What Is My Tummy Saying?

🎯 Educator’s Guide: “What Is My Tummy Saying?”

💭 What is this story about?

Fanti is a little elephant right in the middle of a fascinating game when she begins to feel strange sounds and movements in her tummy. Quite scared, she looks for a private corner behind the big sofa at home to try to figure out what is happening and what her body is trying to tell her, while patient Papa Elephant stays close with respect, giving Fanti all the space and time she needs without any interruptions.

🧠 What will children learn?

• Active body listening (paying attention to our body’s early sensory signals and valuing them before there is any urgency).
• The right to privacy (learning that hiding behind the sofa or the curtains is a valid and natural way for children to seek their own private space).
• Calm and assertive co-regulation (knowing that a relaxed, unhurried adult helps dissolve fears during moments of growing independence).
• The importance of not creating expectations around results, valuing body self-awareness over whether or not the potty gets used.
• The absence of rush or urgency (play doesn’t stop forcefully — it simply pauses).

🤝 How to continue this conversation?

• “Has your tummy ever made funny noises like Fanti’s?”
• “Close your eyes, breathe like Fanti… can you feel what’s going on inside your tummy right now?”
• “Fanti has a hiding spot behind the grey sofa — do you have a secret spot at home just for you?”
• “What could we do next time our tummy feels like it has something to tell us?”

🎯 Educational focus

Potty training should not be linked to success or to social and adult pressure to keep clothes clean, as this creates childhood stress that often translates into long-term difficulties and withholding. This story aims to empower children and place the entire focus on the skill of interoception: pausing to listen to what is happening inside from a space of uninterrupted privacy.