A bear is a small thing to bring into a difficult place. What it carries is the useful part: a way for a child to be understood on their first day, in their first session, in their first hour somewhere unfamiliar.

In Classrooms

Teachers use Feeling Faces for morning check-ins. A face on a desk tells a teacher who needs a quieter start, long before anything goes wrong.

In Advocacy And Care Settings

Children who have been asked a great many questions often stop answering. Handing over a bear is not an answer to a question, and that is exactly why it works.

In Military Families

Deployments, moves and long goodbyes ask a lot of young children. Families use the bear to make room for the mixture - proud, afraid, excited and sad, all in one week.

What We Hear Back

The same sentence, again and again: the child showed us something they had not been able to say. That is the whole of it.