{"id":1047,"date":"2019-09-27T11:30:43","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T18:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/?p=1047"},"modified":"2020-02-27T12:48:23","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T19:48:23","slug":"navigating-your-childs-social-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/2019\/09\/navigating-your-childs-social-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Navigating Your Child’s Social World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Colleen Schilly, Associate Head of School<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI want to start by saying something you can argue with: parents can never know what their children are like when they are not around.\u201d Sheri Glucoft Wong, at our parent ed event Wednesday night, then paused, waiting for anyone to argue. Smiling, she continued, \u201cTeachers and families are the greatest partners. We rely on each other to share what the other cannot see or know.\u201d This Wednesday, Hillbrook had the pleasure of hosting Sheri Glucoft Wong, a licensed clinical social worker, therapist, and consultant who has spent decades working with children, families and schools. Sheri spent the afternoon talking with employees about effective ways to work with children and partner with families, guided by our shared Hillbrook Communication Norms. She then spent the evening offering a wealth of insight at our first parent education event of the year, \u201cNavigating Your Child\u2019s Social World.\u201d As Mark Silver shared<\/a> in advance of this workshop, Sheri\u2019s best advice for how to both elicit more detail and nurture children to feel good about themselves, to see the good in others, and to persevere through disappointment is to respond with a neutral \u201cOh.\u201d The simplicity of this response is not dismissive. Rather, it limits how we fill the moment, making space for the voice, interpretations, emotions and wonderings of the child. In that space, children practice words to describe how they\u2019re feeling, try on strategies for fixing something that feels broken, and experiment with increasingly independent navigation of their social world. Read on for more take-aways from Sheri\u2019s time with parents. 
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Home is your child\u2019s training ground for the world<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheri began her talk with employees by warmly reminding, \u201cChildren are not born civilized.\u201d Like Sheri, educators at Hillbrook believe that children want to do well, can learn to do well, and that the work of childhood and school is to provide the environment and the experiences to help them figure out how the world works. Sheri says a key thing we are charged with nurturing in children is their self-esteem, which she defines as \u201cthe quality that enables you to be considerate of yourself and others at the same time.\u201d This means learning not to put aside oneself for others, and also not to consider oneself at the expense of others. Healthy self-esteem, conflict resolution skills, and friendships are all things that children learn about from direct messages we give them. They also learn these things by watching us. How we do or don\u2019t live out the values we say with our words shapes how children\u2019s characters grow. Sheri urged adults to ask ourselves: How do you talk about someone you disagree with? How do you problem solve when your feelings are hurt? How do you model kindness, empathy, compassion, and curiosity? Children learn to threaten from us, to form cliques or avoid direct communication from us. They learn to yell from us. They also learn to be upstanders, endure disappointment, ask for help, try again with heart, and share how someone has impacted them from us. Sheri reminded us, \u201cChildren are always watching, and the ways we behave provide templates for their behaviors.\u201d 
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No child wants to be mean…they just want what mean <\/strong>does<\/em><\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All behaviors have a function. \u201cIn 40 years,\u201d Sheri stated, \u201cI have not met a child who wants <\/em>to be mean. They just want what mean does.\u201d Being mean can protect you from feeling vulnerable, can obscure shame, can give you power or a sense of significance, or help you feel included where you weren\u2019t. None of that makes being mean acceptable. But when a child experiences meanness or is mean to someone else, this reality provides us the opportunity to model our communication norms and be more curious than certain. Sheri urged us, as faculty and as families, to avoid the harmful practice of labeling children. She said, \u201cThere are no villains or victims, only dynamics that we need to understand, interrupt, and support children\u2019s growth through.\u201d When a child brings us a problem, Sheri encouraged us to notice how much time we spend talking to the child about themselves versus the \u201cproblem\u201d (the other child\/teacher). Focusing talk time on your child shows them that they are your first concern, it also centers around next steps they can control, allowing them to learn and grow. She suggested using questions like, \u201cWhat did you try?\u201d, \u201cWhat are you worried about?\u201d and, \u201cWhat could you try tomorrow?\u201d instead of language that seeks to rescue children, to add your own judgments, or to solve a conflict for them.
