AD My 10 year old is beautiful and funny. She quickly picks up new concepts and has a memory that astounds me. And yet she struggles. We have days she is worrying so much she refuses to go to school, her self esteem seems to bounce between thinking she can do everything to not believing she is good at anything. As she heads towards the teen years the low periods seem to increase and be harder to deal with. As an adult with mental health problems I know it is so important to give my children the tools that will help them to be confident and happy, but I find this hard. The Happy Confident Company have a new book out which aims to help Tweens to learn the skills they need and we received a copy of Happy Confident Me Life Skills Journal to review.

The Life Skills Journal is aimed at helping Tweens to be more confident in themselves

Review of the Happy Confident Me Life Skills Journal

Written by Psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos and Nadim Saad the Happy Confident Me Life Skills Journal is a bright and fun looking book filled with exercises for children to work through. I think of it as more of a workbook than a journal, but I guess that wording might be off putting to some children.

The 141 page book is targeted at children aged 7 to 12 with the aim of teaching them 10 life skills. The journal contains over 60 activities for them to complete and encourages them to work through to learn the powers of: introspection, optimism, interoception, mindset, failure, resilience, creativity, mindfulness, compassion and humanity. The exercises require focus and attention, but hopefully the benefits will be enough keep them engaged.

The book introduces new concepts and words without being patronising and there is a glossary at the end if they need a little help. Children towards the younger end of the age range and those who are less confident readers might need a little help at times.

The book encourages children to take an online quiz before starting the journal so they can have a benchmark of how they have changed. I think it says something about my daughter's current mindset that she joked that she might fail the quiz, I explained it wasn't that sort of test, but rather asking how she feels about various things. After answering the 9 multiple choice questions you get a result of what level you are at with Level 4 being most confident about life.

The pages are colourful and filled with engaging activities

Thinking about "things that make me happy"

What Did My 10 Year Old Think of the Life Skills Journal?

M loved the bright and fun looking journal and she was instantly drawn to reading some of the activities. They are all bite size so easy to get into, our challenge has been to get her into a habit of going back to the journal and working through it. She wants to feel more confident and in control of her feelings, but it is often difficult to get her to commit to anything that will help enable that change. I think it will take us a few months to complete so I will update this when we have made more progress.

My Tween loved the look of the Happy Confident Me Life Skills Journal

The journal is divided into 10 sections, each one teaching an essential life skill

The Happy Confident Me Collection

The Life Skills Journal is just one part of the offerings from the Happy Confident Company available from their website. They also have: 

Happy Confident Me Super Journal 

A hard back with 10 weekly themes to work through as well as space to journal daily. Each day asks them to record how they are feeling, 3 good things that happened that day, free space for recording any thoughts and it has a couple of questions which change each day eg one day they might be asked 'Today, I could tell that my friend felt… " and "The kindest thing I have ever done was…" and another day it might be "Something tough or tricky I experienced today was…" or "I felt good today when…". Throughout the journal are motivational and insightful quotes from people ranging from: Taylor Swift to Serena Williams to JM Barrie. Even children new to journaling will be able to form a new habit by completing it each day. This journal would be a nice way to reinforce the learning in the life skills journal while introducing daily journalling.

Happy Confident Me Daily Journal

This soft back journal contains similar journalling pages as the Super Journal with space for daily and weekly reflection. I think it is good for children who are more used to journalling, who have already completed the Super Journal or who aren’t yet engaged enough for the extra activities, but are open to trying journaling. 

Happy Confident Me Conversation Cards

There are 50 cards which aim to encourage family conversations along 5 different themes. Examples include “Thank each person for something they have done for you”, “Identify one thing you could improve to make family life better” and “when someone you care about is sad, what can you do to help them feel better?”

Happy Confident Me Affirmation Cards

I love these affirmation cards designed for Tweens, although the messages are helpful for everyone. I picked a few at random and it actually brought tears to my eyes because they are absolutely things I want my eldest to believe about herself and life, and that I know that she doesn’t at the moment.

Feelit! Feelings games for the whole family

Designed to create stronger bonds between players and to develop key life skills the pack contains 50 feeling cards which can be used to play 4 games: Name It!, Shift It! Guess It and Act It!

Online Course

The 6 episodes of 15 to 20 minutes episodes are produced for children and adults to watch together. This is a great idea for children who learn better working with a video rather than working through a book at their own pace.

Printables

A range of games and worksheets.

Get a discount on the Happy Confident website with my code "CTT20" 

The Happy Confident Company product range

If your child gets worried a lot another nice idea is to make a Worry doll. In the linked post Helen talks through how to make a safe size worry doll. I think this is a great idea and definitely something I want to do with my children.