Nakita Simpson, author of A Kids Book About Emotions, talks about how everyone experiences emotions differently and for different reasons.
Nakita Simpson, author of A Kids Book About Emotions, talks about how everyone experiences emotions differently and for different reasons.
A Kids Book About Emotions (view book)
Full Book Description:
Emotions? emotions... EMOTIOOOONS!
We all have them, they’re all different, and they’re rarely simple. This book helps kids explore the complexities of their emotions by telling stories, asking questions, and coloring activities made for self-expression. What color do you feel like today?
About the Author:
Nakita is an art director, designer, and illustrator. Simply put, she’s someone who draws words for a living. She’s a lifelong learner who explores creativity professionally in the advertising industry, and personally through building and supporting mentorship opportunities for Creatives from untraditional backgrounds.
*If you want to be on a future episode of A Kids Book About: The Podcast or if you have a question you’d like us to consider, have a grownup email us at listen@akidspodcastabout.com and we’ll send you the details.
A Kids Book About: The Podcast
S1 E02, Nakita Talks About Emotions
[INTRODUCTION]
Matthew: What are emotions?
Julia: Emotions are how you feel.
Pablo Andrés: They don’t control you.
Nakita: Emotions are mental reactions marked by strong feelings and usually causing physical effects. So to walk you through that, it's a mental reaction such as anger or fear or joy, marked by strong feelings, such as happy or livid, and usually causing physical effects.
Matthew: Hold on a second. Livid? What does it mean to feel livid?
Nakita: Livid is another way to say that you are very, very angry. It's almost as if the anger almost overtakes you and blurs your judgment a bit.
Matthew: Got it. Can we hear it from the top?
Nakita: It's a mental reaction such as anger or fear or joy, marked by strong feelings, such as happy or livid, and usually causing physical effects.
Like when you're happy, you smile. When you're angry, you might get a little yelly. And that's emotions.
Matthew: Welcome to A Kids Book About, the podcast! I’m Matthew, your host. The voices you heard at the top of our show were from Julia, Pablo Andrés, and Nakita.
Each week we talk about the big things going on in your world with a different author from our A Kids Book About series.
[MEET OUR GUEST]
Nakita: Hi, I'm Nikita Simpson.
I am a daughter. I am a creative. I'm a writer. I'm a friend. And a bit of a goober. And I'm also the author of A Kids Book About Emotions.
Matthew: This is no ordinary book about emotions, although it is a little about treating all emotions as ordinary, not strange or shameful or something to hide or be embarrassed about feeling.
Nakita: So I wanted to make a tool, make a book, make a conversation starter, so that way a lot of families, a lot of homes could even start talking about that it's not just mom, dad, aunt, uncle, guardian, teacher. Sometimes days at school are really tough and kids may not have the words or tools to know how to communicate that. So if a grownup and a little one want to have the opportunity to talk about that and figure out how to process it together, this book would be the first place to start doing that.
[TOPIC FOUNDATION]
Matthew: Emotions can be funny, and by “funny”, I mean unpredictable. I think we tend to oversimplify them, meaning that I think sometimes we brush off emotions as being basic when really there can be lots of complex things going on in the background. Even just as I was preparing this episode, I felt so many different emotions. I felt excited to talk to Nakita. I felt nervous to make sure I said everything just right. I felt distracted when my daughter kept interrupting me, but I also felt loved because every time she came into the room she hugged me and said “I love you.” All of these emotions mixed together in my experience of creating this episode. And each of those emotions, as well as Nakita’s emotions helped shape this episode to be exactly what it is. Let’s hear how you’ve been feeling, and then we’ll hear from Nakita.
Pablo Andrés: Angry. Sad. Angry, sad, and I don’t know the rest.
Julia: Happy. Angry. Sad. My favorite emotion is when I’m excited.
Nakita: I’ve experienced a lot of emotions recently. Even yesterday I had a lot of work to do, so I felt some fear. I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to get all of my work done. I felt a lot of joy. I ordered some of my favorite burgers for dinner, so that was a very, very happy moment. Another emotion that I felt yesterday was definitely some anger. I felt a lot of emotions yesterday.
Matthew: Maybe you’ve had similar days. Maybe you’ve experienced similar emotions. The COVID-19 epidemic has changed life for all of us, but it’s also given many of us something in common in how we feel about the experience of living life safe at home. And Nakita?
