Books by Wendy O'Leary
The Monster Parade: A Book about Feeling All Your Feelings and Then Watching Them Go
An engaging story that helps children work with difficult emotions by imagining them as playful monsters in a parade (ages 3-7).
Watch as the anger monster passes and the sadness monster disappears--it’s all part of the parade of feelings we experience every day. Instead of holding on to their emotions, kids can acknowledge them and let them go on their way.
What’s happening in your parade today?
Here’s the angry monster
Headed this way
It growls so loud
But you know it won't stay
Copies
No copies available.
Breathing Makes It Better: A Book for Sad Days, Mad Days, Glad Days, and All the Feelings In-Between
by Christopher Willard, Wendy O'Leary
2019 Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards Winner
2020 Mom’s Choice Awards® Gold Recipient
An engaging and interactive story showing children ages 3-6 the power of breath when dealing with new and difficult emotions.
Read aloud and breathe along with this sweet story teaching children how to navigate powerful emotions like anger, fear, sadness, confusion, anxiety, and loneliness. With rhythmic writing and engaging illustrations, Breathing Makes It Better guides children to breathe through their feelings and find calm with recurring cues to stop and take a breath. Simple guided practices, like imagining you are a tree blowing in the wind, follow each story to teach children how to apply mindfulness techniques when they need them the most.
Copies
No copies available.
Growing Self-Compassionate Children A Family Guide for Nurturing Resiliency and Kindness
by Wendy O'Leary, Louise Shanagher
Integrating self-compassion practice into family life is a profound gift that parents can give to their children and to themselves.
Here you will learn how to make self-compassion an active practice for the whole family—with over 70 activities, crafts, meditations, and games.
Self-compassion—being kind to yourself when things are hard—is a valuable quality for parents to model and to cultivate in their children—and studies show that it also builds emotional resilience.
This guide for parents explains the benefits of teaching children about self-compassion, and it offers advice, encouragement, and practices to enrich family life. Wendy O’Leary and Louise Shanagher, who have an extensive background and expertise in mindfulness, children’s education, and psychology, introduce the basic concepts of self-compassion, along with the benefits and the research that supports the practice.
In communicating self-compassion to children, the authors emphasize the importance of focusing on a child’s inherent value rather than on their external achievements and specify the benefits of “self-compassion” over “self-esteem.” Crucially, they show us that self-compassion also includes an embodied, felt sense of deep care and love for ourselves.
Copies
No copies available.