When a child chooses a “wrong” answer in a story, they are not mistaken. They are simply telling you something about themselves. This is the idea behind Reflective Book – a new Israeli platform that turns bedtime stories into a real therapeutic tool. In an era where children face daily anxieties from security and economic conditions, social and academic pressures, a new Israeli initiative seeks to provide accessible support for every parent and child.
Eli Cohen, a mentor and author who works with the bio-polo approach, together with Yana Miril, an alternative medicine therapist, are launching Reflective Book – a free website and app featuring over 100 original stories written specifically to allow parents and children to peek into the child’s inner world and create meaningful dialogue.
“An Innovative Approach to Emotional Education”
“This is an innovative approach to emotional education,” says Eli Cohen. “It’s a digital platform that allows parents to better understand their children’s emotions through simple choices in stories and, through them, start a dialogue that brings them closer. Initially, there are over 100 original stories suitable for almost any complex situation in children’s lives today, and the system continues to evolve and grow, adding stories that present new complexities according to the situation and the spirit of the times. This is the new emotional language.”
Reflective Book is a digital platform offering interactive read-aloud stories for children, accompanied by questions and opportunities for sustained dialogue with parents. The idea is to let the child enter the story world, experience the reading themselves, and then process the content through conversation.
At the first stage, the parent selects the story suitable for the child. Once the child begins reading or listening to the story, the site presents it in an accessible and engaging way. After finishing, the child is presented with reflective questions about emotions, the choices of the characters, and how the child themselves would handle the situation. The site also allows the creation of a page or dialogue unit to serve as a conversation tool between the child and parent. Through these questions and dialogue, the child has the opportunity to reflect on the experience, express emotions, and deepen personal understanding.
“The process bridges a child’s personal experience with meaningful conversation with the parent, eliciting deeper emotional and cognitive understanding,” explains Eli. “It’s not just a ‘story-ending exercise’ but a systematic tool to foster reflective thinking, emotional expression, and self-insight in the child.”
Eli Cohen says: “From a young age, I have worked on the connection between body and mind. I realized that often a child or parent asks themselves ‘why did this happen to me?’ but the real question is which need is not being met. I saw the distress in many parents and realized we needed to develop a simple tool to make this understanding accessible. The stories give the child words for their emotions and the parent a way to better understand them.”
“The Child Chooses Based on Emotion”
Yana Miril adds: “It’s time we understand that a child doesn’t always know how to explain in words what they are going through, but they always know how to choose based on emotion. When a child chooses an answer in a story, even if it is ‘wrong’ according to the plot, it is their inner truth. This opens the opportunity for the parent to listen, ask, and connect to the child’s inner world.”
Eli and Yana emphasize that the site was built from a genuine mission in a post-trauma country, with the goal of making emotional support accessible to children in Israel without financial barriers, and it is available for free to parents and children anywhere in the world. “We chose to offer the stories for free because it’s important that every child in Israel can benefit from this tool without limitations of money or location,” explains Cohen.
The site offers stories accompanied by structured processes: A moment of difficulty, coping, insight, and an emotional-educational message. Connecting them creates an innovative platform that allows parents to understand their child’s emotional world – and help them develop a language of emotions, needs, and dialogue from an early age.