Nakita: My answer would probably be what a lot of people are feeling right now in the midst of this pandemic: a lot of confusion over a year of having to live a life indoors and having to navigate what it is to make sure that I am safe, that people around me are safe.
It's a lot of fear that I felt. A lot of confusion. A lot of sadness hearing a lot of people pass. A lot of joy when I see people finding creative ways to get through adjusting to a new lifestyle. Sometimes a lot of anger because it's not easy having to change up your life at the last minute in circumstances that you can't control and you don't really know why and every day is trying to figure that out.
Matthew: Before we get too much further into this conversation, did you know that there’s actually a second person behind this book? A person who was on Nakita’s mind while she wrote it?
Her name’s not on the cover, but you’ll spot it right away on the dedication, which reads, “To my mom, who’s done everything she can to make sure I always have a safe space in this world with her.”
Nakita: When I was little... I have always been pretty sensitive. And I, at first for many years, thought that was a negative thing. I thought it made me feel a little bit weak or a little bit less than my peers. I felt like I had to be a little more tough, but that just didn't change. My mom recognized that really early on.
So she made it a point to make sure, uh, to be the best mom that she could, because she wanted to make sure that the life that I had was better than life that she had. And she knew that honoring my emotions and helping me understand that would help better how we have our talks, how we communicate, how we navigate life together as mother and daughter.
And I learned over time that not everyone had the same experience, um, growing up. Especially in a lot of Black homes, a lot of immigrant homes, sometimes emotions and how we feel isn't always the topic du jour.
Matthew: “Du jour” is French. It means “of the day”. So when Nakita says “how we feel isn’t always the topic du jour,” she’s saying that talking about how we feel isn’t always to all people the most important topic to talk about.
Nakita: And it's also parents learning how to be a parent and also to be an adult while managing life and making a life better for them for their kids too, while not always having all the tools available like therapy, which a lot of kids should be able to have to talk about their emotions.
Matthew: Why do you think that is, that is some Black homes or immigrant homes, as you brought up, or, really, in any homes? Why could it be hard to talk about emotions? Or to get help to talk about emotions? Or, really, any of that? Why? Why have those barriers?
Nakita: I think a lot of it has to do with, uh, different tiered reasons, different levels of reasons.
Matthew: Nakita talks about those reasons and also answers one of the questions you submitted - right after this break.
[BREAK]
Matthew: Welcome back to A Kids Book About: The Podcast. On today’s episode we’re talking about emotions, how they affect people differently, and how there’s often a lot going on behind the way we feel.
I’m going to state the obvious here. Bear with me.
Everyone manages emotions differently. Every home manages emotions differently. Emotions look different from one person to the next, and from one place to the next. That doesn’t make emotions right or wrong. What it does mean though is sometimes it can be harder for certain people to get support when they are struggling with difficult emotions. This might be because they don’t know what resources or help are available to them. It might be because the way people have talked about emotions with them have taught them to handle emotions a certain way.
Nakita: For a lot of Black and brown homes it's not always the easiest to process, or even have it out in the open to talk about your feelings or emotions. In my own experience, my mom had to focus on worrying about making sure that I had a bed to sleep in, a roof over my head, food on the table.
And it's also another involved level of being a parent that a lot of parents that were learning how to be a parent didn't always consider. Um, and they didn't also have the resources to do that.
And a lot of immigrant homes, sometimes it's a language barrier for people moving into the States, and I know there's a lot of different issues, like the areas that you grow up in, the schools that you go to, or the access to resources that most people have. Not every family is going to have resources available for a therapist. Thankfully we're getting better now, but that's just still a reality.
I think a lot of Black and brown homes just really need the support and we're getting a lot better now, but I think that was definitely a strong point of tension that makes it difficult. But I think we're getting better now where we're centering mental health, we're centering resources.
So that way people can do that more.
Matthew: I first went to therapy when I was an adult. Not everyone needs to go to therapy. In fact, it was my choice. Seeing a therapist each week helped me to understand my emotions as I was feeling them. It also helped me to understand a lot of the feelings I was still confused about from childhood.
I think about A Kids Book About Emotions and I think about what it would have meant to me if I had access to a book like this when I was in elementary school.
Nakita: I didn't expect for this to be a book, a project, a thing that I would do in my lifetime. And I have all the thanks to Kevin Carroll who introduced me to Jelani Memory.
