COVID-19: 9 Articles

Building a Resilient Child: Promoting Independence and Resilience During COVID-19

Helping your child develop independence and resilience is a big challenge in the best of times. During the COVID-19 pandemic, anxiety, isolation, and disrupted schedules make it harder. Dr. Julia Martin Burch shares insights and tips to help you build a resilient child, even during COVID-19. Childhood is full of challenges, from learning to be a student to managing disappointments to resolving conflict with friends. As parents or caregivers, you are charged with the difficult task of supporting and guiding your child through challenges, while also stepping back and allowing them to learn new skills and handle problems with an age-appropriate level of independence. It can be very difficult to strike this balance because your natural instinct is to step in when your child struggles. This instinct is only heightened during the current pandemic as you likely want to do whatever you can to make your child’s life a little easier during this difficult time. Yet, children only become confident in their own abilities to handle challenges by doing so themselves. When you fix a child’s difficulty for them, the child is deprived of the opportunity to learn to cope with uncomfortable emotions, creatively tackle problems, and deal with natural consequences when they occur. In fact, the current pandemic is actually an ideal time to allow your child to start tackling challenges more independently. This is because independent problem solving also gives children a sense of ownership and agency; qualities which are in very short supplies in kids’ lives these days. Whether your child has returned to in-school instruction and some extracurricular activities, or if they are still learning and interacting virtually, building these skills is empowering.   All this being said - it's also important to maintain perspective on this moment in time. Parenting at baseline is hard work. Parenting during a pandemic can feel impossible! When thinking about how to incorporate the following tips into your parenting, gauge your own stress level as well as your child’s. If you do not have the bandwidth to try these tips now, consider re-reading this in a few months.   Check in with yourself Ask yourself how often and at what times you currently intervene on your child’s behalf. Is there anywhere you can give your child more autonomy to make mistakes and muddle through challenges in the service of learning and developing new skills? If you keep intervening as you do now for the foreseeable future, will your child be ready to independently handle challenges in high school and college? Take a hard look at the current level of support you offer and where it might be hindering your child’s growth and independence.  Set goals Identify one or two initial areas to focus on. These will look different depending on your child’s age and your current level of involvement. For example, with a younger child you might slowly reduce the level of support and problem solving you provide around preparing lunch each day during breaks in virtual school. With an older

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Building a Resilient Child: Promoting Independence and Resilience During COVID-19 2021-03-22T17:34:16-04:00

Increase Optimistic Thinking at Home: Part II

As we enter a new year full of new challenges, it is more important than ever to think optimistically. With the ongoing pandemic, social-emotional learning is more important now than ever. In creating our book, Dream It!: A Playbook to Spark Your Awesomeness, with my co-author Sara E. Williams, PhD, we did ground-breaking research that measured the effectiveness of strategies we identified to increase optimistic thinking in children. In our last post, we shared a recent study published in the peer-reviewed journal, Child & Youth Care Forum, that validates Dream It! A Playbook to Spark Your Awesomeness as scientifically proven to increase optimistic thinking. In this post, we’ll share strategies to help you teach your child to think optimistically and ways to bring books to life, both in general and specifically for our book, Dream It!. To help, we will provide some free games and activities, including a new augmented reality game. How to bring a book to life. As a parent or teacher, you may feel challenged to bring books to life for your children. One of the best ways to do this is to connect what you read in the book to your child’s life by providing hands-on experiences that allow them to explore the concepts personally. For example, if you were reading The Three Bears to a young child, you might make oatmeal or porridge for them to eat, or get them to compare the size of their bed to the size of your bed. In Dream It!, we use this approach to teach children how to dream and how to turn dreams into reality. We define dreaming as following your passion, thinking optimistically and setting goals. We teach these concepts by playing games and doing activities, each one having been tested in a real-world classroom. Games are fun and interactive ways to help your child explore concepts they read about. To try some, you can download a free sample of chapter 4. These are what we call bucket list games that help kids brainstorm their dreams. For example, the Dream Board activity is a way to help children collect new ideas in one place. Encourage them to add photos, ticket stubs, drawings, sticky notes — anything that sparks their passion. Then every day they can visualize their dreams coming true. After identifying their dreams, Dream It! shows kids how to sort their dreams according to values and skills and then deconstruct and recombine them to make up new and unique dreams. For example, a child might have the dream of being a cheetah. Adults might dismiss this dream because it’s impossible! However, we encourage children to use their imagination so they can discover their passions and reframe them into more feasible goals. We could ask a child who dreams of being a cheetah why they want to do that. They might say because they love running and being fast and feeling free. We would then help them explore other ways they achieve those same goals

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Increase Optimistic Thinking at Home: Part II 2020-12-30T22:02:43-05:00

Strategies for a Mindful Holiday During the Pandemic

The holidays can be hectic and stressful, even under the best of circumstances. But this year, due to the pandemic, many of our favorite holiday experiences may be different or put on hold. Concerts, performances, and big celebrations will likely be cancelled. Large family gatherings may be impossible. Shopping for gifts may have to happen online. You can still make the holidays special by slowing down and savoring the beauty and meaning of the season. This revised post from 2018 about creating a mindful holiday with your family provides pandemic-appropriate strategies to encourage your child to use their senses to notice what makes the season special, plus some Magination Press titles that may be helpful. You can give your family the gift of calm this holiday season by practicing mindfulness together. A silver lining of the pandemic’s change of plans is that it allows you more time to notice the beauty of the season. You don’t need to sit silently and meditate; you just need to slow down and be in the moment. You can model holiday mindfulness for your child by putting down your phone and other electronics and being present for each experience. Encourage your children to focus on their five senses and their hearts throughout the season. Here are some ideas to bring mindfulness to many common holiday activities and tasks: Concerts, plays, and other performances: These events will happen differently this year. Seek out favorite or new musical, theatrical, or dance performances online or happening outdoors in a socially distanced way. However they happen, these events are a feast for the eyes and ears. Encourage your child to watch and listen carefully. Ask them to think about how watching and listening to the performers makes them feel. At intermissions and afterward, talk about what each of you found the most beautiful, surprising, funny, or sad during the performance. Even if you don’t see a holiday performance, your family can create one of your own, singing favorite holiday songs or acting out favorite stories. Magination Press books Accordionly: Abuelo and Opa Make Music by Michael Genhart and My Singing Nana by Pat Mora explore how families enjoying music together can bring a family together. Decorations: Even if you don’t decorate your home for the holidays, you’ll be surrounded by decorations in your community. The sights, sounds, and smells can be captivating. Lights are a big part of many winter holidays, whether they are candles, twinkling lights on trees, or big displays. Talk with your child about lights as you see them or as you light candles. Why do they think lights are such an important part of many winter holiday celebrations? How do the lights make them feel? What are their favorite kinds of lights?   Share your tradition’s stories about the role of lights. Many of our holiday decorations have a distinctive scent: pine, melted wax, spices (think Gingerbread houses or clove and orange pomanders). Even fire in the fireplace–not necessarily a holiday thing, but

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Strategies for a Mindful Holiday During the Pandemic 2020-12-03T11:08:17-05:00