Main description:

Life can be difficult at the best of times, for children growing up and for the parents parenting them. It can often be a minefield of emotional traps. Maree Watkins's The 1st Family Feelings Guide is a fun way to get through these times. From anger and anxiety to jealousy, from happiness to the sadness of bereavement, Watkins offers the parents common family scenarios to explore and resolve with their children which puts emotional interactions and relationships in perspective and makes them, where possible, surmountable. Using the 'Freaky' family as an average westernised family, Watkins creates scenarios for each keyword from 'A' for 'Afraid' to 'Z' for 'Zero-tolerance' which illustrate how problems arise, how they affect us, how they can be dealt with and how they might be avoided in the future. This is a valuable book for families dealing with daily family life as well as those trying times all families experience. "Many children today are emotionally illiterate; they don't know how to name let alone express their emotions. This book richly fills a long overdue gap for both children and the adults who raise them." Dr Gillian Smale, M. A. (Clin. Psych.). D. Phil.