Emotibles ~ Creatures of the Heart™
Where feelings come to life.
A story-driven collection that turns emotions into characters children can recognize in themselves. Not instruction. Not a lesson. A mirror that helps big feelings make sense.
More Than Emotions
As children connect with the characters, they begin to recognize those same patterns in their own experiences ~ giving them a way to pause, reflect, and respond with clarity.
✨ Did You Know?
The developing brain uses up to 60% of a child’s total energy in the first two years of life. Nutrition during this window measurably shapes neural growth, attention, and lifelong learning capacity.
What This Collection Does
So many children grow up being told their feelings are too much, too loud, or simply wrong. “You’re fine.” “Stop crying.” “Don’t be dramatic.” Emotibles was built for a different truth ~ that every feeling a child has is real, worthy of a name, and deserving of a voice. Emotions are not something to manage out of sight. They are part of who a child is becoming.
Children begin to recognize that their feelings are valid and worth listening to ~ not something to hide, minimize, or apologize for.
Parents and caregivers gain a way to respond instead of react ~ replacing “you’re fine” with “I see you ~ tell me which Emotible is showing up right now.”
Families and classrooms grow into spaces where every feeling is welcomed, named, and expressed ~ teaching children that knowing your emotions is strength, not weakness.
✨ Did You Know?
Children who can name 5+ emotions by age 5 score 35% higher on social readiness, lifelong empathy, and friendship depth.
Why Emotional Vocabulary Is The Foundation Of Everything
Emotional literacy is not a “soft skill.” Decades of developmental research show it is the operating system underneath every other skill a child will learn.
Children with strong emotion vocabularies show measurable advantages in reading comprehension, friendship depth, leadership, and stress recovery for the rest of their lives. Yale’s Center for Emotional Intelligence has tracked these outcomes for over 30 years.
The window matters: by age 8, the brain’s emotional regulation hub is roughly 80% wired for life. The wiring happens through repetition. Through story. Through a child meeting their feelings on a page in the safety of a parent’s lap, before they have to meet them at school.
Emotional regulation in early childhood is a stronger predictor of academic success than IQ, family income, and reading readiness combined. This is the work that begins, quietly, in a story.
When A Mother's Face Goes Still, A Baby Falls Apart In 60 Seconds.
In 1975, pediatrician Dr. Edward Tronick filmed mothers playing happily with their babies, then asked the mothers to stop responding ~ to hold a “still face” for two minutes. What happens next has been viewed millions of times and is required watching in every developmental psychology program in the world.
A baby cycles through joy, confusion, distress, and meltdown in under sixty seconds. Even pre-verbal infants are reading every micro-expression on the adult faces around them. Their nervous systems are wired by ours.
“Even tiny moments of disconnection have meaning to a baby.”
Dr. Edward Tronick · Harvard Medical School
Emotional Regulation IS Adult Attunement
A child cannot learn to regulate alone. They co-regulate with the adults around them. Here is how each adult role can show up as the kind of attuned face a child remembers.
For Parents
You do not have to be perfect. You have to be REPAIRABLE.
- Repair after disconnection. “I was distracted. I am here now.” Repair builds resilience faster than perfect attunement.
- Name your own emotions out loud: “I feel frustrated. I am taking a deep breath.”
- Match your child’s energy briefly before redirecting. Joining first ~ then guiding ~ is how regulation gets taught.
- Read books that name big feelings while looking at your child’s face often. Eye contact during read-aloud is co-regulation in disguise.
- Notice your phone-face. Babies and children read your screen-zone-out as the still-face response.
For Daycare & Preschool
Children spend 30+ hours a week with you. Your face is part of their early wiring.
- Greet every child by name and meet their eyes when they arrive. The first attuned face of the day shapes the whole day.
- Hold space for big feelings rather than rushing to fix. “Your body is angry. I am right here.” is the lesson.
- Use story-time to co-regulate ~ slow voice, gentle pacing, naming what characters feel.
- Train staff to read meltdown precursors. The earlier the attunement, the smaller the storm.
- Talk to parents about what their child seemed to feel that day. Connection between home and classroom is co-regulation across systems.
For NICU & Postpartum Nurses
You are often the first co-regulator a baby ever experiences outside the womb.
- Encourage skin-to-skin contact and unhurried eye contact, even in medicalized settings. Both regulate infant nervous systems faster than medication for stress responses.
- Coach new parents on micro-attunement: looking up from the chart, narrating their actions to the baby, slow tones.
- Send families home with one simple practice: “Read this book to your baby every day, looking at their face often.” It is more than a book. It is a co-regulation tool.
- Watch for postpartum depression markers in parents. Maternal disconnection ripples for months if untreated.
For Therapists & Counselors
The Still Face is now a foundational framework in attachment therapy, dyadic work, and trauma treatment.
- Use the Still Face video as parent psychoeducation. Most parents have never seen what their face does to their child.
- Watch for adults who unconsciously go “still face” when their child has big emotions ~ often a trauma response of their own.
- Teach the rupture-and-repair cycle. Repair is the work, not perfect attunement.
- For older children with regulation difficulty, go upstream: where in their early life was attunement broken, and what does repair look like now?
