With Covid-19 and societal instability as a backdrop, your child may be responding to the start of school in a dysregulated state. Uncooperative behavior, meltdowns, and intense emotions are to be expected from your child (and maybe even yourself as you manage your new role in home learning!) To turn things around, copy what teachers do all year long ~ attend to the social emotional needs of your child. Parents can draw from the myriad of simple strategies your child's teacher pulls from her toolbox every year to engage anxious, frustrated, and unmotivated children.
In Part One, we covered strategies from the first two pillars below. This week, consider how to utilize strategies aligned with the last two pillars of responsive teaching methods. Each of these necessary pillars provides specific ways to soothe children and regulate their nervous systems so they can become curious and enthusiastic learners this year!
1. Ensuring your own personal wellness (because self care is NOT selfish!)
2. Creating predictability and fun routines.
3. Creating a strong bond with your child while ensuring their sense of safety, and
4. Helping your child regulate their emotions and behavior.
3. Create Strong Bonds and a Sense of Safety at Home. Teachers will be working their darndest to get to know and bond with your child virtually. But how will you maintain and strengthen your bond with your children during this challenging time? How will you decrease the fear and anxiety in your home that interferes with learning? How will you remain your child's rock through this lengthy storm? Above all, and before stressing academic learning, insure your relationship with your child is rock solid.
a. Work on being super present with your child. Children often act out when they are craving needed attention from the folks they love. One way to fill this need is by observing your child when they are working or playing, and intentionally making positive comments about what you are noticing. Turn off your phone or other devices when interacting with your child. They will feel your positive presence instead of noticing that you are consistently critical, distracted or multi-tasking.
b. Do emotional check-ins with your child. Ask your child to name how they are feeling once or more each day. Ask them to expand on what may be causing them to feel that way. Just being aware of and naming our emotions helps regulate the nervous system. And an empathetic response from a parent about whatever the expressed emotion is... works wonders.
c. Express confidence in your role as parent and teaching assistant in front of your child. Let your child hear you say, "We've got this. We just need to listen carefully to the directions, make a plan to get it done, and ask for help when we don't understand. I expect you to give this your best effort each day and I will too." Your expressed confidence will help your child feel secure.
d. Do not watch the news when your young children are within hearing distance. The unfiltered weight of the world is not appropriate for children to have to process. If you need help explaining the racial tensions in our nation, plan to attend the Nov. 5th Mountain Strong Families workshop "How to Be an Anti-Racist Family". If your young child seems to be reacting to the weight of the world, help redirect them toward something they CAN control and create by sharing this simple song "Turn off the News" by Lucas Nelson:
f. Make sure your child has plenty of safe interactions with their classmates and friends. Kids can get many of their social needs met at the beginning of the school day during a fun interactive morning meeting with their entire class. Later in the day, your child will connect to learn in small groups with their peers. But if they are still starving for friendship time, set up virtual friendship connection groups or lunch bunches with Althea.Abruscatto@bvsd.org, allow your child to have zoom calls with friends, or see if anyone is interested in being a pen pal who is willing to exchange weekly messages through the mail. Kids will still enjoy playing virtually or reading to each other online (or even with grandparents!). Fill your child's cup with some safe, meaningful social interactions.
g. Try to have family suppers together most nights (with screens turned off). Tell jokes, share what you are grateful for, and ask curious questions about each other's day. Quality family time goes a long way toward creating a strong family bond. Even if you are working nearby your child, stop to have a lunch date together. Share what you both have been working on.
4. HELP Your CHILD REGULATE their EMOTIONS. Humans tend to react to (or mirror) the emotional energy that others give off. All children need "coached" by adults to calm themselves when things aren't going well.
a. Work to stay calm when your child starts to get wound up by lowering your voice, taking 3 deep breaths, and pausing before responding to their resistance or whining. Purposely SLOW YOURSELF DOWN and you will radiate calm energy to your distraught child.
b. When your child gets upset or can't focus any longer, engage in calming techniques TOGETHER. Use what is referred to as a "TIME IN" by breathing or coloring together for five minutes instead of a "TIME OUT" where your child is separated without knowing how to regulate themselves. Sit nearby and coach your child to hug themselves, gently rock back and forth, and breathe deeply together. Go outside for a bit, or go to the window together, and look for 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, then get a drink of water and notice how it tastes.
c. Practice various calming and coping strategies daily (even before you need to do them in real life). Some tools include listening to music, journaling about feelings, self-hugs, deep breathing, and exercise. These strategies naturally align your child's developing prefrontal cortex with their reptilian brain to aid in emotional regulation. Build these strategies into your daily school or bedtime routine.
d. Set up a calming space somewhere in your house with some soothing items in it. Encourage your child to seek out this space for 10 minutes when they need a regulation break to reset themselves for further learning. It might include items such as a liquid timer or glitter jar, Hoberman's sphere, aroma therapy, stuffed animals, or mandalas to color. Your child has a similar set up called a "Refocus Center" in their classroom. Learn how to set up and use a Calming Corner at home in: Establishing a positive tool for learning emotional self-regulation at home
e. Get outside EVERY day. Fresh air, nature play, and exploration help us all feel refreshed and grounded. Have free play, scavenger hunts, water fights, fort building, bird watching..... whatever fun our mountain weather permits.
These practices are what teachers incorporate into the school day in order to reach and teach every child. Teachers know that addressing anxieties and big emotions have to happen before other learning can take place. All the caregivers who are now being asked to help with academics can use these same strategies to heal the uncertainty and chaos that is swirling around your children at this time. Try one or more concrete steps under each Pillar and watch your child relax into a more optimistic and motivated mindset while displaying increased cooperative behavior.
These strategies help rewire their brain and nervous system so they can learn and grow. However, don't expect overnight success. A typical classroom of kids takes several weeks to settle into a routine each fall (pre-pandemic). But by boosting each of these pillars in your home, remote learning will become easier to swallow for you and your child. It might even become your child's best school year yet as they partner with their teacher and their parent in a whole new integrated way. Feel free to contact us with questions or more information about these Four Pillars (kristen.kron@bvsd.org or ann@teeninc.org). GOOD LUCK!
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