The Children’s Shelf

A book can help with

Wanting what you can’t have

For the longing that doesn’t go away when you explain why the answer is no.

Children long for things: the toy everyone else has, a pet, a different house, a parent who lives too far away, a life that looks like their friend’s. Some of it passes in an afternoon. Some of it is a real ache that no explanation fixes, and being told to be grateful for what they’ve got only teaches them to keep it quiet.

Books help by letting the longing be real. Stories where a character wants something badly and doesn’t simply get it, and finds a way to carry that, are far more use than ones that tie it off neatly. They tell a child that wanting is allowed and that they aren’t greedy for feeling it.

Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there.

4–6

Little ones

Wanting badly

At this age the longing is usually for a thing, and it is entirely genuine even when it passes quickly.

Those Shoes

Ages 6–10

Maribeth Boelts

Jeremy longs for the shoes everyone at school has, and his grandmother can’t afford them, and the wanting is drawn honestly rather than tidied away. What he does in the end is genuinely moving. One of the best picture books there is about going without.

or on Bookshop.org

A Chair for My Mother

Ages 4–8

Vera B. Williams

After a fire takes everything, a girl and her family save coins in a jar for one comfortable armchair, month after month. It shows longing turned into patient hope rather than resentment. A deserved classic, warm and full of dignity.

or on Bookshop.org

7–10

Growing children

Longing for something bigger

Older children can yearn for something that isn’t a thing at all: a person, a different life, a way home.

Because of Winn-Dixie

Ages 8–11

Kate DiCamillo

Opal misses the mother who left, and a stray dog helps her build a life in a new town anyway. DiCamillo doesn’t resolve the longing, she lets Opal carry it alongside everything good that happens. A modern classic and a beautiful read-aloud.

or on Bookshop.org

The Tiger Rising

Ages 9–12

Kate DiCamillo

Rob keeps his grief and his wanting packed away in an imaginary suitcase until a caged tiger forces it open. It is short, spare and honest about the cost of not letting yourself want things. A Newbery Honor book.

or on Bookshop.org

11–12

Older children

Wanting what you cannot have

Older children understand perfectly well why the answer is no, and want the thing anyway. What follows sits with the longing rather than talking anybody out of it, which is the only honest thing to do with it.

The One and Only Ivan

Ages 8–12

Katherine Applegate

Ivan is a silverback gorilla who has spent twenty-seven years in a glass enclosure at a shopping mall, and tells you about it himself, in short lines with a great deal of white space. What he wants is not for himself. Based on a real gorilla, and it won the Newbery. An animal dies, and the book does not soften it.

or on Bookshop.org

Some Places More Than Others

Ages 8–12

Renée Watson

All Amara wants for her twelfth birthday is to go to Harlem and finally meet her father’s family in the brownstone he grew up in. She gets there, and it is not the place she had been carrying around in her head. Quiet and warm, and very good on wanting something for years and then holding the real version of it.

or on Bookshop.org

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Something to do together

A wishing printable is on its way

A page for naming what a child is longing for, and separating what might come one day from what can’t. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.

One last thing

A child’s longing is worth taking seriously even when the answer has to stay no. Telling them to count their blessings teaches them to hide the feeling rather than resolve it.

So let them say what they want without arguing them out of it, be honest about what is and isn’t possible, and help them find what they can have instead. A child whose wanting is heard usually settles far sooner than one whose wanting is dismissed.

Questions parents ask

My child wants something we cannot afford.
Being honest that it is not possible, without a lecture attached, usually goes better than a vague maybe. What they tend to need alongside it is to have the wanting heard. Telling a child to count their blessings teaches them to hide the feeling rather than resolve it.
They want something for months and then lose interest.
Common, and not a reason to dismiss the wanting while it lasts. It is real to them now, whatever happens to it later. Letting it run its course, without arguing them out of it or rushing to supply it, is usually the quickest route through.
How is this different from being spoilt?
Longing is a feeling. Demanding is a behaviour. A child can be helped with the first while still being held to a no on the second. Treating the feeling itself as bad manners tends to make both of them worse.
My child longs for something they cannot have at all.
A sibling, a parent who is not there, a pet that died. These do not resolve, and the honest version is that it carries on mattering. What helps is letting them say it out loud as often as they need to, rather than steering them towards the bright side.

You might also want

When it doesn’t go your waywhen the answer is finally no Wanting what somebody else haswanting what somebody else has When money is tightwhen it is something you cannot afford

These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.

More topics are being added.

Head back to the children’s A to Z to find a book for whatever else is going on at home.

Back to the Children’s A–Z
Chosen by Georgia Clare, author, bibliotherapist and mother of two, for Book Quote Therapy. This site is free and always will be. If it has helped, you can buy me a coffee. It is what keeps me adding to it.