Official Review: Emotional Intelligence Activity Book for...

[unamilagra]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Emotional Intelligence Activity Book for Kids" by Sandra Hughes.]

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1 out of 4 stars

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Emotional Intelligence Activity Book for Kids by Sandra Hughes is a workbook targeted toward children ages 7 to 11. I was very excited to review this book because I have a child that age who could definitely benefit from learning how to boost her EQ by a few points. Unfortunately, this ended up being a very disappointing book.

Before discussing the workbook itself, I want to note that the author’s biography states that she doesn’t have an educational background in any field which would lend her expertise in the area of emotional intelligence. Hughes has studied emotional health as a layperson for over 25 years. She created this book to share her findings with others. While this is a noble pursuit, and in no way do I mean to imply that only PhDs are qualified to share information on emotional intelligence, I do think the author’s lack of formal training could contribute to some of the book’s shortcomings discussed below.

This activity book is 92 pages long. Each page contains an activity for the child to complete, such as a coloring page, word find, or crossword puzzle. In addition to the child’s activity is a paragraph of “Wizard Wisdom” directed to the parent, which is an explanation of some aspect of emotional intelligence. The Wizard Wisdom typically talks about the importance of some behavior or learning strategy, and often provides an example of how this topic can be taught to children. Topics include dos and don’ts, vocabulary words, helpful versus harmful behaviors and attitudes, etc. Despite the length of the book and the subjects covered, there is no organization in the presentation of topics. It would be much more user friendly to have the book broken down into chapters or units of study in which pages regarding similar topics were grouped rather than spread randomly throughout the book.

One major problem for me is that while this book is marketed as an activity book for kids, the entire book is actually addressed to parents. Elementary schoolers are typically proficient readers, and I would expect an activity book geared toward them to primarily be written to their reading level and level of understanding. There is a cute Emotional Wizard owl mascot pictured in the book, but he is never formally introduced in a way that children will notice him. I think that having the owl introduce topics to children at their level throughout the book would be an excellent strategy for conveying the information. I understand that parents should be heavily involved in working through the book with their kids, and the Wizard Wisdom paragraphs on each page are often useful. However, they should be supplementary to the information read by children themselves, not the entirety of the message.

After reading through the book, the most disappointing part for me was that I found many of the pages to be unusable. Although I did find useful tips and ideas on some pages, others were just too vague or high level for me to be able to reword in a way that was understandable to my child. Other pages I simply disagreed with or even found harmful. Phrases characterizing children’s negative thoughts and feelings as naughty, unhealthy, or harmful permeate the book. The consensus from other modern child psychology resources seems to be that labeling kids’ thoughts and feelings with pejorative words can cause more harm than good. As another example, I found the “Behavioral Word Study” pages dedicated to behavioral vocabulary words to be concerning. On the “Self-Control” page, we learn that possible difficulties for having self-control could be a bad environment, forgetting too easily, and lacking self-discipline. For the word study of “Challenge,” listed feelings blocking the action of taking on challenges include bad attitude, disliking effort, or lack of cooperation. I fail to see how listing these negative traits out would be helpful for a child. I would hate for my child to internalize that she possesses these poor qualities by reading about them in this book.

My final note is on the editing. I do not believe it was professionally edited. While I only noticed a few actual typos, I found the general readability of the text to be challenging in many areas. For example, on the Behavioral Don’ts page, one of the don’ts you are expected to read to your child is, “Don’t accept that if your mind is not interested in school work, you don’t need to try to change your mind’s attitude and help it become interested.” There are many such awkward phrases throughout the workbook which could have been improved with a round of professional editing.

I had such high hopes for this activity book, but because of the extensive issues mentioned above, I must give it 1 out of 4 stars. If it were possible to give half points, I would give it a 1.5, because I was able to enjoy some of the activities with my child, and there were actually some nice ideas sprinkled throughout the book. It was just so difficult to find them while slogging through the rest of it. I could not in good faith recommend this book to anyone in its current state.

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Emotional Intelligence Activity Book for Kids
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Like unamilagra's review? Post a comment saying so!

[Juliana_Isabella]

I definitely agree that teaching children to think negatively about certain emotions can be harmful. They should learn to accept all emotions but to work through them in a healthy manner and control the behaviors associated with them.

[Crazyreader01]

Sounds like a poorly executed idea. I'll be sure to steer clear. Thanks for the honest review.

[Renu G]

The title looks very catchy, but the contents do not seem to be technically related to emotional intelligence. You have reviewed it well!

[danielleamy]

Other pages I simply disagreed with or even found harmful. Phrases characterizing children’s negative thoughts and feelings as naughty, unhealthy, or harmful permeate the book. The consensus from other modern child psychology resources seems to be that labeling kids’ thoughts and feelings with pejorative words can cause more harm than good.

