Amina Diab's 'Feeling Friends' Helping Kids Handle Their Emotions

Our internal mindscape contains a dizzying maze of emotions that can sometimes feel impossible to navigate, and that’s especially true for kids. Amina Diab - a renowned child and adolescent psychologist and parenting coach - knows this better than most.

During her decade of practice as an ABNLP Certified NLP Practitioner and Positive Discipline Trainer, she has helped to revolutionize parenting mentalities in Egypt advocating gentle guidance and positive discipline to help raise competent and self-reliant children, while also helping countless kids and teens with social, emotional and behavioral difficulties. She is now pouring her expertise into the ‘Feeling Friends’ series of children’s books designed to help children cope with their emotions.

“It’s human to feel the full range of emotions. No emotion is negative. It’s there for a reason—it’s what you do with it that’s important,” Diab tells #CairoScene. “That’s what I’m trying to do in the books. I’m trying to empower children, and let them know that feeling is 100% natural.”

Diab’s four-book series - available in both Arabic and English - focuses on social and emotional issues that pop up in a youngster’s life. Through vibrant illustrations and catchy rhymes, each story introduces a character who addresses a specific emotion or social situation, and teaches the child how to help manage it themselves.

These whimsical stories are buttressed by an array of theories and practices from positive discipline. Diab interweaves SEL (social emotional learning competencies) and many facets of Adlerian psychology into her books, so that children may internalise a growth mindset and confidently guide themselves out of the emotional entanglements that may otherwise hold them back.

You can purchase the books online through the Feeling Friends Instagram page @feelingfriendsseries, and at Diwan Bookstores.