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We learn by doing. It’s true of everyone, especially children. And for certain things, behavioral learning is the most effective way to learn. Skills that depend on data and knowledge, such as mathematics, can start with data and theory, which might get strengthened with practice. Emotionally dependent skills, such as self-esteem, may be better suited for an activity, and an experience-based learning environment for the lessons to land.
Life experiences are the sources of self-esteem. Children want to feel included in communities, and experiences of rejection or acceptance into communities dramatically impact their sense of self-esteem. There are any number of reasons children might feel accepted or rejected by their peers. Children might highlight differences between each other, or affirm similarities. Some children may make decisions based on observations of what they see in the world, such as self-identifying that they are different. This may lead them to make judgments about themselves without any direct interactions. So many factors contribute to the development of self-esteem that educators can never anticipate all of them.
Self-esteem is among the most important factors in the development of any child. Good self-esteem can be the determining factor in the long-term success of a child, while damaged self-esteem can leave children struggling for the rest of their lives.
For these reasons, it’s imperative to include worthwhile self-esteem-building group activities into educational curriculum.
Self-Esteem Group Activities for Youth
Group activities are excellent for building self-esteem in children. Though it’s not the only deciding factor in developing self-esteem, community integration has a powerful determining effect on developing self-esteem.
Cultivating confidence that it’s safe to express feelings aloud.
Recognizing there are people out there with the same fears.
All the students in the class write down something they’re afraid of. Then there’s an open discussion where the question is posed, “What would it be like if that happened?” It can be helpful to adopt an attitude that if the fear came to pass, it might not be as bad as anticipated.
The Gratitude Journal
Creating a habit of looking for good things happening around them encourages children to look for positive aspects of themselves. For this activity, every child has a designated journal for this purpose. On a weekly basis, they are encouraged to write positive things they notice about other people. Then, two or three times every month, have a discussion with the whole class on the highlights from their gratitude journals.
Positive Rephrasing
In this activity, children will say their statements of self-challenge. Things like, “I am a bad writer,” or “I don’t have a lot of friends.” Then the student rephrases the statements into more positive statements. I.e. “I come up with creative ideas when I write” or “I have a great best friend.”
What are Good Traits Discussion
For this activity, students write down traits that they consider “good.” I.e. Good at sports–funny–kind–etc. After making the list, have a discussion in class about the traits. What do these traits look like in a person? How do you cultivate them?
Cooperative Boardgames
Games are fun, and they can either encourage individual conflict, or they can be tools for developing cooperation and a sense of being a valued part of the community. Play board games, and put children into small teams so that they can cooperate on decisions and work together.
Write the End Goal
It can be frustrating being a child. Children can have trouble feeling certain about having any agency in their own lives. With this activity, children write down outcomes they would like to see in their lives. Treating a child’s plans seriously affirms their sense that their actions and thoughts matter.
How to Build Self-Esteem in Students
In the end, there are a lot of potential self-esteem group activities that encourage growth. Determining which ones are best to choose will depend on the educators, the students, and many other factors. Take into consideration factors that contribute to self-esteem when creating activities. Factors such as…
Definitions–who am I? What does that say about me?
Relationships–who am I in my relationships? How do they change me?
Accomplishments–what do I do well? How have I shown improvement? And, alternately, do I wish to change any of my habits?
Self-esteem is complicated, but the factors contributing to positive self-esteem tend toward common experiences. If that’s true, then it’s possible to create environments that encourage improved self-esteem.
Soul Shoppe is a social emotional learning company. For more than twenty years they’ve been devoted to creating tools and empowering educators of all stripes to incorporate emotional intelligence into their curricula. Their strategies are effective in encouraging empathy and emotional awareness in children. Through these strategies and their Peacemaker Program they help decrease conflicts in playgrounds across the country. Click for more information on SEL Programs for Elementary Schools.
When it comes to learning about diversity, children have a huge advantage over adults. If a child encounters something new, they tend to accept it as a part of life with limited judgment. The natural impulse for most people when encountering something confusing is to label it as weird (Qian). When we’re children, we have two ways to develop context clues to support value judgments. One way is through explicit means, like explanations from parents and teachers. The other way is by implicit means, such as pop culture depictions and witnessed interpersonal interactions (Harvard). Educators should be aware of both means of developing value judgments when teaching children about diversity. Even though we can’t control the implicit formation of prejudice, it’s important to understand how your teaching choices explicitly affect a child’s developing understanding of diversity.