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Apologies don\u2019t really matter<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wait\u2026.back up\u2026.what?!<\/em> The act of saying \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d can have genuine meaning. It can also be an empty performance\u2014one that causes further hurt or teaches children the wrong message about how to acknowledge and address their impact on others. The apology itself doesn\u2019t matter\u2026. what matters is that someone who is responsible for causing hurt realizes the result of their actions\u2014it matters that they understand their impact on a space or event, or how a person who was hurt feels. It matters that they show a genuine, self-directed effort to make it right, focusing on the result separate from their intent. As Sheri put it, \u201cImagine the skill and confidence children feel when they go into the world knowing that when they make a mistake they can make it right.\u201d Making it right can look like helping clean up the mess, walking someone to get a bandaid, sending a card, or offering to play with someone. The words \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d matter deeply, if that\u2019s what makes it right for someone who has been hurt. Sheri said, \u201cA growing body of research shows that punishments for behavior or mistakes don\u2019t yield long term behavioral change. Logical consequences, delivered with neutral emotion, and that are a clear result of the behavior do work.\u201d We agree, and encourage you to read through our school\u2019s philosophy on approaching misbehavior in our Student & Parent\/Guardian Handbook<\/a> on the Bear\u2019s Lair. We all want to raise children who have a genuine interest in making it right, a practice that goes well beyond rehearsing the words \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d
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Give your child the gift of a neutral response<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sheri spoke about the \u201cdisappointment muscle\u201d with parents and employees. \u201cKids are born with a disappointment muscle that is weak, and it needs exercise with disappointment to grow strong.\u201d When we intervene to avoid a child\u2019s response to disappointment (tears, stonewalling, arguing, negotiation, tantrums, etc.), we do them a disservice. Disappointment is just a feeling, a fairly common one, and it passes. As Sheri put it, \u201cHere\u2019s something you don\u2019t need a class to practice. It\u2019s free and it\u2019s everywhere.\u201d If adults have big emotional responses to children\u2019s disappointment, or the associated behaviors they use to manage it, we send the message that disappointment is debilitating. We also teach them inadvertently that we don\u2019t believe they can cope with it. \u201cDon\u2019t let your feelings take the center when your child brings you a problem,\u201d Sheri cautioned. It takes the moment away from them and makes it about us. Children benefit when we convey our steady belief in their competence to navigate their world. This steady conveyance also, in the long run, reduces anxiety. \u201cAnxiety is the anticipation of a problem that you won\u2019t be able to solve.\u201d So when we allow children to experiment with solution-making, we teach them they can handle problems. As they amass experiences with designing and acting on their solutions to problems, they develop of narrative of self-sufficiency and self-efficacy. They come to believe that even with the worst experiences or missteps you can recover. 
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At Hillbrook we believe in the essential partnership between home and school. Sheri calls us \u201cshift workers on the same job.\u201d We continue to be grateful for your partnership in shaping a school environment where all children, with the love and skill of the adults around them, are given the support they need to find their way. Please join us for future events in our Hillbrook Parent Education Series, designed in response to your feedback about areas of key interest. Our next workshop, \u201cHow does Hillbrook evaluate its program?\u201d will be on Monday, October 14 at 8:30am following Flag in the Multipurpose Room. We will present a range of data that we use to track our program\u2019s effectiveness, including group performance on standardized tests and data from alumni on high school placement and experience. Plan your participation in our parent ed program by viewing our map of events for the year<\/a>. We look forward to seeing you! 
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By Colleen Schilly, Associate Head of School \u201cI want to start by saying something you can argue with: parents can never know what their children …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[143,34,77],"tags":[219],"class_list":["post-1047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-core-values","category-parent-education","category-social-emotional-learning","tag-associate-head-of-school"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1047"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1264,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1047\/revisions\/1264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}