Rachel’s Reads

Stress is a normal and unavoidable part of life. Pressures from school, homework, extracurricular activities, and relationships can all feel like too much for our kids. Part of our job as parents is to help our children find healthy ways to manage the stress they experience. By giving our children tools to handle the stress in their lives, we can help them to become more resilient. The following books are helpful tools families can use to begin the conversation and start learning stress management skills together, because—let’s be honest—us parents could use a few more tools in our anti-stress toolbox too! Keep a lookout for A Smart Girl’s Guide: Worry in Little Free Libraries around Roanoke!

Wemberly is an expert worrier. You name it, she worries about it. Danger and disaster loom everywhere she looks. Will the playground equipment fail? Will she leave her doll somewhere? Will there be enough cake for everyone at her birthday party? And now, Wemberly has a new challenge ahead: her first day of school. Wemberly’s worries go into hyperdrive until she gets to school and finds a friend who understands and helps her refocus. Henkes’ thoughtful story and expressive drawings expertly capture how incredibly intense worry can feel for kids.

The A Smart Girl’s Guide series by American Girl has a book for almost every issue preteen girls struggle with, and they are all well done. A Smart Girl’s Guide: Worry is no exception. It is written in an approachable style that feels like you’re getting advice from your kind big sister. Magazine-style quizzes and fun illustrations draw kids in and keep them engaged. The information is top-notch and covers the nature of worry, stress, perfectionism, and fear, while teaching practical skills to help manage stress and worry. This book is a must-have for girls ages 9 to 12. I just wish there was a version that would appeal to boys, too.

Mindfulness activities for preschoolers? How could you ever get them to pay attention? Well, Breathe Like a Bear’s author, Kira Willey has found a way. This incredible collection has exercises for calming, focusing, reenergizing, and relaxing. Each exercise takes only a minute or two, and almost of all them involve the imagination. You can drink a cup of hot chocolate, act out a rainstorm, breathe like a snake, fly like a bumblebee, or float like a cloud. This delightful book makes meditation accessible for the very young in a fun and joyful way.

Do you have a visual or kinesthetic learner at home? If so, this book is for you! Large photos show real kids practicing deepbreathing exercises. The kids demonstrate each activity in step-by-step photographs that make the directions clear and easy to understand. In between the breathing exercises are instructions for hands-on projects that promote mindfulness, including glitter jars, breathing buddies, energy slime, gratitude chains, and bubble wands. Calm Mindfulness shows that mindfulness can be both enjoyable and creative. As a bonus, the included projects offer wonderful opportunities for some family memory-making! The energy slime was a HUGE hit at our house.

Mindfulness as a way to reduce stress is a new (or newish) skill for most adults. Sitting Still Like a Frog is a parenting book that explains the whys of meditation, provides tools on how to integrate mindfulness into your life as a parent, and teaches you how to share this new knowledge with your child. It’s a quick read, with just over 100 pages, and is packed full of information. As an extra bonus, a CD is included with 11 different guided meditations to help get you started. This is a wonderful introduction to meditation that can help make mindfulness a part of one’s family culture.