Ruby's Worry

"One of my absolute favourites is Ruby’s Worry . I read the first one in the series with my nephews. It goes back to what I said about externalizing another child’s worry so that you can talk about the worry as well. Also, this idea that the more the child keeps it inside, the bigger it gets. That’s easy for children to understand—that they can talk about it, because otherwise it’s going to get bigger. They can then ask questions about their worry, they can talk about it, and the worry disappears. The book gives them the tools to understand what happens when you don’t talk about it. It also gives you the tools the understand how to get rid of it. Tom Percival is amazing. In a simple way, he’s made it so accessible for parents to be able to talk about children’s worries and anxieties. Not every parent is a psychologist. Even more for parents than for children, books are an accessible way to deal with a child’s anxiety, because you can literally find a book that deals with what your child is going through and use it to talk through it with your child. Ruby does a lot of things and then she has a little worry. She keeps it to herself and then it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger until she has to deal with the anxiety. That is how children deal with worry, because they don’t want to talk about it. They’re not sure it’s something that their parents are interested in, or sometimes, they’re not sure how to talk about it. This book helps them to voice what they’re going through."