Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Sad: An Early Years in Mind story and guide
This free digital book aims to help educators, parents and carers have important discussions about mental health with young children.
About this resource
The foundations of mental health and emotional development are laid out in our earliest years through the bonds we form with those around us.
Supporting young children to be mentally healthy helps them to regulate, play, learn, imagine, relate and enjoy life.
In Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Sad, you’ll meet Jackson, a young child, and Bilal, an early years teacher. Their relationship highlights the power that teaching and learning, co-regulation and compassion can have in the early years. The story, written by award-winning children’s author Laura Henry-Allain MBE, can also prompt discussions about mental health with young children so teachers, parents and carers feel more confident recognising the different ways children experience and cope with their mental health.
Our Early Years and Prevention specialists, Dr Abi Miranda and Claudia Coussins, unpack parts of the story to help you reflect on how you can support young children with their mental health.