Little Roots, Big Feelings

Little Roots, Big Feelings
A Guide to Big Feelings, for Little People

Every child feels big things. Not every child has the words for them yet — and that's where you come in.

Little Roots, Big Feelings is a gentle, practical guide for parents, grandparents, and caregivers who want to help the children in their lives understand, name, and navigate their emotions with confidence. Drawing on the same clinical foundations that underpin Alysia May's work with adults — nervous system regulation, body-based awareness, and the belief that emotional skills are learned, not innate — this book translates two decades of clinical experience into language and tools that meet a child exactly where they are.

Designed to be read and explored together, Little Roots, Big Feelings combines warm, relatable stories with simple prompts and hands-on activities you can do side by side with your child. Each one is built around a single idea: that emotional regulation begins in the body before it ever reaches the mind, and that the most powerful thing you can offer a child is not a lecture about feelings, but a felt experience of moving through them — together, safely, and without judgement.

You don't need a background in psychology to use this book. You simply need a willingness to sit beside your child as they learn one of the most important skills they will ever develop: how to feel something difficult and know, in their body as much as their mind, that they are going to be okay.

Because the truth is, you are already doing the most important part of this work — you are showing up. This book is simply here to give you the language and the tools to make that showing up even more powerful.

The roots planted in these early years grow into the emotional resilience of adulthood. This book is for every parent and carer who wants to be part of growing them well.

A companion guide to Shifting Seasons, for the next generation already on their way.