by Lynea Gillen | Dec 3, 2016 | Trauma
When you’re in pain, support is essential. So is releasing sorrow and anger. But we can get trapped in these emotions, too – ruminate and recreate them in our lives, over and over and again. One way I know that the kids I counsel are getting healthier emotionally is... 
by Lynea Gillen | Nov 13, 2016 | Media, Mental Health
Several years ago, the children in the 6th grade classroom I was visiting as a school counselor started to talk about the dangers in the world and how many “bad” people there were “out there.” I asked them to tell me more. They told me about stories from the news,... 
by Lynea Gillen | Oct 16, 2016 | Mindfulness
Bringing Mindfulness to the K-5 Classroom “Imagine that your mind is a television,” I told the small group of students I was visiting at the rural Oregon school where I worked as a counselor. “And you have a remote.” I then asked them to change to a sad channel and... 
by Lynea Gillen | Oct 8, 2016 | Social-Emotional Learning
Stories can do a lot of things – soothe, entertain, enchant, even teach. And it’s not just the content of the story itself that teaches. It’s what stories require of us: the use of our imagination. Imagination lays the groundwork for critical social skills such as... 
by Lynea Gillen | Sep 28, 2016 | Mindfulness
This post was originally published on Parent Herald. It’s a big developmental step when a child begins to realize that they can control their thoughts and feelings. They begin to understand how what we think affects how we feel and what we do. This is a skill I’ve...