Jess Lovibond Therapeutic Services

08/04/2025

🌟STORY STEPPER SPOTLIGHT!🌟

Today’s Story Stepper Spotlight is on Gary.

Gary’s Story Step story is called The World’s Hairiest Fairy 🐻🪄

About Gary:

Gary is 21 years old (well he was at some point!)

He has a beautiful bestie called Beau and she’s a stunning staffy dog. They live near the sea and get to go on walks in the most beautiful scenery. 🥰🐶

Gary does drawing.

Actually, he does much more than drawing… he takes complex concepts and translates them into fabulous images even small children can understand.

He does videos too… it’s thanks to Gary that The Story Step videos and illustrations look as stupendous as they do.

When he’s not drawing, you can usually find him playing his guitars (one at a time, obvs!), learning about new stuff ( ), or painting walls and fences while not drinking coffee.

Thanks for being a Superb Story Stepper, Gary! 👏👏👏👏👏🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

You can find a sneak peek at A
Gary’s story in our story, and you can listen to the whole thing by clicking the link below. 💙📚

The Story Step is a brand new volunteer driven children's storytelling project! JLTS and our fabulous volunteers aim to create a bank of stories accessible to any child who doesn’t have an adult at home to read with them.

02/04/2025

Today is and this 👇 is The World’s Hairiest Fairy.

TWHF is a therapeutic story about a grumpy old bear who struggles with his Big Feelings.

Bear thinks nobody likes him because he’s scary, but one day, a boy comes along and helps Bear to understand that we all have Big Feelings sometimes.

Feelings are just that though, they come and they go… Bear learns from Boy that sometimes all we need is for someone to sit with us and our Big Feelings until they pass.

The World’s Hairiest Fairy is one of the stories available now on The Story Step, read by the fabulous Gary Nightingale Creative…

You can click here to go and listen to the adventures of Bear and Boy right now:

https://www.jltsfamilyservices.org.uk/the-story-step

My immense thanks to all the men who read for The Story Step, I’ll be showcasing and spotlighting them all over the next few days (they’ll love that! 😬🫣🤣).

You can do your bit to show your support for this incredible project too by just listening to a story or three!

Happy Darn International Children’s Book Day! 💙📚

29/03/2025

Not long until you’ll be able to watch all these stories, read by all these amazing men! 😁📚

24/03/2025

Have you heard about our new project, The Story Step?

It’s a project to help children who don’t have an adult at home to read with them.

It’s come about as a result of the staggering news that a significant number of children are starting school having never owned, held, or read a book…

Never. 😔

So, JLTS asked men to read a story for us to share to our YouTube channel and what a cracking response we got!

You can see a sneak peek of the amazing men and their stories in our story.

If you’d like to support The Story Step, you can donate via the link below, or you can help us by:

💙 Liking & commenting on this post

💙Following The Story Step on your other socials (search )

💙Reading a story for us (send us a message to find out how!)

Iʼm raising money to promote The Story Step as widely as we can so we can reach as many children as we can!. Support this JustGiving Crowdfunding Page.

15/03/2025

“I’m embarrassed… I’m not a confident reader myself”

Of all the reasons I hear from parents for not reading with their children, this one is by far and away the most common, sadly.

It’s not that parents don’t want to read with their children, they do! And they feel incredibly bad that they’re not confident enough to. 😔

This is why we’ve created The Story Step…

A place where there’s no judgement, just stories.

A place where there’s no flashy sets and no autocues, just decent humans giving their time to share a story.

A place where there’s almost thirty stories, all read by men who have families, jobs, dogs, hobbies, and their own lives, but who still found time to give a few minutes for a good cause.

Now it’s our turn… we need to make sure we do justice to the efforts of those incredible men who have given their time so someone else’s children can enjoy a story.

Please can you help us reach as many children as we can?