Teaching Children About Diversity
Unlearning Biases
People can develop implicit biases as early as four years of age (Harvard). That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to teach acceptance of diversity to children. It’s important to know what you’re up against when you start. From an early age, we develop instincts to think of people similar to us in “good” terms and people who are different in “bad” terms. According to Dr. Miao Qian, a postdoctoral research fellow with the Inequality in America Initiative, the way forward out of this pattern is a persistent effort to unlearn subconscious habits of stereotyping. Qian and her team are developing an app game designed to retrain people to new subconscious habits. Qian’s hope is to begin a trend of no longer equating different with bad.
According to Qian, unlearning bias will be the most effective tool in helping future generations grow up with better acceptance of diversity. The fact of the matter is that we inadvertently imbue children with subconscious prejudices. With care and vigilance, we can foster circumstances that will encourage new subconscious habits. The key to the future is unlearning biases.
There are a few things you can do, as educators, through teaching diversity in classroom activities. In addition, Soul Shoppe can help with online courses such as Respect Differences and Allies Against Racism.
Incorporate More Diversity into Reading Lists
Reading can be a powerful tool and diverse books are important.
The good news is that the need for diverse books is a known problem. Recently, writers and publishers have been doing a hard push to give less-represented voices a bigger platform (Harvard). The question, “Why aren’t there more people in these books like me?” can guide you. We’ve been using stories as a safe place to try out hard thoughts and feelings since we worked out how to light campfires.
It can be a powerful thing to strive for more diverse representations of racial backgrounds, sexual orientations, etc., in the literature you incorporate into curricula. Children tend to form a lot of biases from literature. Normative depictions of characters with diverse backgrounds can be a powerful influencing factor in how children develop or redefine biases (Harvard).
Diverse representation in reading lists creates more opportunities for conversations about prejudice. It’s difficult to judge what has influenced kids in their lives outside of the classroom. It’s equally difficult to anticipate what they will encounter that will influence how they develop biases. What an educator can do is set reading lists and know what’s on them.
It’s important to incorporate teaching about diversity in classroom activities because we’re dealing with largely subconscious biases developed from implicit influences. Relearning biases requires similarly implicit and subconscious tools.
Talking about Prejudice – Explicit Tools for Implicit Problems
Fear is an influencing factor in developing biases about anyone with a different background than yourself. A powerful tool to help with uncertainty and fear is creating a safe place to talk about hard subjects.
It’s important to talk about prejudice (Harvard). Children sometimes lack the vocabulary to talk about or make decisions about new things they haven’t encountered yet. Supervised conversations in a classroom setting can give children a sense that it’s safe to ask hard questions and that their views matter (Harvard).
In a classroom setting, children can think about questions they might not encounter explicitly in their daily lives. Questions like:
What does discrimination look like?
Have you ever been impacted by discrimination?
Conversations about prejudice and discrimination are difficult, but supervised conversation nurtures communication skills–both speaking and listening. Listening is an important step in accepting diverse perspectives.
How to Teach Diversity in the Classroom through Classroom Activities
As mentioned above, when diversity is taught through activities it can be extremely effective. Here are some ideas:
Say hello each day in various languages
Serve a snack from different cultures around the world
Intolerance rests on a foundation of biases gained by both implicit and explicit influences. Addressing prejudices isn’t impossible, but it takes patience and persistence. Learning to accept diversity requires an effort to relearn subconscious biases, some of which we might not know are there. By incorporating more tools for empathizing with and normalizing diverse perspectives and backgrounds, it’s possible to make curricula that aid in teaching children about diversity.
Students can quickly become overwhelmed when they have a lot of work to do but haven’t yet been equipped with the skill of goal setting. Overwhelmed students may act as though they are disinterested, aloof, or even lazy. They may appear to engage in an approach-avoidance cycle that adults interpret as a lack of motivation when the reality is that they aren’t sure how their present assignments will lead them to achieve their future goals.
Goal setting for students is vital. Every child needs to be equipped with a clear objective, as well as tactics to help them achieve their objectives when obstacles arise.
