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Self-help for kids: bedtime stories for troubled minds
With mental health issues among young people on the increase, Lauren Libbert looks at the books helping them to cope in a complex world
Like many children, my 12-year-old son was never a huge fan of bedtime. I’d sit by his bed for a while, kiss him goodnight then leave him to read before the shenanigans would begin. First, he’d come downstairs for a cup of milk, then for a glass of water, and soon he’d be calling out for another cuddle saying he couldn’t sleep and what time would I be coming to bed.
Half an hour, sometimes an hour, later, with my patience worn thin and my legs starting to ache from going up and down the stairs, he’d eventually fall asleep with our dog, Freddy, sprawled across the bottom of his bed, with his reading light on and the bedroom door left wide open.
In the light of day, after some gentle probing, I got to the bottom of his unease, the combination of darkness and silence apparently creating a space for his mind to start racing with catastrophic thoughts – of a break-in perhaps – instead of being able to shut down and relax.
In an effort to quell this night-time unrest, his father bought him a book, The Mindful Teen by Dr Dzung X Vo, a Canadian paediatrician specialising in adolescent medicine, and encouraged him to read it before bed. As a self-help sceptic, I had my doubts it would come to anything.
But surprisingly, we are a few months in and it has worked wonders. Marketed as a self-help guide for teens, the book explains how stress works on the body and brain with an equal dose of science and interactivity, offering step-by step mindfulness-based techniques interspersed with testimonials from teenagers who have experienced stress in some form in their lives and come out the other side.
It’s a dip-in, dip-out manual and my son especially likes the breathing exercises, which teach him to pay attention to the sound and timing of his breath, and seem to stop his mind from wandering off into the panicky unknown before sleep.
Dr Vo’s aid for teens is just one of the many books out there now that are specifically targeting children growing up against the backdrop of social media addiction and increasingly poor mental health.
With rates of depression and anxiety among teenagers having increased by 70 per cent in the past 25 years, and over half of all mental ill health starting by age 14, with 75 per cent developing by 18, it’s clear why self-help books for children are rising in popularity.
“There has definitely been a rise in interest in books that address mental health for children,’ says Sam Hutchinson, director of b small publishing, which is publishing two activity books in this area this August in a series called Level Headers. “Publishers are using words and phrases such as ‘empowering’, ‘confidence’ and ‘managing emotions’. One book, You Are Awesome by Matthew Syed, has been a particular success and appears to have helped create space for this subject in bookshops and online, instead of confining them to libraries and schools where they have traditionally been kept.”
Confidence coach and former primary schoolteacher Natalie Costa, coauthor of the Level Headers books Find Your Power and Stretch Your Confidence aimed at children aged six to nine, claims these fun, engaging books are essential for children in an increasingly competitive society.
“There is far more pressure on children at school these days as they are attaching more self-worth to marks or which class they’re in,” Hutchinson says. “At school we’re taught to problem-solve, but we’re not really taught about our emotions or how to understand and manage the wobbles better, and that’s what these books aim to do. Instead of being tools we only learn as adults, why not have them when we’re younger so children can grow up with a sense of self-confidence, so that they’ll be able to push for that pay rise or have the guts to start a new business?”
Anything that gives children the resilience and confidence they need has to be a good thing, especially considering the rise in the number of teenage girls self-harming – a dramatic 70 per cent increase between 2011 and 2014 according to a recent BMJ study – and the fact that the number of young children seeing psychiatrists has risen by a third.
It was with this – and her two daughters, aged nine and 13 – in mind that productivity strategist Francesca Geens came up with the idea for The HappySelf Journal (happyselfjournal. com), 18 months ago.
The journal, with its bright lemon cover, is based on scientifically proven methods that promote happiness and encourages children – aged six to 12 – to express gratitude and think about their emotions, by writing them down or circling appropriate-feeling emojis.
“I kept reading in the press about mental-health issues and stressed-out kids and I feared for my daughters because I couldn’t see a solution,” says Geens, 44, from Kent, who has sold more than 8,000 copies of the journal since its publication last August, and is now working on one for teens.
“My job has always been about helping people to develop positive daily habits and dealing with digital distraction, so I thought, ‘why not bring this to children?’” she says. “After all, 40 per cent of our happiness is totally within our own control and I wanted to help children to feel happier and get them world-ready, giving them a positive, reflective space where they can jot down their thoughts with the help of a few simple prompts.”
Her Facebook page is full of testimonials from grateful parents who say that their children are now sleeping or communicating better or feeling less anxious.
“It seems to have become a bedtime staple for so many and I’m blown away by its success,” says Geens.
But not all self-help books for children are of the interactive variety or written as guides or manuals. Fiction too has its place in helping children develop their mental well-being.
Andrea Chatten, a former teacher and lead children’s emotional and behavioural psychologist at Unravel (unravelsupport.co.uk), has written a set of six magical novels entitled The Blinks, each one dealing with characters experiencing a different emotion such as worry, shyness, sadness or anger. The books are aimed at children aged seven to 12, although they have also become popular with teens.
“As a teacher for over 20 years I saw how happiness was robbed from children when they couldn’t deal with their emotions, and social media and academic pressure was just making this worse,” says Chatten, who published the novels in 2015 and is now selling more than 300 copies a month worldwide. “Children’s brains have so much plasticity and if a young person doesn’t interrupt the cycle of emotional difficulties it will grow in momentum and stay with them as an adult and through to their parenting.
“I wanted children to read these stories and see that they weren’t alone in their feelings. Instead of ignoring or resisting their emotions, they had to learn ways to deal with them so they could move on and be happier – just like the characters in my novels did.”
Chatten receives emails and messages regularly from teenagers and parents alike grateful for her novels and the impact on their lives. “Children – just like adults – need to learn how be happy human beings and I’m glad my books can help with that.”