Abstract

A parent’s struggle to manage their emotions may have significant impact on small children. Helping a child understand in the here and now about what is going on for the parent, without blaming that parent or the child, may be useful for the child. It may also lead the child to seek different models of managing emotions and self-concepts. Reading books with children, or bibliotherapy, could be useful for parents who experience stress-related “meltdowns” or perhaps live with mental health conditions such as borderline personality disorder, and for those working with small children in educational, child care or child protection settings. This brief uses Meltdown Moments, a picture-story book written by an experienced mental health clinician and illustrated by a professional artist with lived experience of emotional turmoil, as an example of what may help in conversations about what is going on in the family.

Keywords: Mental Health Literacy, Picture-Story Book, Children, Emotional Dysregulation, Borderline Personality Disorder, Families, Mental Health, Bibliotherapy, Intergenerational Mental Health

How to Cite:

Sved Williams, A. & Jonsson-Harrison, M., (2018) “Using Picture-Story Books to Help Families Understand Turbulent Parental Emotions in Families with Small Children”, Journal of Parent and Family Mental Health 3(3): 1009. doi: https://doi.org/10.7191/parentandfamily.1009

Rights: Copyright © 2018 Sved Williams