This article will discuss the importance of goal setting for students and practical ways to teach it.
Goal Setting for Students
The Importance of Goal Setting
EducationWeek states, “Goal setting helps students to be more aware of the learning that they are expected to experience. This awareness helps students to be engaged in the learning process. Mastery-oriented goals give students the opportunity to focus on learning standards and their own growth.”
As indicated above, there is a strong connection between a student’s understanding of their trajectory in the classroom and their ability to self-assess their learning progress.
For example, most teachers clearly define the student objective inherent within any given lesson plan. Most lesson plans begin with the words, “At the end of this lesson the students will be able to . . . “ Or some such similar statement. Clearly defining the objective of the lesson helps guide the teacher in their planning.
Why not share the objective of your lesson with the students?
Research shows that when you write the day’s objective on the board for all the students to see, they learn how to compare and contrast the day’s goals with their own experience. If a teacher writes, “At the end of this lesson, the students will be able to list the elements of a structured essay,” you are giving clear instructions as well as setting clear goals for your students. Students can, in turn, learn what goal setting looks like and how to measure their progress.
When objectives are social emotional rather than task-based, the objective may sometimes go unspoken. When implementing activities related to social-emotional learning, sharing goals is important. In addition, creating a chart of classroom goals together can help students see what outcomes the classroom wants to achieve while taking an active role in deciding the desired outcome. In this case, the class may come up with ideas like “be respectful to others.” Because the goal is their own and not just given to them, they may take a more active role in ensuring that outcome.
The importance of goal setting for students is that they learn to recognize a goal and outcome so they can eventually create roadmaps for themselves in any area of their lives.
Practical Ways You Can Teach Goal Setting for Students
Goal Setting for Older Students
One of the most widely accepted and practical approaches to goal setting for students is found in the acronym SMART.
Smart goals for students include the following tenants:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-based
Let’s get more specific about how to set a smart goal.
Specific
The career search website Indeed discusses smart goals at length. Indeed explains, “By setting objectives and creating a clear roadmap for how you’ll reach your intended target, you can decide how to apply your time and resources to make progress.” This sentiment is a good reminder that what we teach our students about setting goals will follow them into their adulthood and careers.
When you are teaching smart goals for students, you can begin with helping them understand what it means to make a specific goal. The guidelines for setting a specific goal include the 3 S’s:
Simple. Sensible. Significant.
For example, if a student struggles with the concept of long division in math class, they might make a specific goal to help focus their efforts and feel motivated to achieve it. In this case, the student might decide they want to become better at long division because they want to master the skill to move onto the next level of math.
Measurable
Measurable goals help students track their progress and stay focused.
Using the example above, the student might set a goal to practice long division for 20 minutes a day. This is a measurable goal because it includes a specific amount of time and defines a piece of evidence that can prove progress.
Attainable
Setting attainable goals means the goal should stretch your student’s abilities but remain possible.
An attainable goal for a student who wants to become better at long division might be to get a better grade on their next math quiz. So, a student who earned a 60% on one quiz might set the goal of achieving a 70% on their next quiz. This goal is attainable because it is realistic and not overwhelming.
Relevant
Relevant goals are those that matter to your students. Part of the importance of goal setting for students is that they learn to recognize which tasks are essential to spend time on and which are not as relevant to their future endeavors.
Your students’ goals should align with their values and larger, long-term goals. In the example of a student who is struggling with long division, you might encourage them to think about how mastering the skill of long division will help them move on to the next level of math, which will, in turn, help them achieve the goal of graduation to the next grade level.
Connecting tasks to specific outcomes that relate directly to a student’s vision for their future works as a motivator and a source of inspiration!
Time-Based
Setting a clear and specific end-time or end-date for each goal helps students maintain stamina and focus because they know there is an end in sight–especially when they’re working on something they might not be interested in.
The math student might decide, “To achieve my goal of mastering the skill of long division, I will practice these math skills every day for 20 minutes until the next math quiz. Then, I will reassess the amount of time I spend practicing math.”
Short-term goals can help students keep the end in sight, and they also give you, as the teacher or parent, an opportunity to reward their efforts. If they achieve their goal of earning a 10% higher grade on the following math quiz, you can celebrate their success, thus motivating them further. If they don’t achieve their goal, you can celebrate the work they put in and help them reassess their strategies.
