Lessons for Teaching Social-Emotional Learning at Home
Sesame Street has put together a series of videos for very young children about staying healthy during the Corona outbreak, and tips for coping with big feelings (see Abby’s message.) Best for Preschool.
Social Emotional Video Lessons: Adam Parker is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist who has brought his lessons online, including assignments to do as a family. Best for elementary-aged students.
EQ in your PJs: Rudolph Matheny has created a number of lessons about the stress response, anxiety, problem-solving and mindfulness. This series is geared towards teens, and is a great one to watch together to reflect on stressful moments together.
Books to help children understand emotional and learning challenges: The Child Mind Institute put together this amazing list of books to help children of all ages facing emotional or learning challenges.
Highly respected local psychologist Daniela Owen just (4/10/20) created a book for children on coping with COVID called Right Now, I’m Fine. There are two versions of her book – one is a coloring book, and the other is illustrated in color.
Tools and Resources
Collaborative Proactive Solutions (CPS): Kids do well if they can. When they are not doing well, it is because the demands of the situation at hand exceeds their skill set. In fact, we all do well if we can, but the demands and stressors of our current environment make it challenging to do the things we’re used to doing (working, exercising, learning, social interactions, etc.)
We need a different set of skills to do “normal” things during abnormal times.
CPS is a highly-researched approach for children who struggle with behavioral and emotional regulation both at home and school, created by Ross Greene. His philosophy is that kids will always do well if they can, and issues of poor motivation are actually due to lagging skills, not lagging desire. His approach helps to identify these lagging skills, and gives parents structure for how to help them solve the problems preventing them from meeting our expectations.
While developed for children with the most challenging behaviors, this approach is extremely helpful for all children to build executive functioning, emotional regulation, perspective-taking, and problem-solving skills.
To learn more, read/listen to The Explosive Child or Raising Human Beings, follow the Parent Walking Tour on the Lives in the Balance web page, check out these 2-minute videos, or contact me for individual parent-coaching.
Check out Ross Greene’s recent interview with Elizabeth Sautter and Rebecca Branstetter specific to COVID-19.
The B Team: This is a Facebook group for those learning to implement the Collaborative Proactive Solutions approach. It is a well-moderated group where they are diving deep into how to best support children with challenges regulating their emotions and behavior in the best of times, and especially now that we’re in the bizarrest of times.
Schedules: Our first post offered a few recommendations for structuring your day. This is not only about making sure learning happens, it also gives children a sense of safety and security, and sets up a strong foundation to work from if flexibility is required given everyone’s needs on a specific day.
Schedules also allow you to put your needs on the table, such as planning for the hour(s) you’ll be in an important work meeting, and figuring out tasks that are fun to do independently during that time when parents’ needs come first. This adds predictability to times when you will be unavailable, and an explanation to times when you may be additionally stressed.
Headspace and Headspace for Kids: Meditation is a proven intervention to help students build emotional and behavioral regulation skills. I highly recommend Headspace for Kids – the meditations are short and involve very simple, effective visualizations. Even more effective when you do them with your child J
Please let me know if you have any questions!
This post was created to support families through COVID-19. If you have more questions related to working with your children at home, please let me know by sending me an email or commenting on this post!
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