Teaching toddlers about growing happiness
Pick of the week: October 27, 2025
Clinical psychologists picking kids books rooted in mental health science 🌸
My Heart Fills With Happiness: A board book about cultivating happiness for toddlers (age 1+)
Each week, we recommend one kids book that teaches a mental health concept. Today, we’re sharing a book that talks about cultivating happiness: My Heart Fills With Happiness, written by Monique Gray Smith and illustrated by Julie Flett. This book highlights the concept of savoring — the idea that paying attention to and talking about positive experiences can make us happier. Read on to learn why we recommend My Heart Fills With Happiness to the parents we know, the science behind savoring, and tips for talking to your kiddo about happiness.
About the Book
My Heart Fills With Happiness is a beautifully-illustrated book showing ordinary moments in life and families spending time together. Throughout the book, a child describes all the things that makes them feel happy, from smells, like fresh-baked bread, to sensations, like walking barefoot on grass. The story ends with a question to the reader: “What fills your heart with happiness?”
Buy My Heart Fills With Happiness or listen to the author read it for free
What Science Tells Us about Savoring Happiness
It can be tempting to think that happiness only comes when life is smooth and stress-free. Yet research from the field of positive psychology has found that happier people tend to do things to help their happiness grow. One of these things is called savoring, which involves paying attention to, naming, and talking about events and experiences that make one happy. Multiple meta-analyses (studies that combine results of other studies) have found that learning how to savor increases well-being.
Researchers have found that savoring plays two important roles when it comes to happiness. In a study where people reported on their mood and experiences every day for 30 days, savoring helped explain why positive events made people happier, and it also shaped how strongly those good moments boosted their mood. The takeaway? When something good happens, happiness rises — but taking time to savor it makes that happiness grow even bigger.
Engaging in savoring and other skills that cultivate happiness might also protect us against mental health problems. Researchers at UCLA recently developed a new strategy for treating depression: Teaching strategies that increase positive emotion, like savoring! These researchers have shown in two randomized trials that a form of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) focused on boosting positive emotions improves depression and anxiety more than forms of CBT focused on reducing negative emotions (like changing negative thoughts to reduce sadness). We think these clinical trials hint that helping kids learn to savor good moments — even when they’re not dealing with depression or anxiety — could protect their mental health down the road — though more research will be needed to prove that this works.
How to Talk About Savoring Happiness with Your Child
Try out these prompts for talking about savoring positive emotions with your kiddo:
What Marin likes about My Heart Fills With Happiness: As adults, sometimes we can get attached to the idea of needing to spend money to make happy memories. I love that this book reminds us of the rich joy that can be found in simple (and priceless!) moments in nature and with our loved ones. While I am never one to turn down a vacation or shopping adventure, this book helped me remember how much happiness I find in watching the bees visit my backyard.
What Betsy likes about My Heart Fills With Happiness: I love how this book shows rather than tells about happiness through heartwarming illustrations of everyday moments: Siblings leaning on one other as they watch bread baking, a girl twirling in the sun, a kid and a parent singing and playing guitar together. These images remind me of the peace and joy I feel when I’m with my loved ones.
Go deeper on the science of positive emotions and savoring happiness:
We like this step-by-step article on savoring from Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. Parents can also try out their savoring walk to cultivate their own happiness.
Parents can use savoring to strengthen their relationship with their child and help get through the daily stresses of parenting. This handout describes how to savor moments of connection with your child.
Want to learn about other types of “positive psychology” skills beyond savoring? Check out this NPR article describing many different skills that can help cultivate positive emotion, featuring Judith Moskowitz, a professor at Northwestern and expert in positive emotion.
For parents who want to help their young kids begin practicing naming and noticing their feelings (including happiness), check out Minds in Bloom’s Feelings Chart for Toddlers. 🌸
For folks who want to go SUPER in the weeds on savoring, check out this in-depth article about savoring by a professor at Skidmore College. It’s written for therapists, but we think parts in here are useful for everyone — especially the “What Savoring is Not” section, which outlines the difference between savoring and ignoring pain and problems.
Buy My Heart Fills With Happiness or listen to the author read it for free
We think My Heart Fills With Happiness would be a great addition to any child’s library. We’d love to hear your reactions to this review and your questions about savoring. Reply to this email, or join our community to leave a comment!
FYI: The links above for buying My Heart Fills With Happiness are affiliate links (see this page for more information).
I love how this week’s book selection easily brings to mind many happy moments I had raising my children, and also many joys from my everyday life today. I was also encouraged by all the opportunities to learn more about the scientific support for the value of building the skill of savoring positive moments - good for old & young alike. Thank you Minds In Bloom for the example of the conversation style we can tryout to savor positive happenings with our loved ones, especially the kiddos in our lives!