Trauma Parenting Specialist and author of How Are You Feeling Today Baby Bear? Jane Evans explains the inspiration behind the book.
Why I wrote How Are You Feeling Today Baby Bear?
From the time I was a little girl I have loved children’s books and, for the past 22 years since becoming a parent, step-parent and grandparent I have totally loved children! My professional life has been an extension of this love for them.
My work has regularly brought me into the lives of families living through the most difficult of times. For many this has been domestic abuse and violence, mental illness, addiction, homelessness, poverty and child abuse. It has always been a privilege to sit alongside them and to learn from them. My life has been full of ups and downs, my battles with mental illness and beyond domestic abuse and through it all, in one way or another; it has always been children who have been the light at the end of the various dark tunnels.
For many, many years I have had a burning desire to write a book for children which would be of real use to them. In my work with children I have used story books to give them chances to explore, in a gentle way, how they might feel about complex issues they have no words for. When I worked as a Parenting Worker with families affected by domestic abuse and violence, their parents and carers kept asking me for a suitable book to share with their youngest children who had seen and heard arguing, fighting and other abuse.
Sadly, I have repeatedly been struck by how much the children I have worked with have struggled to find the words to describe their feelings. For most of them it has been like learning another language and has been a slow process of trying to make up for a vital missing part of their developmental journey. Similarly their parents have often shown and told me how they too have found this difficult both for themselves and with their children.
Never was this more evident than when I was working alongside families’ post domestic violence and abuse, especially those with very young children. “Is there a book I can read with them?”, parents and carers would ask me; I struggled to find the right one which would give a child opportunities to learn about the words for their feelings without being scared, or without being ‘told’ how they might feel.
Finally the time came to put the words and images I had created in my mind, from thinking about how a very young child feels during and in the aftermath of domestic violence, down on paper! Baby Bear was ‘born’ with two Big Bears who are having a difficult relationship, which often erupts into arguing and fighting, all of which is heard and felt by Baby Bear.
My hope is that How are you feeling today Baby Bear? will help families and young children post domestic violence and abuse to put feelings into words, rather than feeling their only option is to express these difficult emotions via their behaviour. Happier, healthier children with a closer connection to caring adults will offer them the onward journey they so deserve.
You can find out more about Jane’s work, upcoming events and read more of her blog posts on her website: http://www.parentingposttrauma.co.uk/
You can also follow her on twitter: @janeparenting