1. Who Is Roland Y. Kim, Ph.D.?
Roland Y. Kim, Ph.D. is an author, researcher, educator, and psychoeducational consultant whose work focuses on emotional development, parenting, relationships, empathy, and the lasting influence of early relational experiences.
His professional journey began in economics before a growing interest in human development led him to clinical psychology. He completed APA-accredited clinical training informed by psychodynamic, object relations, cognitive-behavioral, and Gestalt approaches.
Over several decades, his work has included clinical and community service, parent education, radio broadcasting, newspaper columns, seminars, and public mental-health education.
Across these different roles, one question has remained at the center of his work:
How do our earliest ways of finding safety, strength, connection, independence, and understanding continue to shape who we become?
His later work brought these questions together in a Five-Stage developmental framework exploring the movement from safety and dependence, through voice, care and repair, and independence, toward empathy and integration.
But eventually another question emerged:
Could these ideas be made meaningful not only to psychologists and adults, but to children themselves?
That question became The Five Planet Journey.
2. Why I Created The Five Planet Journey
The Five Planet Journey began in a very personal way.
I was looking for meaningful children’s books to give my grandchildren.
I wanted stories they could enjoy as children, but also stories carrying something they might return to as they grew older.
After spending many years thinking about emotional development, I began wondering whether some of what I had learned could be translated into a language children could experience naturally—not through psychological terminology, but through stories, animals, relationships, choices, and imaginary worlds.
Gradually, five worlds began to take shape.
On Meerkat Planet, a child could discover that growth begins with feeling safe enough to explore.
On Lion Planet, the child could discover strength, confidence, personal space, and the emerging voice that says:
“I can!”
On Dog Planet, strength encounters another discovery:
“You matter, too.”
Children begin thinking about care, responsibility, relationships, and what we can do when someone has been hurt.
On Chimpanzee Planet, another question emerges:
“What do I choose?”
Here the journey turns toward freedom, independent judgment, negotiation, and learning that we can remain connected to others without surrendering our own choices.
Finally, Elephant Planet asks perhaps the most difficult question:
How can I understand your world without losing my own?
The journey becomes one of empathy, perspective, flexible boundaries, collaboration, and integration.
Together, the five worlds form a developmental journey:
Safety → Voice → Care → Freedom → Integration
But I did not want the planets to become labels for children.
Every child carries all five planets within them. So do adults.
Sometimes we need safety. Sometimes we need the courage to speak. Sometimes we need to recognize that we have hurt someone and repair the relationship. Sometimes we need to say no and make our own choice. And sometimes we need to understand how different people’s needs and perspectives can coexist.
Nor does growing mean that we graduate from one planet and discard it.
We carry the gifts of the earlier planets with us.
That is why the five children’s books belong together.
No single planet contains everything a child needs to grow.
Safety without enough freedom can become overprotection. Strength without enough care can become control. Care without enough independence can become people-pleasing. Independence without enough connection can become isolation.
The later journey asks us to bring these capacities together.
That is also why I created A Parent & Teacher Guide to The Five Planet Journey.
The five storybooks are the journey. The Parent & Teacher Guide is the map.
The Guide invites parents, teachers, and caregivers to look beneath children’s behavior and ask not only:
“How do I stop this behavior?”
but also:
“What may be trying to grow here?”
There is one more reason this question matters deeply to me.
Adults have planets, too.
Sometimes a child’s growth takes them into emotional territory unfamiliar to the adults raising them. A child’s independence, disagreement, anger, vulnerability, or changing perspective may awaken something unfinished in us.
Supporting children’s development therefore sometimes requires adults to grow alongside them—and ultimately to allow the next generation to travel farther than we did.
That has become one of the meanings of The Five Planet Journey for me.
I do not want these books to tell my grandchildren—or any child—exactly who they should become.
I hope they offer something quite different:
a safe place from which to begin their own journey.
3. A Wish for the Next Generation
The Five Planet Journey began with my grandchildren, but the wish behind it extends to every child.
I hope you become safe enough to grow, strong enough to have your own voice, caring enough to repair, free enough to make your own choices, and wise enough to understand others without losing yourself.
And for my own grandchildren, there is something more I hope these books will someday communicate:
I spent many years thinking about how people grow emotionally. Later in my life, I turned some of what I had learned into stories for you.
You do not have to see the world exactly as I do.
Take from these stories whatever becomes meaningful to you. Make your own choices. Discover things I did not discover. Question things I thought I understood.
Keep traveling. There may be worlds beyond the five planets that I could never see.
If these books help you travel even a little farther—with greater safety, courage, care, freedom, and understanding—then creating them will have meant something very special to me.
With love for the generations still growing,
Roland Y. Kim, Ph.D.
Interested in the developmental framework behind the stories?
Explore the Five-Stage Theory → FiveStageTheory.com