bert allain

Truthful Turtle This coping skills fable helps children understand the value of truthfulness. Truthfulness is a quality we want in our children. This fable illustrates that the ability to be truthful is not so much about avoiding punishment as it is about being brave, generous and kind. Being truthful is an excellent skill but can occur only if you have the “Good Thinking” skills to be brave, generous and kind.

The Fault Finder There are few qualities more admired than “taking personal responsibility”, because so few of us do it. We may be trying to avoid consequences or “save face” but what is lost when you are a Fault Finder is what is truly important. "It's not my fault" is a familiar refrain to all parents and teachers. In an effort to avoid embarrassment or punishment, we humans typically try to avoid responsibility for much of our behavior. This is very typical in children. In some cases,

Selfish Shellfish This coping skills fable allows "alerting" a child about to engage in selfish behavior. Selfishness seems to be part of our DNA. This short fable will help even young children recognize that being selfish or jealous of others are qualities that lead to unhappiness. There are some human characteristics that seem to be hardwired such as jealousy and selfishness. This fable uses the real life behavior of crabs to illustrate how ridiculous it is for any crab or person to be eit

The Trying Metal This coping skills fable is about learning to do the difficult and scary things in life that are necessary to be happy and successful. Sometimes a “trick” is more valuable than all the fussing, punishing and begging we do to try and change certain behaviors. The skill your child will learn in this fable is one of the greatest you can give them. Perfect for positive skills training in the classroom.

Beeing Mean to Me A coping skills fable that includes "Parent Notes" to help teach the material. Blaming others instead of taking personal responsibility will cause your child a lot of problems but there are “Good Thinking” skills to change this behavior rather than just punishing them. The social skill of accepting personal responsibility is often avoided by using the excuse “You are being mean to me”.

Penny Perfect and Sally Sloppy Adults may say “just do your best” but what we may really be communicating may be totally different. The two characters in this fable react to this typical parent saying differently but both will end up unhappy. One of the more difficult things for all of us to decide is, "When is a task good enough” or “Not done yet.” Penny is too concerned about being perfect or being ridiculed while Sally just wants to be "finished". Consequently, these young spiders never h

Dr. Nice and Mr. Nasty Anger is a topic about which much is written and said. Several of the stories in the Coping Skills series are designed to encourage us to look at the true source of our anger … ourselves. When we are angry, we typically look to a situation or to others as the cause of our anger. This is such an accepted notion that few question its validity. But in our modern understanding of psychology, we now accept that our thinking is the cause of the emotional state we call anger.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game There are a lot of lessons that can be learned from sport games. This one could be the most valuable of those lessons. This fable can be an inspiration for effective coping in many difficult life situations. Children will learn that your thinking determines your emotions and behaviors. That “Stinky Thinking” will lead to "Not OK" emotions and "Thumbs Down" behaviors. If your thinking is “Good” (makes sense in the situation), then you will be able to evaluate option

The 9 steps in this booklet will be your guide to understanding how to help all of your students develop the cognitive coping skills (good self-talk) that will help them be successful and happy in your classroom. Based on years of real world use of stories specifically designed to easily teach and maintain these skills. Many of these stories will be available on the TPT website.