- Recommend co-read aloud time as homework. Books that name feelings give parents the language to attune.
A Story Is A Still Face's Antidote
When a parent reads an Emotibles book to a child, they look at the page together. They name a feeling. They watch the character’s face change. They feel their own face change in response.
Every read-aloud is, structurally, the OPPOSITE of the Still Face Experiment. It is a parent and a child, attuned, sharing a moment that names the inner world of one of them out loud, in the safety of the other’s gaze.
The book does the naming. The grown-up does the attuning. The child does the learning ~ silently, somatically, durably ~ that their feelings are safe to feel out loud.
Stories that name feelings teach faces how to stay.
Inside the World of Emotibles
Each book brings one emotion to life as a creature with its own name, shape, voice, and way of showing up. Children meet the Fizzlesnaps when excitement bubbles over, the Wigglewhoms of Maybe Mountain when doubt creeps in, and the Puffwhisps when relief finally arrives.
Some creatures are bridges ~ the in-between feelings that help children move from stuck toward steady. Naming them is the first gentle step toward feeling in the right direction.
✨ Did You Know?
Kids with rich feeling-words have 50% fewer behavioral incidents. Naming a feeling tames it. Stories teach the names.
Five Waves, Five Worlds
EACH WAVE OPENS A DOORWAY TO NEW FEELINGS
Series One
Foundational Feelings
Feel Your First Feelings
Happy, sad, calm, disappointed, excited, hopeful. The everyday feelings take on faces and names children can hold onto, turning the familiar into something worth noticing and naming out loud.
Series Two
Love & Connection
Feel Your Belonging
Meet the creatures of love, friendship, gratitude, and care. These are the feelings that remind children they are seen, held, and part of something bigger than themselves.
Series Three
Big Reactions
When Feelings Get Loud
Anger, fear, jealousy, frustration ~ the feelings that rise fast and need somewhere to go. Each creature shows children that big doesn’t mean bad. It means something inside deserves attention.
Series four
Stuck & Striving
The In-Between Feelings
Meet the Bridge Family ~ creatures for ambivalence, boredom, confusion, doubt, and the other sticky feelings in between. They teach children that naming the stuck feeling is the first gentle step toward feeling in a new direction.
Series Five
Wonder & Growth
Feelings That Lift You
Curiosity, hope, gratitude, pride ~ the feelings that help children grow. These creatures show children what’s possible when emotions are met, not minimized, and kids get to keep becoming who they already are.
Foundational Feelings
THE UNIVERSAL SEL SET
Foundational Feelings
The first 52 Emotibles ~ the core feelings every child already knows but doesn’t always have names for. From Jubilumps to Dripdrops to Puffwhisps, this wave gathers the creatures of joy, sadness, and tranquility, so children have a whole cast for the feelings that show up every single day.
All 52 Foundational Feelings
The full cast of core emotions ~ each creature coming soon, each one a story children will meet one feeling at a time.
Love & Connection
START HERE
Love & Connection
THE HEART OF LOVE, BELONGING, AND CONNECTION
Come on in, the Chroma Hearts wait for you. This wave brings the creatures of love, belonging, friendship, gratitude, and care ~ the feelings that remind children they are seen, held, and part of something bigger than themselves. The heart-warmers of the whole Emotibles family.
All 35 Creatures of Love & Connection
Every creature coming soon ~ the full cast of belonging, trust, love, and the feelings that bind us together.
Big Reactions
Big Reactions
WHEN FEAR, ANGER, AND REACTIVE FEELINGS TAKE THE LEAD
When feelings arrive loud, fast, and hard to hold, the Big Reactions cast is already there to meet them. This wave brings the creatures of fear, anger, and reactivity ~ from Flitterjitters to Rumblefluffs to Twitchflits ~ so children have companions for the feelings that usually get called “too much.”
All 35 Big Reactions
Every creature coming soon ~ the full cast of feelings that rise fast, burn bright, and need somewhere to go.
Stuck & Striving
Coming Soon
START HERE
Stuck & Striving
HOW CHILDREN LEARN TO REGULATE AND RETURN TO STEADY
When feelings get stuck, sticky, or slow, the Bridge Family shows where they can go.
This wave brings the in-between creatures ~ for ambivalence, boredom, confusion, doubt, and the other sticky feelings that sit between stuck and steady. Each creature teaches children that naming the stuck feeling is the first gentle step toward feeling in a new direction.
All 38 Stuck & Striving Creatures
Every creature coming soon ~ the Bridge and Drive families, for feelings that sit in between and the ones that push children forward again.
Wonder & Growth
Coming Soon
START HERE
Wonder & Growth
COURAGE, WONDER, AND THE JOY OF BECOMING
When hearts grow bolder, minds grow wider, and feelings stretch into the unknown ~ the Wonder Circle opens the door. This wave brings the creatures of curiosity and courage, carrying children across bridges of bravery, belief, and becoming.
From quiet confidence to bold imagination, from gentle gratitude to radiant pride, these are the feelings that stretch us, shape us, and show us who we are becoming. Wonder & Growth is where the heart learns to reach farther than it ever dreamed.