If you’re not in a position to make a donation (every little helps!), then perhaps you could like this post and leave a comment so the men who’ve given their time so generously can see their efforts recognised.

Thank you and Happy Darn Saturday! 🥰💙

Iʼm raising money to promote The Story Step as widely as we can so we can reach as many children as we can!. Support this JustGiving Crowdfunding Page.

12/03/2025

JLTS is proud to announce our latest project:

The Story Step!

A volunteer driven storytelling project that aims to create a bank of stories accessible to any child who doesn’t have an adult at home to read with them. 💙

18/12/2024

Feelie Bean Advent Calendar Day 18

Sometimes less is more…

When faced with a massively overwhelmed child, doing LESS can be more impactful than doing more.

We all know the old saying “Actions speak louder than words”, so next time you’re struggling to support a struggling child, try removing your words and using your actions instead.

Our Beanie Quickies offer a range of ‘mirroring’ activities (you do, child copies) which require no words but create solid, unquestionable connections.

💡Use at least one ‘naughty’ action (poke out your tongue or pull a sulky face) because these usually provoke giggles and if the child is giggling, they’re self-regulating and moving through their overwhelm 💙

16/12/2024

Feelie Bean advent calendar day 16

Today the Feelie Beams are talking about colouring in.

It’s a great co-regulation activity that grows self-regulation abilities…

In other words, if you sit down and do a bit of colouring with your kids, you’ll both feel more relaxed and they’ll learn that colouring in is something that helps them relax!

All the resources in the Feelie Bean advent calendar are taken from my EQ Toolkit resource, Sometimes I Need… My Beanie Buddies.

This and all my other therapeutic stories are available on Amazon and you can browse before you buy on my website - link in bio 💙

14/12/2024

Day 14 of the Feelie Bean advent calendar and today, Green Bean wants to tell you that sometimes they need to be bad! 😈

I tend to encourage adults to change how they think about ‘badness’ - if we reframe our thinking away from ‘bad behaviour’ and towards ‘unmet need’, we immediately change our own feelings about the event from Furious to Curious…

If we try to understand the unmet need instead of simply punishing the behaviour, we stand a better chance of changing the child’s behaviour.

Important note: Not all ‘bad behaviour’ is due to unmet need or trauma, sometimes it’s just plain naughtiness!

Naughtiness is an important developmental phase - it helps children learn about boundaries, autonomy, natural consequences, and empathy.

Knowing the child is essential to knowing the difference between unmet need and autonomous decision-making (you say no and the child chooses to do it anyway).

If children choose to naughty around you, it’s actually a compliment…

It means they trust you to hold and manage the risks for them.

All behaviour is communication - even naughty behaviour - what unmet need in yourself did you meet by having the extra ‘naughty’ mince pie…? 😉💙

JLTS works with schools and families to support development of emotional intelligence in children. We offer a range of services including a selection of therapeutic stories and professional resources to accompany them and maximise learning opportunities.

Check our website for more information - link in bio!

13/12/2024

It’s Friday the thirteenth… 😱

Sometimes I feel frightened 😥

Fear often shows up behaviourally as anger - when we’re scared, our human response is usually that attack is the best form of defence.

Children especially can fall foul of this because we (the adults) tend to react to the behaviour we see rather than responding to the feeling behind it.

Behind every behaviour is a feeling and behind that feeling there’s a child who has few choices…

I deliberately included words like ‘frightened’ and ‘bad’ in Sometimes I Feel… because they’re the words that adults (with all good intentions!) try so hard to dilute and avoid - we don’t want our children to be sad or angry, we want them to be happy and content!

They’re not ‘bad words’ though, and there’s no such thing as a ‘bad feeling’ - fear and sadness are inevitable parts of life so if we don’t talk about them, and importantly, how to manage them when they DO show up, our children won’t know.

You can find out about all our therapeutic stories and our EQ Toolkit, Sometimes I Need… My Beanie Buddies on our website - link in bio 💙