Catherine Newman - What Can I Say?: A Kids Guide to Super-Useful Social Skills to Help You Get Along and Express Yourself; Speak Up, Speak Out, Talk about Hard Things, and Be a Good Friend

More Rave Reviews

A delightfully illustrated, inclusive guide to help kids evaluate their behavior, tune into their feelings, figure out how to start a conversation, be a good listener, and interact in simple and emotionally charged situations.

Christine Koh, coauthor of Minimalist Parenting and cohost of the Edit Your Life podcast

An accessible primer on how to be more loving, inclusive, self-confident, and, indeed, a better human.

Jenny True, Dear Jenny columnist on Romper and author of You Look Tired: An Excruciatingly Honest Guide to New Parenthood

What Can I Say? reminds us how much interacting in a healthy way with those around us enriches our lives. From compromise to gratitude to forgiveness to compassion, Catherine Newman reminds youth and the adults who care about them of the importance of humanity in communication.

Abigail Gewirtz, author of When the World Feels Like a Scary Place and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Psychology

One of the most important things adults can teach children is the skill of communication and self-advocacy. What Can I Say? can not only teach children to be more confident, eloquent, and clear, it can save them from harm and give them the tools and courage they need to ask for help.

Jessica Lahey,New York Times best-selling author of The Gift of Failure and The Addiction Inoculation

Newman is out with another totally gorgeous guide for kids about how to succeed in the world. This book is to Gen Z what Free to Be You and Me was to Gen X. Youll find yourself wishing youd had it years ago!

Julie Lythcott-Haims,New York Times best-selling author of How to Raise an Adult and Your Turn

The mission of Storey Publishing is to serve our customers by publishing practical information that encourages personal independence in harmony with the environment.

Edited by Deanna F. Cook and Mia Lumsden

Art direction and book design by Ash Austin

Illustrations by Debbie Fong

Text 2022 by Catherine Newman

Ebook production by Slavica A. Walzl

Ebook version 1.0

May 24, 2022

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

For my kids and my kids friends and my friends kids and my nieces and nephews and niblings, and for all the kids everywhere who have shown me what it means to communicate lovingly, gracefully, hilariously, courageously, and with beautiful, authentic awkwardness.

Catherine

For all the kids who struggle (like I did) to speak up for themselves and others.

Debbie

This is a book about how to talk to the other people in your life (you can probably figure out how to talk to yourself on your own) because our relationships are what give our lives meaning! Relationships with our friends and family, for sure, but also with our neighbors and teachers, our teammates and classmates, our fellow citizens and crushes and pets. Okay, you already know what to say to your petsSit and Stay and Whos a good boy? and Which one of you ate my underpants? But that still leaves the humans: What do you say to them? And how? And, also, when?

It depends on the situation, of course! And this book tries to cover a lot of different situations: easier conversations and harder ones; in- person talking and the kind you might do over text or email. Other peoples ways of being in the world can be so confusing.

But you already have the tools you needempathy, curiosity, and careto learn the skills you need to connect with other people, just like youve learned the skills of making a sandwich or cutting a heart out of a folded piece of paper. Skills that might take practice, sure, but that you can master over time so you can live happily and well in the world of people.

But why?

Learning how to be more kind, gracious, expressive, compassionate, responsible, respectful, and authentic in your interactions is going to make the world a better place, filled with happier people. Plus, its going to help you in a million ways: Your friends might adore you more, your parents might agree to more stuff, your peers might be more likely to respect your opinions, your teachers might give you the benefit of the doubt, and maybe even strangers will fall all over themselves to help you.

Even if you experience conflicts and disappointments in your relationships sometimes (and you will), youll know how to handle them better. If how youre acting and interacting feels right, so will everything else. Plus, as one of my own kids once said,

You're never going to be lying on your deathbed wishing you'd been a bigger jerk.

Theres not a single right way to be, though. You might be an introvert or an extrovert, shy, outgoing, or really just more into your pets than you are into people. Normal is not a thing, and everyone doesnt have to be the same kind of person.