Students must learn early on that not reaching a goal the first time is a natural part of learning and growth. Celebrating their determination is just as important as celebrating their victories.
Goal Setting for Younger Students
Goal setting for younger students often needs a more hands-on approach and more practice. In this case the SMART acronym will need to be broken down further. Younger students will need regular instruction on how to set effective goals. Here’s how to break down SMART goals for younger students:
Specific: What exactly do you want to accomplish?
Measurable: How will you know when your goal is set?
Attainable: Is it possible to meet this goal?
Relevant: Is the goal worth your work and effort?
Timely: What is the deadline you want to set to achieve your goal?
To help younger students understand concepts of specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely, it’s helpful for them to explore opposites. For example, “What is specific versus vague,” or “What is measurable versus non-measurable.” This activity can help them better understand the meaning and importance of each term.
Conclusion
Actively having your students participate in classroom goals, having them set specific goals for their tasks, and leading by example are all great ways to introduce goal setting into the classroom. Implementing SMART goals is also helpful because it gives students a framework that is easy to remember and repeat.
At Soul Shoppe, our mission is to transform schools and communities by cultivating awareness, empathy, and connection. Soul Shoppe transforms learning communities into inclusive, empathy–based environments by teaching kids and adults the social–emotional skills they need to navigate life’s difficulties with compassion and self–awareness. From the Peacemakers program to online elementary school SEL programs, and parent programs, Soul Shoppe brings social emotional programs directly to you.
Reach out to us for more information on supporting you as you support our kids and communities!
Reading social cues is an essential part of being a caring member of society at every age. Sometimes, people learn these cues naturally. In other cases, they must be taught.
Children who struggle with social skills sometimes have trouble picking up on social cues, which can lead them to misunderstand people or situations. For this reason, it’s important to teach children how to read social cues.
Reading social cues can be taught through a series of activities. This article will discuss social cue examples and teaching social cues.
Reading Social Cues
Social Cue Examples
There are four categories of social cues–facial expressions, body language, vocal pitch and tone, and personal space (also referred to as physical boundaries).
Facial Expressions
According to the US National Library of Medicine, “The expressions we see in the faces of others engage a number of different cognitive processes.” For this reason, assigning one’s facial expression to their emotional state and intention helps us make educated choices about how we interact with others.
For example, if a child sees that a classmate is frowning and, as a result, intuits that child is sad, they will take their sadness as a cue, telling them how to interact with their classmate. An empathetic child may ask their friend what’s wrong. A child who enjoys making people laugh may try to cheer their friend up.
Understanding what someone else is feeling helps us know how to best interact with them. If a child doesn’t have this ability, they may act in a way that is perceived as lacking boundaries or being uncaring, when that isn’t the case at all.
Just like facial expressions, body language is an example of a social cue.
Body Language
Body language is the science of nonverbal signals such as gestures, facial expressions, and eye gaze that communicate emotions and intentions (Science of People). People use their bodies to communicate all the time. Sometimes we purposely use our body language demonstratively. Other times our body language reveals our internal intentions without our awareness.
When children are good at reading social cues, it gives them confidence socially. When they have difficulty understanding body language, they may feel they are experiencing rejection or encounter confusing situations without knowing how to communicate the experience.
For example, if a group of three classmates is huddled together and speaking in whispered tones with their faces creating a small circle, the cue is clearly that this group needs privacy. If a child steps into the circle and asks, “Do you want to play?” they will likely be rebuffed. In this example, the child did not do anything wrong but may receive a response that makes them feel uncomfortable.
Reading body language is important to social interactions and social-emotional development. Another of these critical social cues is vocal pitch.
Vocal Pitch and Tone
Vocal pitch and tone fall under the category of nonverbal communication. Such communication has been studied extensively in the context of impression formation because people’s opinion about another person is not only based on what a person says (verbal cues) but also to a large extent on visual and vocal cues (Sporer & Schwandt). When children miss social cues reflected in another person’s voice, they may fail to understand the relationship between themselves and another person.
Furthermore, changes in vocal tone can change the meaning behind what someone says. For example, if a teacher asks a student if they completed their homework, a student might say, “Yes, I completed my homework?” in a high-pitched voice and with an upward inflection at the end of the sentence. This vocal cue might alert the teacher that the student did not finish their homework.