I have a psychology degree and know a little about child development. But I'm definitely not saying I have the knowledge to write anything like this book!

I think that teaching children to express themselves in a healthy way is so important for their development. Teaching children that some emotions are "naughty" is not healthy. It seems like the book encourages them to block or hide negative feelings, which are completely natural and normal...as most of us adults know! I feel like the author had good intentions, but it hasn't turned out as planned. Well done on your review, it must be interesting to see your daughter's perspective on this activity book!

[kandscreeley]

I love the idea of this book. It's too bad that it wasn't executed well, though. Children could definitely benefit from learning to deal with their emotions in a more productive manner (most adults probably could, too.) It just sounds pretty much unusable in its current format. Thanks for the review, though.

[Kibet Hillary]

I expected that this could be one of the best books. One of the best things to do in any book or work is organization of the content into smaller units made up of related topics. This makes the book readable and also gives a space for monitoring one's growth in a particular area. I hope that the author will consider editing this book again.

[Prisallen]

It is too bad that this book wasn't written better. I agree it shouldn't be teaching children that certain emotions are bad, negative and unhealthy. We all have emotions- positive and negative. That doesn't make us bad or good. Good review!

[unamilagra]

I definitely agree that teaching children to think negatively about certain emotions can be harmful. They should learn to accept all emotions but to work through them in a healthy manner and control the behaviors associated with them.

Thanks for your comment. Yes, this was the most disappointing part for me.

Sounds like a poorly executed idea. I'll be sure to steer clear. Thanks for the honest review.

Yes, I believe her heart was in the right place, but I don't believe she was qualified to create a book of this type without help from professionals. Thanks for your comment!

The title looks very catchy, but the contents do not seem to be technically related to emotional intelligence. You have reviewed it well!

Thanks for your comment!

I have a psychology degree and know a little about child development. But I'm definitely not saying I have the knowledge to write anything like this book!

I think that teaching children to express themselves in a healthy way is so important for their development. Teaching children that some emotions are "naughty" is not healthy. It seems like the book encourages them to block or hide negative feelings, which are completely natural and normal...as most of us adults know! I feel like the author had good intentions, but it hasn't turned out as planned. Well done on your review, it must be interesting to see your daughter's perspective on this activity book!

Yes, exactly! I'm not sure if the author intended for it to come across this way, or if it was just part of the book's poor execution, but I definitely don't want to teach my children to push their negative feelings away rather than dealing with them. Thanks for your comment!

I love the idea of this book. It's too bad that it wasn't executed well, though. Children could definitely benefit from learning to deal with their emotions in a more productive manner (most adults probably could, too.) It just sounds pretty much unusable in its current format. Thanks for the review, though.

Yep, I totally agree with you. Thanks for your comment!

I expected that this could be one of the best books. One of the best things to do in any book or work is organization of the content into smaller units made up of related topics. This makes the book readable and also gives a space for monitoring one's growth in a particular area. I hope that the author will consider editing this book again.

Thanks for the comment! I do wish she would partner with an actual psychologist and publisher to find a way to incorporate her helpful ideas into a more user-friendly format without the harmful messages.

It is too bad that this book wasn't written better. I agree it shouldn't be teaching children that certain emotions are bad, negative and unhealthy. We all have emotions- positive and negative. That doesn't make us bad or good. Good review!

Thanks for the comment! I totally agree with you.

[chiefsimplex]

I have gathered that ,the strategic arrangement of material in this read was good.However the targeting is totally off the mark- the interactive aspect is woefully compromised. I hope the author takes note.Thanks for such a thorough review

[Espie]

Emotional quotient is an important human facet to hone, and I agree that it's best that professional advice is well-backed. I appreciate the author's honesty with the declared disclaimer. Thank you as well for your frank yet well-explained thoughts on the piece.

[shereads shereads]

Wow, this sounds like a great concept with an extremely messy execution. Too bad the book didn’t live up to its potential.

[Connie Otwani]

The idea of the book is quite interesting. The title just draws in anyone working with children. It's unfortunate that it was poorly executed. The author should have done some research on child psychology in order to know how well to package some of the ideas. Thanks for your thoughtful review!

[kdstrack]

The author had good intentions with this book. I love your insightful comments about the book's contents. Your parental common sense shines through! Thanks for your review.

[Kelyn]

I liked the title of the book and would have had high expectations of it myself. It's unfortunate that the content reflects a very poor knowledge of children's psychology. Perhaps having some professional consultants on the book would have been a good idea. The concept of teaching children about their emotions is a good one, it was just poorly done in this book. Thanks for the review, I'll be sure to avoid this one.