What School Counselors Wish Every Parent Knew About Children's Emotional Wellbeing
When my son was in second grade his teacher called me in for a meeting. He was struggling. Not because he wasn't trying — he was trying harder than anyone in that classroom. But reading comprehension was genuinely difficult for him, and the gap between what he understood and what the assessments expected was widening every semester. What I noticed — and what nobody talked about enough at the time — was that his reading struggles and his emotional struggles were the same struggle wearing different clothes. When he felt confused he shut down. When he felt behind he stopped trying. When the words on the page felt like they were working against him, his whole sense of himself as a learner quietly started to erode. That experience sent me on a years-long journey into how children's emotional lives and their academic lives connect — and it is ultimately what led me to create The Grumble Toad Adventures. Because I wanted to build a world where children who struggle feel seen rather th...