When a child misses social cues in terms of vocal pitch, they may take words too literally and end up missing jokes or another child’s intentions.
Vocal pitch is a social cue example, as is personal space.
Personal Space (Or Physical Boundaries)
In general, we tend to move close to those we are interested in knowing further or with whom we are comfortable, and we move away from those with whom we haven’t reached a high level of comfort. When a child misses a personal space social cue, they may stand too close to someone they are just meeting, or they may choose to stand at a great distance, thus sending a confusing signal to a friend.
Identifying personal space is important for children for various reasons–including safety, healthy social interactions, building accurate impressions of others, and feeling a general belonging within their communities.
Teaching Social Cues
There are several activities teachers and parents can use to teach social cues to the children in their lives. The following three activities were tested over time, and when they’re practiced often, can vastly improve a child’s ability to read social cues.
Reading Social Cues Activities
1. Monkey See, Monkey Do
This activity allows students to practice eye contact and recognize facial expressions. The objective is for students to mirror another person’s facial expressions. For example, you can furrow your brow and frown and have your students imitate you.
Other ideas for expressions or actions include smiling and puckering your lips or winking. Once students have successfully imitated your facial expression, you can ask them how they think you feel when making that face.
2. Emotion Charades
This activity teaches students how to interpret emotions. First, write down what you feel on small pieces of paper. Examples could include happy, angry, frustrated, confused, or sad. Fold the pieces of paper in half and place them in a hat.
Divide the class into two teams. A student from the first team picks a piece of paper from the hat and acts out the word written on the paper. Their teammates have one minute to guess the emotion. If they do, they get one point. The game continues, and a student from the other team picks a word and acts it out. When there are no words left, the game is over. (Study.com)
3. One Word Story
This activity helps students learn to stay on topic during conversations and understand others’ facial expressions during conversations.
Have your students sit in a circle and tell a story one word at a time. For example, the first student might say, “The,” then the second student could say, “boy,” the third could say, “played,” etc. The game’s objective is for the group to tell one cohesive story.
If you are looking for creative and innovative ways to teach children to read social cues, we invite you to reach out to our team!
In addition to working with students, Soul Shoppe supports the entire school community through the creation and facilitation of dynamic programs that give teachers and parents the necessary tools to foster social-emotional learning. Find out more about Soul Shoppe’s social-emotional learning programs, peacemakers certification, and more by contacting us.
Anyone who spends time with children understands that play is more than a frivolous pastime. It’s the work of childhood. Work through which the next generation learns skills like effective communication, conflict resolution, problem-solving, and cooperation.
In this article, we discuss learning through play, cooperative play, and provide examples of cooperative games for kids that can be used in the classroom.
Cooperative Games for Kids
The Six Stages of Play
American sociologist and researcher, Mildred Parten, dedicated much of her career to studying the art of play. As a result of her research, Parten identified six stages of play through which most children progress. She was careful to note that each child is unique and can progress at different rates. Even so, the stages do tend to follow one another eventually.
Unoccupied play is that which we observe in babies or young children. In this stage, children explore materials around them in an unorganized fashion. The focus of this stage is learning how the world works.
2. Solitary play (0-2 years)
During this stage children are content to entertain themselves. The main skills they acquire as they are preparing to play with other children are new motor and cognitive skills.
3. Onlooker play (2 years)
Children involved in onlooker play are actively watching others. As they observe, children learn about the social rules of play and relationships–rules they will eventually employ when they feel ready to jump in for themselves.
4. Parallel play (2-3 years)
This play occurs when children play side-by-side but aren’t interacting with one another’s games. This stage does not include social engagement but it does teach children further social skills and gives them a framework for inviting others into their play in the future.
5. Associative play (3-4 years)
During this stage, children shift their focus from activities or objects of play to other players in the game. The focus of this stage is practicing what they’ve learned through observing others and building social skills with other children or adults.
6. Cooperative play (4+ years)
This is play categorized by cooperative efforts between players. Children become interested in both the game and the players. To this end, they begin to communicate desired outcomes and collaborate toward a common goal while understanding that each person has a distinct role to play.
