My Favourite Children’s Books for Anxiety

​This is the first in a series of posts I will be doing about some of my favourite children’s books for some of the common areas’ kids can benefit from support around including validating and coping with anxiety, managing anger, understanding feelings, grief and loss, and social skills. This post is relevant for supporting anxiety including understanding anxiety, not feeling alone, and coping. And for some parents as we are approaching the half way point of summer, anxiety for some kids starts to increase around mid-August and having some relatable books can help reduce some of the unease. Please find below four of my favourites:   

1. How Big are Your Worries. This book shares about everything bear worries about day and night including soccer, not know things at school, monsters under bed, and scary dreams. It covers the strategies to physically show how big the worry is, share about worries with caring adult, and write or draw about your worries, and how these helped bear overcome his worries. Book good for ages 3 to 9.
2. Lena’s Shoes are Nervous (A First-Day-of-School Dilemma). Highly recommended book choice for kids starting school or even for younger kids nervous about returning back to school. This book is a great example of ways to use objects to help normalize emotions like being anxious or nervous, other times things worked out okay, and how we can use our bravery to face things that make us feel nervous. Book good for ages 4 to 8.
3. Don’t Feed the Worry Bug. All the what if questions strong worry and anxiety can create, with the overthinking Wince experiences that many kids and even an older audience could relate to. Capturing the human experience of how negative thought worries build and build on each other through the use of feeding the worry bug, and how distraction and changing thoughts helps to shift focus. Book is good for ages 4 and up.
4. Wilma Jean the Worry Machine. This book shares the experience of a school age girl who worries about so many things day to day including classroom, friends, and weather. It normalizes anxiety and worry, and when it can start to become too much. Covering strategies to help reframe anxiety including worries can control and cannot control. Book good for ages 6 to 10.

If you need additional support reach out to me, I am Nicole Levy, and I am here as your helping hand, let’s get started, book your complimentary initial consult today https://www.mindfulhealingjourney.ca/#/