The Road to Resilience
How to Support Children in Developing Social and Emotional Skills and Build Resiliency During this Pandemic
As a new school year dawns upon us, I hear many parents voicing concerns about the future of their child’s education. Many states will be having virtual online learning in order to stop the spread of the COVID-19.
This entails that many parents and educators will be facing an unconventional school year this year. To those parents and educators who are having strong emotions over having to adapt to this new sense of normalcy, I hear you and I see you.
In my article, “From Kindergarten Teacher to Parent: 10 skills I learned”, I listed 10 important skills that I learned as an educator and how they intertwined with parenthood. Along with being a Kindergarten teacher, I also had the opportunity to teach Social and Emotional (SEL) skills to each grade level at my school.
As a classroom teacher and a parent, I have seen firsthand how teaching children SEL skills not only helps with their social and emotional development, but also with academics, developing confidence in themselves and with others around them.
If you are a teacher or a parent, I see you. I have witnessed firsthand how challenging it is to work while trying to take care of a child at home.
This pandemic has drastically turned our world and society upside down. We’ve had to change and adapt many aspects of our society. One of the most greatly impacted areas is education. Back in March, I had to modify my teaching to long distance learning while simultaneously taking care of my toddler.
The best thing you can do for your child or students is to be present, have open communication and provide children with coping skills to help build their resilience. It may not feel like it, but you already have everything you need to ensure your child or student succeeds with distance learning.
As parents and educators, we need to focus on building resilience in children by developing their social and emotional skills. Early childhood therapist, Craig Knippenburg, stressed the importance of building resilience in children during the Coronavirus pandemic in a Huffpost article. He stated that:
“Children need to develop resilience to cope with the setbacks and roadblocks that the world inevitably throws at all of us. They’ll be better prepared for life if they learn how to work through difficult circumstances, explore painful emotions, manage stress, accept what is out of our control, fail, and try again.”
As an SEL teacher, I was in charge of teaching each grade social and emotional skills. I would go into the classrooms once a week and teach from an SEL curriculum that my school adapted.
Social and emotional skills are the building blocks to building resilience. SEL skills refer to self and social awareness and problem solving skills.These are skills that help children cope with difficult situations by working through strong emotions, making responsible choices and developing coping skills to overcome adversity. Some examples include emotional management, empathy, cooperation, relationship and decision making.
Here are some things I learned about teaching social and emotional skills to children:
- Have some ‘helpers’ by your side: With younger kids I used puppets to help me teach each lesson. I had different puppets for each class and these puppets became my “teacher helpers”. The children loved seeing the puppets!
You can also use stuffed animals that you have at hand — it doesn’t have to be actual puppets. Any animal or doll will suffice, as long as they are attractive to children. My helpers were only there with me during the lesson and I never brought them out for other reasons. This helped distinguish that these puppets were there for Social and Emotional class helpers.
I find myself using my daughter’s stuffed animals to soothe her when she has strong feelings. If I notice that she is feeling frustrated or upset, she starts to cry or put her hands together with her fists. She has a frog lovey that, ever since she was a baby, she gravitates to for comfort. I make sure to have it close by so she can seek it out if she needs it. At this young stage, I am teaching her to learn to manage her emotions by taking breaths, hugging a lovely or finding comfort in my arms, if needed. - Storytelling & Role-playing: Two similar strategies that I used to teach SEL concepts was storytelling and role-playing. I used storytelling to pique the student’s interest in the topic, and a lot of times as an ice breaker. We would roleplay after teaching the class the SEL topic and I would come up with scenarios that they can relate to.
The SEL curriculum had scripted prompts about children going through different situations such as coping with feeling frustrated. I always related it back to the students: Can you think of a time when you felt frustrated? How did you handle it? I would take their situations and we would role-play ways that supported the child in solving the problem.
My toddler is a bit too young for role-playing right now, so I use storytelling by reading her books about social and emotional skills. I also like to do a picture walk. A picture walk is an educator term for reading a book by talking about the pictures. What do you see? Since she can not verbalize just yet, I narrate to her the picture walk — and point to the different parts of the book, focusing on faces and expressions to support her understanding of emotional management. - Modeling: Modeling is a great way for adults to demonstrate to children ways that they use social and emotional skills. In the classroom, I would model to students the skill that we would be learning.
If the topic was problem solving, I would include a story about a problem that I faced and how I solved it. It’s important to note that we, as parents and educators are not equipped with all the answers or how to handle situations perfectly.
It’s important for children to see that adults make mistakes too and that we are learning and growing as well.
For my toddler, I model to her positive behavior, especially regarding emotional management. This is the stage where they pick up everything that you do. If I want her to focus on her food at the table, I also focus on my food at the table.
A few weeks ago, she was frustrated because she couldn’t have my fork during dinner. I narrated to her that I need the fork to eat, and redirected her to her toddler fork. If she still felt frustrated, I looked at her, took a few breaths and spoke to her again telling her that I know you are feeling frustrated, but this is not an option right now. I then redirected her to use her own fork instead.
Acknowledging feelings is key for young children. It is important for their feelings to be validated. I am teaching her how to work through her emotions when she is having strong feelings and how to redirect them in a positive way. - Focus on your mental health: one of the most important things you can do for your child is focusing on your mental health. We need to help ourselves before we can help others. An article in the Washington Post outlined ways that parents can support children’s mental health. One of those suggestions is taking care of ourselves and “giving ourselves “the emotional space to work through stress and frustration”.
The article further suggests examples such as “taking 5”, taking 5 minutes to yourself while your child is engaged in a quiet activity. This could also mean having a “quiet or reflecting corner” at home where you can direct yourself or your child to a designated safe space for them to calm down if they are having strong feelings.
I would have a “reflecting corner” in my classroom where children were invited to go if they needed some down time to themselves. You can create this at home with a soft rug, pillows and books, but it could also be as simple as a room in the house.
You can model how to use this as a coping mechanism by saying “Mommy is feeling frustrated right now. She needs a few minutes in her reflecting corner and then will come back and play with you” so children acknowledge your feelings and you demonstrate how you are coping with them.
Anyone who has a toddler knows that they take up a lot of energy. There are times when I need a few minutes to myself and have to leave the room while my daughter plays with her toys or my husband watches her. It’s okay to need a break, we are not machines wired to be on 24/7.
It is important to note that as caretakers, asking for help is not a sign of weakness or defeat. Developing these coping skills supports ourselves, our children and students in recognizing these strong feelings in order to work through them. Being able to stop and take a moment to breathe helps us become in tune with our emotions, and to recognize signs of help if needed before it’s too late and our emotions take over.
Now more than ever, as educators and parents we need to create a safe space for children. We need to let them know that it’s okay to have strong feelings, and that we are there to help navigate these uncharted waters.
There is a term in psychology research emerging called “post-traumatic growth”- this refers to the positive growth that arises after experiencing psychological struggle and adversity. As professor of Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis and a consultant at the parenting skill site called “Parent lab” stated in a Huffpost article
“ While we certainly don’t want our children to experience a pandemic crisis, it is important to view this time as an opportunity for growth.”
As educators and parents, I’m sure that we can all agree that is a challenging time for everyone right now. By providing children with tools to develop their resilience we teach them that yes, this is a tough time right now, but we will overcome it together. You are not alone in feeling this way. We will be resilient, adapt to this new sense of normalcy and come out stronger.
