ABOUT THE AUTHORJanine Halloran is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with over 15 years of experience working with children and adolescents. She has worked in a variety of settings, including schools and outpatient mental health clinics. In 2013, Janine started Encourage Play, a website dedicated to encouraging kids to learn social skills through play. The topic of self-regulation and learning coping skills to deal with difficult feelings kept coming up as she was doing work for Encourage Play. Teaching coping skills has always been a passion of Janine's, since she first started as a counselor and since she became a mother. Dealing with stress, anxiety and anger is such an important skill to learn, but not all kids learn those strategies naturally. Janine wanted to create a website with curated products aimed at helping kids calm down, balance their energy and emotions and process challenging feelings. So she created Coping Skills for Kids, an entire site dedicated to teaching children how to deal with stress.

Janine lives in Massachusetts with her husband (whom she has known since high school!). They have an 8 year old daughter and a 5 year old son. As a family, they are working on increasing their positive coping skills together. It's always a work in progress. When Janine isn't working, you can find her in her garden or doing an arts and crafts project. She has a weakness for Nutella and Netflix.