Book: Up and Down, Round and Round (Learn to Identify Emotions)

Identifying emotions and where they're felt in the body is a vital skill for kids and adults alike and is the first step toward emotional regulation.

How do we teach kids about emotions and feelings?

Openly, honestly, and using terminology that we can incorporate into our everyday conversations with our kids.

This book is a fabulous educational resource that uses colors and the emotional “up and downs” in every day to talk about how to understand and identify emotions — and why that’s so important.  It is featured in Month 4 of the "Kids Mental Health Skills at Home" program.

This is important book is the first in Mighty + Bright’s highly anticipated “Emotions” series, and introduces the concept of emotional regulation.

This book explains the emotional experience in an easy-to-understand way and incorporates scientific findings such as “Name it to Tame it,” the Window of Tolerance (developed by Dr. Dan Siegel, MD, co-author of “The Whole Brain Child”), and the Zones of Regulation, an educational method used in many schools.

This book covers:

• The role our bodies and brains play in emotion;
• The purpose of emotion in our lives, and the concept of high energy emotions (like anger or anxiety) and low energy emotions (like sadness or depression);
• The desire for unpleasant emotions to go away, and why they’re helpful;
• Why emotions happen, including how our thoughts can cause them;
• The benefit of naming our emotions;
• How to begin understanding our own emotional experience;
• Common worries about BIG emotions and how to safely cope with them;
• Different people’s different reactions to the same experience;
• An opening to discuss anxiety and depression with kids;
• The idea that no day is all “good” or all “bad.”

Meet Mia and Stuart

With her messy pigtails and sunny personality, Mia brings a bit of fun to books about hard topics. Explaining life's toughest stuff to her toy giraffe Stuart, Mia is the star of the What About Me? book series, where she's able to help kids feel safe by explaining exactly what they can expect when faced with big changes.

About the Author

Sara Olsher is the founder of Mighty + Bright, which helps families through hard things like divorce, cancer, and other major changes using visual magnetic calendars. Based on decades of research about emotional intelligence and how to talk to kids so they actually learn, Mighty + Bright's calendars have helped hundreds of families through some of the hardest times in their lives.