By Colleen Schilly, Associate Head of School with resources from Maureen Casey, Hillbrook School Counselor
On Tuesday, April 28, Hillbrook’s School Counselor, Maureen Casey, shared her expertise via a virtual gathering and created space for Hillbrook families to discuss strategies for staying at home and being our best. The slide deck for the event is accessible here, and what follows are notes from Maureen’s presentation, as well as incredibly valuable suggestions and insights from our attendees.
What do we know about staying at home?
Staying at home has enormous challenges, and as the weeks progress, the nature of those challenges has changed. Trying to stay on top of all the various news items and advances in the situation can feel like whiplash. What we know is that we are all doing this for the first time. Nobody is an expert in this…yet! We know that having some semblance of a schedule or routine can help everyone channel their energy in positive ways. It is also a good time for you to slow down a bit. Don’t miss the opportunity to scan and reflect on what’s going on for you, your immediate family, and your extended circle of loved ones. Make sacred the space and time to be together purposefully.
Emotions are all over the place and sometimes amplified. You may see yourself or someone else in your home (child or adult) express a big emotional response that doesn’t seem to match the situation. This is really normal in times of stress with lack of control. Children are experts on their parents and will take their cues from you. Even if you think you are masking your emotion, children can often pick up on your subtler signals. Consider what you need to help feel your best so that you can create a steady environment for children. Find ways to discuss the more analytical, practical side of the virus and stay-home orders with other adults in places and ways when it is not possible for children to overhear. While they know and learn a lot from listening to adults, they lack the experience necessary to put these conversations in perspective and do not benefit from these conversations the way adults do.
We know that the most important thing right now is relationships. The fact that you are present at home for your children is the very best thing for them. Children’s attachment to you as their parent is the most important relationship they have in their life—you are the person/people they need the most! Nurturing your own meaningful adult relationships is also important right now; make time for that in whatever way you can.
What do we know about children?
At most ages, children are still trying to match the right words to the feelings that they are having right now. Supporting their developing “feelings vocabulary” is a key role that you can play in their lives. Children may express feelings verbally, through imaginary play, or through behavior. You may feel surprised or concerned right now to hear children process ideas about sickness, death, scariness or intrusion in their play. But having a chance to put their emotions out of their bodies through play is a healthy practice that is critical for their development. Allowing them to hand their feelings to you is also a positive way for them to process big emotions. It is normal to see some regression in your children (tantrums, crying, inability to do something routine independently, etc.). In fact, at times, you may even feel these unpredictable or outsized responses to situations. Support your child in finding concrete ways to manage big feelings. You can model this for them by taking time to draw, move, sing, read, and also by naming your emotions and strategies, like: “I’m feeling frustrated that things aren’t going like I planned today. I’m going to take 15 minutes and sit outside in the sunshine. I know it will help me feel better.” When you do this, you normalize that big feelings are an experience that everyone has, and you model how familiar actions can help you move through those big feelings. Children thrive on examples they can follow; it’s how they learn best!
Children are bound to ask questions during this stay at home period. Keep conversations age appropriate. Listen to what they are actually asking, use their words, and remember to interpret it at/for their age level. As you consider your response, remember these components:
- Acknowledge the emotion: “It sounds like you might be feeling ______. I understand that feeling and I feel it sometimes too.”
- Be honest. This doesn’t mean you need to give them more information than is age appropriate, but what you do say should be truthful. Like, “We don’t know right now when we’ll be able to go to grandma’s and that can feel ____. Should we make a card we can send to her?”
- Empower your child with a coping strategy and help them transition from fear, sadness, frustration or disappointment to a plan. “Sometimes when I’m feeling _____, what helps me is _____ or _____. What do you sometimes do to help yourself feel better? What should we try?” By doing this, you replace their lack of control (which a big feeling can often give us) with a concrete response and teach them important skills that will reduce anxiety and promote confidence in future challenging situations. We can’t always control circumstances, but we can control our own actions and behaviors.
Sensory input is a huge way to ground all of us. If things are feeling “jagged,” consider how to incorporate your child’s various senses to help ground them (or yourself): bake cookies, listen to birds, take a short walk, step outside and play I Spy, or make a “Go Find It!” deck and play together.
Refusal is definitely a way children tell us they are feeling out of control and need some structure and help. Sometimes students also don’t want to do things at school. This is very typical during a child’s development, and will be more common now when there is so much change to routines. Here are some of the ideas we might consider at school when observing resistance to a task. These range from accommodations to modifications of the task and center on making getting started easier:
- Make it social: whether that’s something like “teach the lesson to your pet or sibling” or “brainstorming together” with a parent, or friend on the phone to make it more appealing.
- Lower the threshold to starting: even “try this for just two minutes,” giving them a physical timer they can manipulate to see the start and end. Maybe they choose “What’s a good number of minutes you’re going to try this on your own?” Lowering the threshold to start can also be accomplished by having something special to look forward to next, or a special place or tool to work with. At school, we pay attention to designing “soft transitions,” when the activity and mode of participation that precedes one task thoughtfully segues to the next. If you’re coming in hot from playing outside at recess, it’s hard to sit right down for independent math practice. A softer transition might be to play outside, then snack and draw inside, or listen to some reading before an independent practice task. Even better if your child knows what to expect next and these activities are part of a routine! Visual schedules help young children anticipate what’s next.