He had mentioned that he was writing a book and how Jelani was looking for more diverse authors. And I said, please send me this person's contact information. I need to get in and write a book because I don't see any authors that look like me that write children's books and the process of workshopping it with, uh, the A Kids Book About team was amazing. It was really fast, not for lack of tact, but it was fast because it was just so easy to make. We talked about our life's journeys. I talked about mine. We managed to fold that into the story of writing about emotions. There was a lot of laughter. There was some tears for me, for sure.
But there were happy tears and even working with, uh, the designer with Duke and coming up with all of the fun ideas that we could put in this book and all the different ways that we could color or like make-build-destroy was so much fun. I felt so much joy making this. This was. The most probably enriching thing that was such a light in my past 2020 year.
So much joy!
[LISTENER QUESTION]
Matthew: We received a number of questions from listeners about emotions. Today we’re hearing from Pablo Andrés in Oregon. He was thinking a lot about emotions and asks...
Pablo Andrés: I wonder why you have to deal with them sometimes?
Nakita: Well first, thank you so much for your question, Pablo. That is a great question. And I hope you are having a wonderful day whenever you hear this. And to answer your question. We have to deal with emotions because they are natural. They are different states of being, which means they're very much a part of how we feel things, how we experience the world, and how we react to the world that we live in.
That's why we have to deal with them. Some people experience emotions very strongly. Some people don't really experience emotions at all. They do help tell us how we are reacting to the world that we live in.
They teach us a lot of things about ourselves. They help us create our identity, or who we are, and they help us understand the people that we are around a lot better.
Matthew: Nakita gave me some really good advice during our interview and I’m gonna share it with you, but you’ve got to promise me that you won’t forget it. And that you’ll come back to this advice whenever you need to hear it. Deal? Alright.
Nakita: For me, whenever I experience an emotion I don't want to deal with, I try to stop everything that is around me. I take a moment. I try to breathe. I try to think about what I'm feeling. I ask a lot of questions that start with “why.” Why am I angry? Why is this making me feel this way? Why can't I stop feeling it? And then some “what” questions: What can I do to make myself feel better? What can I say to myself or to whomever is making me feel this emotion to change the outcome of how I'm feeling?
And I try to do a little practice here and there if I don't have the chance to ask too many questions. Maybe it's a timeout for myself. Maybe it's taking some time to doodle or to draw how I feel, and those different steps can help you get through feeling the things that you don't want to feel to a better place of feeling the way that you want to feel.
Matthew: Isn’t that great? If a grownup’s been listening with you, first, take a moment to take in that advice. Alright. Now, think of what you might try next time you’re feeling a really big emotion and you’re not quite sure what to do. Be sure to ask your grownup, too. I wonder if they’ll try the same strategy. I wonder if they’ve got a strategy that’s worked for them that they could share.
Nakita: I do have emotions about emotions.
The only emotion that I am strongly against is hate. It takes a lot to get to a place of hate. I don't like using that word too much only because it feels too permanent. It feels so negative. And I know that it has a place as all emotions do. But I try my best to abstain, to stay away from hate as much as I can because when I get to that place, it's really hard to remove myself from it.
I am very, very drawn to love. I love, love. I love love and all of its forms. I love love for my family. I love love for my friends. I love love for my peers. Um, I love love for people that love me. Love is such a great emotion. It's has a natural pull to people and it binds us in ways that we never expect. That's such a great emotion.
[CLOSING]
Matthew: Thank you to Nakita Simpson, author of A Kids Book About Emotions, for joining us today, and to our two very special kid voices for helping make this episode what it is.
Pablo Andrés: My name is Pablo Andres Batwon I live in Oregon and I’m 6.
Matthew: Pablo Andrés loves to...
Pablo Andrés: Play games. Jump on my trampoline. And watch YouTube.
Julia: My name is Julia. I am 5 years old. I live in Maryland. My favorite thing is to color.
Matthew: Thanks, Pablo Andrés! Thanks, Julia! If you want to be on a future episode of A Kids Book About: The Podcast or if you have a question you’d like us to consider, have a grownup email us at listen@akidspodcastabout.com and we’ll send you the details.
A Kids Book About: the Podcast is recorded and produced by me, Matthew Winner, with help from Chad Michael Snavely and the team at Sound On Studios.
Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever podcasts are found, and if you liked this episode, consider sharing it with a friend, teacher, or grownup.
Join us next week for a conversation about systemic racism with A Kids Book About author Jordan Thierry.