Description

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An analogy about building trust with others and yourself. Like floors on a hotel, it shows children and teens that there are different levels of trust you can have with others. As you gain more and more trust, you go higher up into the hotel with nicer and nicer rooms. At the very top is the penthouse, where the people you trust the most live.

The story is about a boy who runs a hotel called the Trust Hotel, where people do not pay for rooms but instead, they are given rooms based on how much trust the boy has built with them. The first floor of the hotel has rooms for people the boy sort of knows, but does not trust with anything big. The main rooms above that are for his friends which are bigger and nicer than those on the first floor. The third level has bigger rooms for close friends but has even more breakable and prized possessions in it. Finally, the penthouse is reserved for people the boy trusts with everything. The story highlights the importance of trust and how it takes time to build it through shared experiences and honesty.

The story describes how a child decides to give out keys within their Trust Hotel. When one person breaks their trust, the child decides to give a second chance. This ends up being a mistake and they decide to have the friend evicted from the hotel. This demonstrates how people can go up and down in trust just like hotel room floors. This can help children and teens understand that trust is something that can be earned, built, or lost over time and experiences.
This is written to make kids think about what kinds of friends they make and how healthy relationships can change over time. It discusses how building trust is different than love and that you can still love someone even though you may not trust everything they tell you.

This book also contains helpful questions to ask the reader as well as a list of "red flags" to be used as discussion points to talk about together. This is meant to be a demonstration of this skill and to be used to have the reader then draw out their own Trust Hotel too