What to Do When Friends Hurt Your Feelings: Smart Ways to Protect Yourself is a book written for children struggling with peer relationships. It teaches them how to safeguard both their own precious emotions and their valued friendships. Based on 16 years of hands-on experience and research, elementary school teacher Lee Hyun-ah presents ten essential scenarios of common peer conflict. Each situation is accompanied by practical strategies that children can apply to navigate these challenges with confidence and wisdom.

New Release by Lee Hyun-ah, Bestselling Author of Words That Embrace Emotions

For 10 Consecutive Years, "Friendship Issues" Rank Top Concern Among Elementary Students
Is It Possible to Protect Both Precious Friendships and Your Own Heart?

As children begin their elementary school life and step into society, they encounter many new types of friends and experience countless peer conflicts.
"Why am I the only one left out?"
"Even if my best friend treats me poorly, should I endure it to avoid being alone?"
"I asked them to stop, so why are they teasing me even more?"

Lee Hyun-ah, a longtime "heart healer" in the classroom who has attentively listened to children's worries, noticed that the most pressing and painful concern for children today is the "struggle with friendships." Through meeting children who find arguments with friends terrifying, feel crushed by small misunderstandings, and suffer silently when hurt or bullied by friends without knowing how to respond, she began to reflect: "How can these children protect their hearts from harm while maintaining and developing healthy friendships?"
What to Do When Friends Hurt Your Feelings: Smart Ways to Protect Yourself can be seen as the culmination of her observations, reflections, and research as a teacher in response to this very question.

If You Want to Build Healthy Friendships?
Move Forward Step by Step Through Practice, Even If You Make Mistakes!

The author first presents 10 problematic situations children may encounter in friendships through relatable stories. Then, using text and illustrations arranged like picture book scenes, she makes it easy for anyone to immerse themselves in and empathize with these situations. The protagonists in these 10 stories all feel hurt by their friends but struggle silently, fearing that expressing their true feelings might lead to rejection, anger, or drifting apart. However, enduring or avoiding problems never leads to solutions.

After fully empathizing with these situations, it’s time to practice the "Try This" and "Next Steps" suggested in the following pages. For example: setting boundaries with friends who overstep, saying no to unwanted requests, or stepping away from hurtful friends to make new ones.

By observing how 10 different protagonists navigate their friendship challenges, readers will come to understand what the book means by "smart." True smartness isn’t about perfect test scores or solving difficult problems—it’s about "cherishing and protecting one’s own heart while wisely resolving friendship issues." Of course, this ability doesn’t appear out of nowhere. The only way to develop it is to follow the book’s guidance: even when it’s hard, to confront, make mistakes, gather courage, and practice repeatedly, so both the child and their friends can learn and grow bit by bit.

A key feature of this book is that all the children are depicted as animal characters. This minimizes common biases related to gender or appearance when portraying relationships among children. It avoids stereotypes like "the bully must be a tall boy" or "the gossip must be a delicate girl." Another feature is that the children in the book cannot be simply categorized as "good" or "bad." Just as a child excluded by a desk mate might have previously spread rumors in another group, peer conflicts among children are rarely black and white.

Turning Friendship Struggles into Opportunities for Growth
Becoming a Solid Support for Children

Many parents, worried about their children getting hurt in friendships, often ask the author whether they should teach their children to defend themselves. Seeing children struggle in friendships can be heartbreaking for parents, who may also fear the potential long-term harm. However, if we consider that children will grow through countless interpersonal relationships in the future, parents’ attitudes must also adapt. Friendship challenges should not end in harm but can become stepping stones for growth. What children truly need is not for adults to create perfect relationships for them, but to learn how to face conflicts and failures and accumulate the experience of overcoming them.

In the "Note to Parents" at the end of the book, the author suggests ways to connect with children:

Start conversations with observations rather than interrogations.

Stay by their side and offer emotional warmth.

Share your own real experiences instead of immediately providing solutions.

It is both difficult and crucial for children to feel safe enough to share their struggles. When sending children out into the world, the most solid preparation parents can offer is not to prevent them from falling, but to nurture their resilience—the ability to stand up again even when they fall. May this book also serve as a reliable guide for children to strengthen their inner resilience through the challenges of friendship.

Lee Hyun-ah

Elementary/Middle/High School Teacher · Reading Consultant · Reading Instructor

An experienced Seoul elementary school teacher with 16 years of classroom practice, Lee Hyun-ah also serves as the representative of the "Children's Book Research Group for the Joy of Learning." Currently pursuing her doctoral studies in Counseling Psychology at Ewha Womans University Graduate School, she shares educational content focused on building emotional resilience and serves as a mentor in elementary education.

Her outstanding contributions to school reading education have earned her the Minister of Education Award and the 5th Future Education Award (Grand Prize). She has also appeared on EBS programs such as Future Education Plus and Into the Educational Field to introduce innovative reading education methods.

As a writer, she contributed to the 2015 Revised National Curriculum Textbook and has reached over 50,000 educators through best-selling lectures, including Teacher Hyun-ah’s Emotion Lessons That Revitalize the Classroom on the Ice Cream In-Service Training platform.

Lee has long served as a bridge of encouragement among students, teachers, and parents by documenting children’s words and lives. Drawing from this experience, she writes with a warm and insightful perspective toward children. She is the author of Words That Embrace Emotions and Children’s Emotional Pharmacy, and has translated more than 30 picture books into Korean, including Picture Book Design Library and Sadness Is an Elephant.

Introduction
01 When I yell at friends to stop teasing me, they just tease me even more.
02 My friend makes me do things I don't want to do, and I can't say no.
03 My friends posted my photo in a group chat and made fun of me.
04 During break time, my desk mate won't play with me, so I hide in the bathroom.
05 My best friend bullies me, but I don't want to be left out, so I endure it.
06 I feel insecure because friends tease me for being short and chubby.
07 I feel uncomfortable when my friend hits or touches me.
08 My friend spread lies and bad rumors about me behind my back.
09 I got so angry that I pushed a friend who was provoking me.
10 I saw kids hitting a classmate, but I was too scared to do anything and just watched.

Smart Friendship Checklist ①, ②

A Note to Parents