for the child, the parent, and their relationship. Read it, read it again, and then, more importantly, apply it.

Tal Ben-Shahar, PhD, author of Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment

The Emotionally Healthy Child can help any adult who wants to raise healthier and ultimately happier children in todays world.

Michele Borba, EdD, author of UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World

Also by Maureen Healy

Growing Happy Kids

The Energetic Keys to Indigo Kids

Copyright 2018 by Maureen Healy

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, or other without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

The material in this book is intended for education. It is not meant to take the place of diagnosis and treatment by a qualified medical practitioner or therapist. No expressed or implied guarantee of the effects of the use of the recommendations can be given or liability taken.

All identifying characteristics, including names, have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals described.

Text design by Tona Pearce Myers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Healy, Maureen, [date] author.

Title: The emotionally healthy child : helping children calm, center, and make smarter choices / Maureen Healy.

Description: Novato, Calif. : New World Library, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018020624 (print) | LCCN 2018023482 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608685639 (ebook) | ISBN 9781608685622 (alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Emotions in children. | Child rearing.

Classification: LCC BF723.E6 (ebook) | LCC BF723.E6 H43 2018 (print) | DDC 155.4/124dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018020624

First printing, October 2018

ISBN 978-1-60868-562-2

Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-563-9

Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper

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Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh, and the greatness which does not bow before children.

KHALIL GIBRAN

CONTENTS

Our parents bring us into the world, but in the end, we are responsible for what we become.

KHALIL GIBRAN

I was a wild child. The type of child whose family members would babysit and leave wondering whether they really wanted children. Of course I had my charms, but my energy was boundless. I could run circles in the backyard, climb up the weeping willow, take the dog for a walk, and then come home to make my own beaded barrettes. I was constantly in motion. Later on, we discovered that I had many allergies, and once those were addressed, my body came back into balance and I calmed a great deal.

But my emotions were still big and intense. I was also a highly sensitive child who cried when someone teased me or when I fell off the swing and scraped my knee. I felt things deeply and didnt know what to do with my big emotions. Luckily I found constructive outlets for my energy, such as gymnastics, piano, and tap-dancing, into which I could pour my emotional ups and downs. But these creative classes felt like temporary relief. Now I know that what I needed was to learn about emotions and what my role was in creating happier ones.

The ideas and tools in this book are what my younger emotional self was seeking an understanding of how emotions work and how I could create better-feeling ones. Todays children are seeking the same things, and this book was born to address that need. My child clients have big feelings and face the same quandaries I had so many years ago, but fortunately they have me to guide them and provide them with activities that work, even in todays digital world.

People say to me, Im glad I grew up before the Instagram world put my awkward photos online, and I agree, but in some ways life is easier now. Information about how to feel happier and become emotionally healthy is now more accessible, which is a huge improvement over when I grew up playing Atari in my basement and not having a clue about what to do with my big emotions when I lost at Pac-Man.

One Big Idea

Emotional health is based on the ability to make better choices, even when feeling anger or another big emotion. Children and adults alike can learn how to identify their emotions, and then use the tools of emotional health to:

stop

calm

make a smarter choice

These three simple steps have the power to change everything. One of the challenges of emotions is that the tricky or challenging ones usually have speed, and to stop requires skill and practice. Just saying, Stop that isnt enough to slow a fast-moving car; one needs to know how to apply the emotional brakes, come to a stop, and then move in another direction. This is what this book teaches.

Using the tools in this book, children and adults alike can learn to pay attention and catch themselves before they make not-so-smart choices. Adults often know a not-so-smart choice when we make one, whether its screaming at someone or speeding twenty miles above the speed limit, so learning how to calm and center, and then make a smart choice, is not just good for your health its good for everyone around you. I define a