The way our children learn to play is an excellent example of the constructivist theory of education. This theory is based on the idea that learners build on their existing knowledge to learn new information. As such, cooperative play is not only a capstone achievement for our students, it is also a catalyst from which they can grow into healthy adults and effective members of society.
The skills children derive from cooperative play that, in turn, provide the crucial foundation upon which they build future success include working together to achieve a common goal, developing the ability to problem-solve, sharing and exploring ideas, speaking and listening, and improving social, mental, emotional, and physical agility.
Additionally, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University and co-author of Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children with Roberta Golinkoff, breaks down the skills kids need to succeed with the “six C’s,” which include— collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence (NPR). Cooperative play helps children to learn these C’s.
Examples of Cooperative Games for Kids
Chief among cooperative games for kids are those that teach team-building skills. To that end, we’ve compiled a list of team-building games that have been proven to build both confidence and skill. Those listed are mainly cooperative games for the classroom but can also be adapted for online learning.
Here are our top five cooperative games for kids from various resources:
Set-Up: For this activity, prepare a tray with 20 unrelated items. For example, a spool of thread, an eraser, a juice box, etc. Once you’ve selected your items, create a document with 20 images of your selected items to put up on the screen. Divide your class into even groups.
Instructions: Set a timer and have each group divide the 20 items into four categories that make sense to them. For example, they may put an earring, a glove, a headset, a sock, and a smile into the category “things you wear.” Have groups work quietly so that their ideas are kept secret. When the time is up, give each group time to present their categories and the rationale behind each category.
Set-Up: Provide each team with four different images and ask students to come up with a short story that connects all the objects together. For example, the images can be a person, an object, a location, etc.
Instructions: Give students about 15-20 minutes to discuss and come up with a story, then present their story to the class.
The goal of this activity is to generate discussion among student groups about a specific topic or content area.
Set-Up: Faculty conducts a brief (10-15 minutes) lecture on a topic or content area. Faculty may assign a reading or written assignment as well. The instructor gives the students a set of generic question stems. Question stems help students to come up with or write questions about a text or topic.
Instructions: Students work individually to write their own questions based on the material being covered. They do not have to be able to answer the questions they pose. This activity is designed to encourage students to think about ideas relevant to the content area. The students should use as many question stems as possible.
Grouped into learning teams, each student offers a question for discussion, using the different stems.
Three-step interviews can be used as an ice breaker for team members to get to know one another or can be used to get to know concepts in-depth, by assigning roles to students.
Set-Up: The teacher assigns roles or students can “play” themselves. Teachers may also give interview questions or information that should be “found.”
Student A interviews Student B for the specified number of minutes, listening attentively and asking probing questions.
At the teacher’s signal, students reverse roles and B interviews A for the same number of minutes. At a second signal, each pair turns to another pair, forming a group of four. Each member of the group introduces his or her partner, highlighting the most interesting points.
Set-Up: The teacher selects a short video (10-15 minutes) on the topic of their choice. The topic should have some relevance to the lives of the students watching.
Instructions: When the video is over, organize students into groups and ask them to discuss the following questions:
What is my experience with [the topic]?
What are the major feelings associated with the experience?
Discuss how this affects our interactions with others.
At the teacher’s signal, the class comes together as a whole and one representative from each group shares the overall feelings expressed in the group. Once every group has been represented, the teacher can ask one debriefing question, “What are the implications of these experiences to you?” Or, for younger students, “How does understanding your classmates’ feelings about these experiences help you understand them better?”
Cooperative Games in the Classroom
As you plan to lead cooperative games for your students, be sure to choose games that are appropriate for their stage of development. Equipping our kids to engage with one another productively helps build healthy students, classrooms, and communities.
Every generation in recent history has grown up in a world where national and international news makes its way into the safety of our living rooms and around our dinner tables.
Though parents, teachers, and other caretakers might try to shield their children from scary sounds, images, and stories, the truth is that kids continue to be exposed to the dangers and stressors in our current culture.
In the 1970s, newsreels squawked out threatening projections about the United States energy crisis.
In the 1980s, the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union threatened war and the AIDS epidemic struck fear and panic.
Then in the 1990s, images of the Los Angeles riots, the Bosnian War, and the Oklahoma City Bombing repeatedly played for months on end.
