Can anyone recommend any good books about emotions? Books geared for preschoolers, in particular. Our 4yo son is having major emotional outbursts and meltdowns, and even his teacher is commenting that they're these HUGE emotions and he kind of spirals completely out of control. He swings from pure joy to rage to sadness and back again, with seemingly no trigger. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. And they're just huge. In the past week, he's thrown and stomped on toys out of anger/frustration. He was so upset at dropoff this morning after I left that the teacher thought he was going to hyperventilate. When I ask why he's so upset and why he's behaving the way he does, he says it's because he misses me. His teacher had been putting him in timeout when he lashed out (like breaking the toys or hitting his friends), but she's decided that that just escalates him, so today she had him sit and put 50 pompoms back in a container, one by one. She said that seemed to help, since it sort of redirected the energy. But I feel like we need to address and talk about emotions better and hoping maybe someone has a book to recommend.

We've recently started trying to sort of "re-sleep-train" him - we had been having to sit in his room next to his bed until he fell asleep, which was taking close to an hour every night. We've started trying to leave the room and let him fall asleep on his own, and it went well for about a week and then suddenly he's crying before I even walk out the door, and we're having to do the checks on him. Usually it only takes one check about 5-10 minutes later, but it still feels awful because he's 4 and having these huge emotions as it is. So is he tired? Is he feeling neglected and so he's acting out? Is he reacting to the fact that his 14mo sister demands a lot of attention? Is this normal 4yo behavior and "this too shall pass?" Or is something else going on here? Do I need to talk to the pediatrician and consider taking him to a counselor?

I'm feeling really sad and frustrated and like a total failure of a mother.