If parenting during shelter-in-place feels challenging and isolating, you only have to scroll through a few social media memes to realize that you are not alone. Preschool aged children have intense feelings, no matter the setting. Throw in some stressed out parents, new routines, uncertainty, and a global pandemic and you have a recipe for disaster. So, how can you help the little ones in your life sort through all these feelings (and maybe help yourself in the meantime too)? Talk about those feelings! ALL THE FEELINGS! Here is a link to a feelings chart that you can print and use at home. It has a lot of feelings. Feelings can be nuanced. According to Yale's RULER approach, emotions range in pleasantness and intensity levels. Understanding that can actually make taming them a little bit more manageable. It can also help young children appreciate the wide spectrum of emotions even if they are not yet developmentally ready to name them all. But too many options can be overwhelming for some people. If you're going to use a feelings chart at home, do so in a way that is going to be truly useful for your kids. With my 2 and 4 year old, this meant cutting out pictures and arranging them in a way that made more sense to us (we used the RULER approach and arranged them by "energy level" and "pleasantness"). We pick out how we are feeling based on the picture we most relate to and then talk about the different ways to label that feeling. We talk about whether or not we like the way we are feeling. If we don't like it, we talk about things we can do to change how we are feeling. Which brings me to the next challenge: calming strong feelings. Here is a social story you can use to begin talking about ways to calm strong feelings. Another useful approach is to come up with strategies that can be easily used to calm strong feelings in the moment (like this generic one). My 4-year-old helped me brainstorm a more personalized calming strategy menu for our house last week because we needed it (please excuse the art, time was of the essence)! Personalized menus or choice boards can come in handy for everyone - especially when they are practiced proactively ahead of time. We earned "stars" for each calming strategy we did (grown ups too! Modeling is so important and, honestly, we all benefitted). At the end of the day, the person with the most stars won! The prize? Picking the song we danced to before bed. Practicing strategies when we are calm makes it easier to remember to use these strategies when we are not calm. If we talk about how we feel both before and after we use the strategies, we become aware of which strategies are most helpful. Plus, when parents are stressed, it's way easier to grab a pre-made list of ways to help your kid calm down then try and come up with a creative list off the top of your head.
The menu we made probably won't last that long. Hopefully we will back into a better routine and we won't need to practice it daily anymore. Or, more likely, we will need to make a new one to spice things up or as the weather gets nicer (please-oh-please let the weather get nicer!). We might find that we need a totally different type of choice board - perhaps a problem solving board for when two kids want the same toy. We might need something different each week. And that's okay. The creation of each menu or choice board is a collaborative effort and invites everyone to think of solutions. Even young children can feel empowered when they are genuinely asked to help solve big problems. And each new board is a chance to talk about feelings and ways to regulate those feelings and that's a win for everyone. Well, for three minutes at least.
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AuthorMiss Nicole is the Social Worker for the Early Childhood Program in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Categories
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May 2020
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