As we are well aware today, the 2020s have introduced stressors no one could have predicted, and they are affecting our children daily. Masked children are familiar with the pandemic that continues to disrupt their classrooms, though they might not fully grasp the enormity of the threat. Some are aware that friends and loved ones have gotten sick, while others live in households that have been stricken with joblessness and even homelessness.
As caretakers, it behooves us to understand how we can identify the signs of stress and anxiety in children and become familiar with tools we can implement to help them thrive despite anxiety-inducing realities.
Identifying Stress in Children
Anxiety is a natural part of life. It doesn’t always signal a more significant problem–sometimes, it is simply a human reaction to a human dilemma.
For example, if your child sees one classmate teasing another, she may grow anxious. This anxiety could be an empathetic response, during which your child puts his/herself in the other person’s shoes and feels what she might feel if she was being teased. A child’s anxiety in this situation could also be triggered by the fear that the offending classmate may tease him/her one day.
Though these feelings are not comfortable, they are normal and even helpful. Just as some discomfort helps lead adults to pursue healthy, strong responses, they also help children navigate difficult moments.
Some fears are common among specific age groups. Some of these common fears include:
Strangers
Loud noises
Monsters
The dark
Bugs
Sickness
Dogs
Children experiencing fears can exhibit behaviors resulting from their uncomfortable feelings even if real danger is not present. When worries go unaddressed and unprocessed, they can become stress and anxiety.
Stress in children can manifest in various ways. According to Aetna, these are among the most common:
Avoidance of specific activities, situations, or people
A tendency to worry about what can go wrong in any scenario
Worries or fears that interfere with normal daily activities
Persistent distress despite an adult’s reassurances
Trouble sleeping at night or insisting on sleeping with family members
Physical symptoms, such as headaches or stomach pain that don’t stem from other medical conditions
When you identify these signs of anxiety in your student or child, use the moment to connect with them. You can seek to understand what is at the foundation of their concern and help them clearly articulate the source.
How to Help a Child With Stress and Anxiety
Help your child talk about what is frightening them by asking specific questions.
Often, articulating their fear or frustration can release tension in and of itself. For example, if a child becomes upset at the suggestion of beginning his or her school day on Zoom, you can ask them, “What makes Zoom scary?” Or, “What was difficult about the last time you met your class on Zoom?” These questions can help guide your child toward specific answers.
Once you’ve taken the time to help your child identify the source of their worry, validate the emotion they’re experiencing.
If a child tells you they’re afraid of the dark, and you’ve asked clarifying questions to pinpoint the specific fear, you can say, “I know a lot of children your age who feel afraid of the dark.” Then begin to help your child create a plan to overcome their fear. You may feel compelled to offer a great deal of sympathy or comfort to the child as you discuss their fear of the dark, but it’s best to identify the fear, validate it, and then move on to creating a plan. Too much sympathy can become a reward that reinforces the fear.
After you’ve initiated a conversation with the child, help them create a plan to overcome their fear.
If a student exhibits significant fear of heights, and you’ve helped them identify the fear and validated the fear, such as “I can see you are really afraid of heights,” you can help them plan a way to overcome it.
“How about today you stand at the top of the slide for a few seconds and imagine yourself having a great time going down the slide. By the end of the week, you can give it a try!” Helping children set these goals and then encouraging them along the way lets them know you see them, hear them, and you are willing to support them through difficult emotions and circumstances.
Social and Emotional Learning Helps Children with Stress
NPR recently discussed the importance of social and emotional learning to overwhelmed children.
The author interviewed Olga Acosta Price, director of the National Center for Health and Health Care in Schools. Price says, “Effective social and emotional learning doesn’t happen ‘only at certain times of the day or with certain people,’ it should be reflected in all school operations and practices. With disruptions from the pandemic so widespread, that kind of approach is needed now more than ever.” At Soul Shoppe, we agree.
The best time to help children understand and interact with their emotions–and the feelings of others–is while they are experiencing them throughout the day.
Children are still experiencing crises daily (NY Times). It is our responsibility as adults and caretakers to help guide our children through these tumultuous times by helping them survive and thrive. We can do that when we give them the social and emotional tools to face the dangers–either imagined or real–and grow the skills they need to identify, manage, and reframe complicated feelings.
