I have a lifetime of educational experience, as a teacher, researcher, curriculum developer and educational adviser, both in the UK and internationally.  While I believe that education is hugely important, I have always felt that the role of parents and caregivers, as the most important influence on a child’s life, has not been well enough supported.

As a parent myself, I know that we all just want to do the very best for our kids, but just don’t have the time to research all we need to know and do to prepare our kids for the pressures of an increasingly challenging world.

One routine that most of us still try to make time for is to read to our younger kids, usually at bedtime, and encourage older kids to read for themselves.  But we don’t always give a huge amount of thought to the books we choose, just as long as they are interesting and capture our child’s imagination.

We know that kids learn best when enjoying themselves and interacting with those they love.  It struck me that story-time could provide a golden opportunity to develop the vital social and emotional skills kids need to succeed in life if only someone would curate the best children’s books on the market into a research-informed social and emotional curriculum for 0-16-year-olds.. 

Two years on, and a huge amount of child development, neuroscience and children’s literature research later, Sociemo has done the hard work so you don’t have to.

My dream is that Sociemo becomes a central part of every child’s experience and every parent’s routine, helping to ‘grow kids’ Sociemo’ from a young age, right through their teenage years, to foster their life-long mental health and wellbeing, while reassuring parents that they are doing the very best for your kids.