- Identify the obstacle and consider tradeoffs: What is the thing that’s “yuckiest” about the task for the child? If it’s a writing activity, where’s the worst part? Teachers observe for patterns in resistance and also ask children questions about the task to try and figure out where the sticking point is. Maybe a child can generate a lot of ideas, but doesn’t like the work of writing them down in paragraphs, or maybe they don’t mind hand-writing but they hate getting started with brainstorming. Or maybe they would be willing to write their story, if they could pick which adult would read it. At school, we sometimes help children design trade-offs in the activity, breaking it into smaller parts or chunks and letting go of the pieces that seem less critical to the learning target. If it’s about writing a story with beginning, middle and end, but handwriting is the hold-up, maybe for now the child draws the story as a timeline or comic, with pictures and just a few words.
- Include choice: Choice gives children agency and control. It can be especially helpful in empowering them to feel in charge of themselves and their world when they are feeling powerless. The choices don’t have to be complex; even simple choices often help get started. (Examples: “Today you need to do two SeeSaw assignments. Which two would you like to do?” Or, “Today your bed needs to be made. Will you make it after breakfast or after lunch?” Or, “When you finish your reading, then we can take a walk. Who would you like to walk with today?”) You can separate tasks into categories for your child to choose from: a “have to” set of choices and a “want to” set of choices. This provides children with a wide menu of options, but reinforces the expectation that there are some tasks we have to do to take care of our bodies, brains, and our family unit.
- Find the things to celebrate: Instead of focusing on the things your child isn’t accomplishing (which can begin to feel overwhelming to them and to you) celebrate the things that are going well (the made bed! The cleaned up lunch plate! The quiet reading time!). There are things that are working, and it can be easy to lose sight of those. Your child needs to know you see those things too!
How can you make your home a haven?
As the adults in your house, you can make your home a haven for everybody. It all starts with you. When you wake up in the morning, before you get out of bed, and before you check your cell phone: take a deep breath (or a few of them!). Adjust your expectations. Feel grateful for something or someone. If you are someone who is used to effectively controlling and managing your situation, professionally and/or personally, this time may feel particularly disarming. It’s tempting to think that because everyone is in the same place things might be easier to manage. It’s not! We’re all pioneers in an unprecedented situation and cannot expect ourselves to rise to all the needs in our homes all the time. Let go of the need to rate your performance. (“I feel bad I’ve just let my kid be on devices!”) It’s okay. Instead, consider for yourself and your family: what is the most important thing? It might be that you need to attend to responsibilities and meetings for your work; that means adjusting your expectations for other elements of your day and your child’s day. We can’t do everything we did before while all being together in our houses at the same time. It’s okay to let some of these things go.
If you can, give everyone a dedicated place in the house to work or to be alone. This needn’t be an entire room; it can be a table, a comfy stool at a counter, or a shady spot outside. Notice and identify what each family member needs in what amounts (alone time, play time, family time, & purposeful work time). Help each other design the spaces to fill those needs.
Finally, these days are both hard and joyous. When you get to the end of the day find ways to applaud it and celebrate all that you, and your family, did accomplish. What felt like an accomplishment for others may surprise you. Fall back on empathy, respecting somebody else’s point of view (even if they are the littlest person in the house), and remember that smiles and humor go a long way!
Wisdom from Attendees
What follows are some quotes that include suggestions and insights from parents of children of all ages. There is so much to learn from one another as we all gain our footing!
“I remember reading that one of the paths to happiness involves focusing on one thing at a time. I didn’t think about it too much at the time, but I’ve noticed that the times I end up most frustrated are when I’m supposed to be doing one thing (being with my kids) and I’m also trying to do another (work email)…. or vice versa. Giving things my full attention has been a really helpful shift for me. I like the phrase ‘applauding the day.’ Without the clear delineation between “work is over” by driving home, I’ve found it important to have something to look forward to at the end of the day to create that separation from one focus to another. We’ve been leaning hard into the family dinners and this has felt fun, celebratory, and like an important ‘ritual’ for our family to mark the end of each day.”
“Creating a designated space for my own work that is separate from the kids’ spaces is really helpful for focusing on one thing, and because it separates you from the space where your kids are working, it also builds independence in them as well.”
“I’ve been trying to figure out how to name the things that I’m feeling, and finally recognizing that it was ‘grief’ was really helpful. There is a podcast where Brené Brown was interviewing David Kessler about grief (listen here), and it gave me insight into what I’ve been experiencing and feeling. The phrase ‘If I can name it, I can tame it’ has helped me label what I’m feeling – and I now feel like I’m coming out on the other side. I’ve been carving out time and putting up boundaries for kids to show them that I am also giving myself time to do what I need.”
“I’ve found that my kids respond well to novel experiences (even really small ones) that we can order or create that give them something to look forward to. We’ve been getting materials and they make things to play with together. You can order maker kits online for different ages. That’s working well for them to feel like something is exciting.”
“My youngest child really likes to help out around the house, and my older child is really refusing to do chores and certain kinds of school work. While it’s frustrating, I’ve been trying to come at it with a bit of empathy as it seems like it might be one of the ways he is trying to regain control over his world which has definitely been turned upside down with the stay-at-home order.”
As we all navigate this journey as a school and community, we hope these resources are helpful (and hope-filled) as we navigate our current shelter-in-place and the weeks ahead.